Hrithik’s lengthy post

Amid all the VFX bashing, Hrithik Roshan shared a detailed note on Instagram around VFX in cinema. “Yes, bad VFX exists. It’s sometimes so bad it’s painful to watch. Especially for me… and especially when it’s a film I’m part of,” he wrote. He then shared a childhood memory about watching Back to the Future at the age of 11. “I became obsessed. I would sit with my dad’s VHS player studying the frames—pause-play, pause-play—until I broke the player. I ordered a book, Industrial Light and Magic: The Art of Special Effects, from Reader’s Digest with my pocket money…and waited months for it to arrive at the Juhu post office. Happiest day of my life. I can still smell the book as I unwrapped it. Many others followed.”

“Today, some special humans among us, like the makers of films like Kalki, Baahubali, Ramayana (also my dad for Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish, of course), are my heroes. They have the guts and vision to do what’s never been done, all for the love of cinema, so that we, the audience, get to experience something never watched before. From my point of view, they risked all that money and years and years of effort just so another 11-year-old kid could feel what I felt.” 

“Bad VFX is if the movie promises, say, ‘photorealism’ but is unable to inhabit it fully. Even a small lapse in physics/gravity can then destroy the entire illusion. Or the promise is of storybook style but they fail in making it beautiful enough or artistic enough or divine enough, and so fail to engage. But to say that the storybook style is not looking photorealistic isn’t fair. Because it’s not meant to be.”

He ended by saying the discussions around films need to be more thoughtful. “AND you can’t criticise the maker just because he has chosen one style while you prefer another style. That’s not fair. So sometimes when you say ‘bad VFX,’ maybe it’s just a style you didn’t expect. So next time don’t just ask, ‘Is it real?’ First ask, ‘Is it right for the story?’ ‘Is it making me feel what the maker intended?’ Debate it. But debate it with awareness.”