Two Legends, Two Teasers, Two Opposite Reactions

Mani Ratnam and Shankar are two legendary directors from Tamil cinema who have equal fan following in Telugu.

One director gave timeless classics like Roja, Dalapathy, Bombay, Sakhi, and Guru, while the other kept delivering blockbuster entertainers like Gentleman, Premikudu, Oke Okkadu, Indian, Aparichitudu, and Robo on a huge scale with novel concepts.

But over time, Shankar has slowly started fading out. His 2.0 was a VFX gimmick with a poor story, and his last film, Indian 2, was a complete dud.

On the other hand, Mani Ratnam is making efforts to reinvent himself and update his directorial skills according to the changing tastes of the audience.

His last film, Ponniyin Selvan, was decent as a film and also did reasonable business at the box office.

Now both directors are coming up with huge films, and their teasers have been released back-to-back.

Mani Ratnam’s Thug Life teaser was released two days ago and received a good response from all over. The intense performances, slick visuals, good action choreography, and thumping BGM were impressive and showed that Mani Ratnam is still quite capable of making a film for today’s audiences.

On the other hand, Shankar’s Game Changer teaser was released on Saturday. Though nothing was outright bad, the teaser seemed quite generic. It lacked the wow factor.

The reaction from Tamil audiences is that Mani Ratnam has gone way ahead of Shankar in terms of filmmaking, which was not the case a few years ago. Many feel that Shankar needs to update himself, or else he will soon become outdated.

It has been an interesting case of two teasers in two days from two iconic directors and two vastly different reactions from the audience.