50 percent Anil Ravipudi, 50 percent H Vinoth: Why only one half of Jana Nayagan works

7 min readHyderabadJul 27, 2026 08:16 AM IST When a remake works better than the original material a filmmaker adds to it, the problem is not the remake, it is the filmmaker. Director H Vinoth said before Jana Nayagan‘s release that his film retains about 50 percent of Anil Ravipudi’s Bhagavanth Kesari. The rest is all his: His villain, politics, AI warfare, and his vision his for how Vijay should say goodbye to cinema. He probably did not expect audiences to take those numbers and use them as a scorecard. But three days in, that is exactly what has happened. The first half, where Vijay holds a frightened girl’s hand and slowly builds her confidence, works. That is the Ravipudi half.The second half, where Bobby Deol commands a robot army in a fictional African country rendered through AI w