War.

The most confusing part about the teaser to me was the fighting scenes. There were quite a lot of battle scenes in a one minute teaser, especially for a movie based on a book that doesn’t feature any war.

In the book, wars of past are detailed and there are small, sometimes even fierce, skirmishes between groups here and there, but there’s no ‘war’ in Ponniyin Selvan. Most of the actual fighting in Ponniyin Selvan is irrelevant to the greater plot. Verbal fighting is another story though.

Ponniyin Selvan is like Game of Thrones gone good. Like what if Ned stark manages to stop the great war since most of the stakeholders are actually good at heart? The lack of war and the race to stop it is the entire point, or rather plot, of PS. So, I’m really wondering what MR has done to the story.

And I’m not really surprised to be honest. I knew from the start they couldn’t do justice to the books. The book is voluminous and convoluted. The unraveling at the end was so satisfying because Kalki built everything up from scratch patiently through four books. Six hours won’t be enough to do that. A web series might but that won’t fetch much money I guess. Anyway, I’m not complaining.
I’m just intrigued to witness Mani’s version of Ponniyin Selvan. I’ll try my best to forget the books and judge it as a standalone duology.