Allu Arjun’s Raaka is already looking like an unusually ambitious project, with multiple timelines, multiple characters, and a huge ensemble. The latest buzz suggests that Allu Arjun will be seen in a triple role, with one character as the main protagonist, another carrying negative shades, and the third reportedly being an ancient warrior. The film is said to move across three different timelines, with Mrunal Thakur playing his love interest in one of the eras.
Deepika Padukone is reportedly playing a pregnant woman in a Puranic-Vedic era, while Rashmika Mandanna plays her protector. This is particularly interesting because Deepika had already played a pregnant woman in Prabhas’ Kalki 2898 AD. Janhvi Kapoor is said to be playing a tribal girl, while Aishwarya Lekshmi reportedly appears in a negative role. The film is also expected to feature wild creatures, exotic species, and a completely different sci-fi world.
Interestingly, Deepika’s pregnant-woman character has already become a talking point among Prabhas fans. The Prabhas-Allu Arjun fan war over who is the bigger pan-India star has been going on for years, and this similarity with Kalki 2898 AD is now giving another reason for the debate. Some Prabhas fans are already accusing Atlee of stealing the idea and mixing it with several other elements. Atlee has also faced plagiarism allegations around several of his earlier films, with critics often accusing him of taking ideas from different movies and combining them into his own commercial formula.
That makes Raaka a very risky proposition. The ingredients are certainly huge: triple roles, three timelines, an ancient hero, a villain, a pregnant Deepika, Rashmika as her protector, tribal characters, exotic creatures, and massive action. But making them work as one coherent film is going to be challenging. After the recent disaster of Yash’s Toxic, which also had many female characters and top heroines, there is a bit of skepticism around Raaka. But Raaka cannot afford to become another film where the scale looks bigger than the actual content.
Atlee now has to prove that Raaka is not just a massive collection of ideas, but a properly executed cinematic experience. With Allu Arjun at his peak and the project being positioned on such a huge scale, the expectations are enormous. The bigger the ambition, the bigger the risk if the execution goes wrong.
