Mani Ratnam's Ponniyin Selvan: I (2022) may be a National Award winning movie today, but three years ago during its release, it was at the receiving end of a massive negative social media campaign. Those active on the Tamil side of film Twitter stand witness to the negativity and venom, the keyboard warriors spewed onto Mani Ratnam, and his decades-long ambition of making the 'Ponniyin Selvan' story into a movie.
Ponniyin Selvan: I released in theaters on September 30, 2022, and by October 1, all the Kalki Krishnamurthy "fans" had expressed in every shade and hue, how Mani Ratnam had "butchered" their favourite piece of Tamil historical fiction literature. No word however on how the 'Ponnyin Selvan' novel climbed to the top of Amazon India's bestseller list, a rare achievement for a Tamil book, indicating sales of over 6,000–7,000 copies per week, or how there was a 500–600% increase in e-book sales, with the Tamil version experiencing a particularly massive growth, all thanks to Mani Ratnam's film around that time.
By the time Ponniyin Selvan: II released in April 2023, a good chunk of these "ardent readers" were exposed of their masquerade; They were found going for Mani Ratnam's neck for depicting Aditha Karikalan's death as suicide, revealing their ignorance of the complex death Kalki had given the character in his books. To these nay-sayers' benefit, 2022-2023 was pre Open-AI era, so they had no ChatGPT or means of asking Grok "is this true?"
In the Ponniyin Selvan novel, author Kalki Krishnamurthy leaves Aditha Karikalan's death open to interpretation. Nandini technically murders him, but Karikalan's wavering mental health in the story, and him walking voluntarily into a situation where he knew he could be killed, gives suicidal consent.
Another section that was out for Mani Ratnam's neck during the release of Ponniyin Selvan-I in 2022 were the Raja Raja Cholan deniers. The titular character of the 'Ponniyin Selvan' world is a real life 10-century pioneer king, who is revered in Tamil Nadu. But as with all Kings in history, Raja Raja Chola has his own share of dark-deeds. Modern-age Tamils, with and without exposure to the fictional novel, had decided that Mani Ratnam's Ponniyin Selvan movies are "a white-wash" of history, and hence were protesting against it with negative reviews.
Not to mention the Telugu section, who walked into theaters expecting a Baahubali, and came out accusing Mani Ratnam of "plagiarism", completely forgetting that Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan heavily inspired SS Rajamouli's Baahubali movies. While Mani Ratnam faced extreme heat post the release of Ponniyin Selvan, the one who was torched until the release of the movie was AR Rahman for his music, deemed "uninteresting" and "dull" at that time. AR Rahman went on to win the National award for best background score for Ponniyin Selvan: I.
Ponniyin Selvan: II wasn't spared of such social media hate either, but some of the audience had woken up to the campaign at play, because they had actually gotten to see the first movie on OTT, and had not disliked what Mani Ratnam offered in the form of a film. Two years later, Mani Ratnam is now out with a movie titled Thug Life, which stars his uncle-in-law Kamal Haasan in the lead.
The social media bashings are back, but some of these negative reviewers are self-admittedly also dislikers of Ratnam's Chekka Chivantha Vaanam (2018), Kaatru Veliyidai (2017), or Kadal (2013), movies that are not necessarily the director's top works but still work. Are the Thug Life negative reviews overwhelmingly flooding social media at the moment? Yes. Are negative reviews of a Mani Ratnam movie reliable? Maybe not because of the nay-saying pattern when it comes to Mani Ratnam's films.
Is Thug Life worth watching in theaters? - That is a call an audience spending money on a movie ticket should take, after actually watching the movie on the big screens.