Ra.One – Well D.One

I would like to start by saying that I am not a Shahrukh Khan fan, in fact I hardly watch any of his movies, forget liking them. Its not that he is a bad actor, he is one of the wittiest actors actually, which is the only part of his movies I like. I saw the movie just to give some revenue to SRK, looking at the amount he was spending on promotions. But after watching Ra.one …I am a fan, not of his acting skills or style or whatever, but for his entrepreneurship, marketing, management skills ; courage and diligence.

Ra.One- the Movie

I liked the movie. It was entertaining, different, and pretty funny at times, not a bad story line, good on the eye. If it was made by Spielberg or James Cameron it would have been a blockbuster. His south Indian accent dint stay constant was one of the many small glitches, which coming together had quite a major effect causing a negative effect in the minds of the viewers.

What it got Right

- Freshness

- Science fiction comes to India, finally

- Effects wise, India’s best

- Entertaining

- A pretty original script( there will always be comparisons with many Hollywood movies, but then sometimes credit has to be given to the makers)

What went wrong?

- Marketed as a Superhero movie, when it’s a closer to Science Fiction movie.

- Better editing , I know the masala is needed , but it could have been a little cleaner.

- Indian audiences not ready for sci-fi yet

- Tried too hard- Sometimes, when you have too many ideas on your mind and you want to fit in all of them, it happens.

- Hard sell- The movie was forced on you, with SRK appearing from every nook and corner of every nook and corner. People’s expectations were raised too high and they were also exhausted of anything related to ra.one or srk.

- The explanation of how these things turn real from their virtual character wasn’t good enough(this is suppose to be the base of your movie, Krissh had done this part well with the whole “see the future” thing.

Hollywood Movies from which you think you’ve seen a ra.one scene from

- Spy Kids 3- the whole gaming and its levels

- Terminator - the robot thing, although in ra.one they were’nt technically robots.

- Spider man, superman,etc- The geeky avatar of the Hero

- Bicentennial man- Artificial intelligence, and it can go to the next level( if they have a part 2)

- Iron man

- There was this one Swat kats episode, which had something like this..i don’t remember clearly.

The Business aspect

SRK went all in for this movie, using finding every possible link he had in the world and connecting it to the movie. He went on every possible show, every possible brand he endorsed was associated.He also put in the Don 2 trailer in between all of this. Used his resources to the most, and he made up for the weaknesses of the movie with his amazing marketing,PR and management skills. His guts have to be admired, the risk taken, the hard work he put in

From a management perspective, this should be a case study, because he had made sure his movie would make money before it was even out.