Anji was NOT peak (yes this is a reaction post)
**Why people think it WAS good?**
1. Nostalgia - Most people here saw it as kids. As kids, we are easily drawn to graphics and adventure type stuff, and tend to ignore everything else and our minds fill gaps. And we only remember the good parts of an old film - not the rest. 2. Graphics - Yes, undoubtedly, the climax scene and some other scenes are done very well. In fact, the camera quality throughout the film - even minus VFX scenes was very good.
**Why it is ACTUALLY NOT THAT GOOD?**
1. I will remind what Super Star Krishna said about Takkari Donga which is very relevant here: "When we made Mosagallaki Mosagaadu, we nativized the movie by putting native names to villages, and bringing some cultural aspects and esentially - translated the movie - not just the story of english movie, but also the world and characters. Takkari Donga didn't do that"
Anji COPIED INDIANA JONES. There is no doubt about it. Lot of the chase sequences and even the villain character is from Indiana Jones.
They failed to "translate" the movie for telugu audience. I have no issues copying good movies. You need to nativize them.
2. First part of the movie is like "Jagadeka veerudu athiloka Sundari" - naturally, this is boring for audience. It became cliche, caring for kids and one of the kids being in danger.
3. Most part, Chiru is in a traumatized mode. Indiana Jones movies cleverly dont make it too sentimental and still keep it quippy, and adventerous.
4. The village in first part of movie looks very artificial. Just like Peddi, the village or the area they stay feels more like a movie set, and less like a real place.
Namrata is a bad cast (Sorry Bob), but she cannot act and is an odd choice (and mostly useless in her character script).
To summarize, most people forget all the bad parts of the movie and act like its some great movie that didn't make it.
You cannot show the final 20 minutes sequence and say its a good movie. FInal 20 minutes is genuinely good, but always crying Chiru is not a good characterization for such a movie.
**How can it be fixed?**
1. When you copy something, COPY the spirit of it and translate it to telugu. 2. Make Chiru a RAW Agent or a police investigating a local art thieves like any temple in India with history -like Madhurai, or temples in Karnataka- or temples near Himalayas etc. 3. Make Chiru in his element with his typical - easy going - and a bit of comedic dialogues to bait the villain. 4. Of course theres needs to be victims for villain so that hero feels the need to be savior. But the important part is hero should feel "energized" to save them, not feel "underwhelmed" by the pressure of emotion. 5. Villain character - If you remember old telugu movies - even when main villains are foreign, there always used to be indian counterparts who help them - like Rao gopal rao smuggling with foregin countries.
We need a strong secondary villain character thats telugu whos working with main villain who could be a foreigner. Most of the movie, secondary villain is the one thats hero's chasing. Only bring in main villain at the end.
6. Dont copy Indiana Jones stunts (like traps, escapes) - make them native to Indian temple setups and see what makes sense.
(Look at Uncharted 2 - its a great game that took time to understand native culture at least)