Ram Gopal Varma calls Yash’s 'Toxic' 'insult to intelligence' compared to Ranveer Singh's 'Dhurandhar - The Revenge'

Ram Gopal Varma has not stopped praising Aditya Dhar's big hit espionage spy thriller, ‘Dhurandhar’, starring Ranveer Singh since its release on December 5 last year. Now, he's showing his support again and this is before the sequel ‘Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge’ clashes with Geethu Mohandas' Kannada action film ‘Toxic: A Fairytale for Grown-Ups’, starring Yash from ‘KGF’. RGV named this box office fight 'Dhuroxic'.

Ram Gopal Varma praises ‘Dhurandhar’

On Sunday, the filmmaker clarified in an X (formerly Twitter) post that ‘Dhuroxic’ pits two cinematic cultures against each other, “not of regions, but of cinema”, dismissing any “North vs South” or “Bollywood vs Sandalwood (the Kannada film industry)” narrative. “The principal difference between the two is that #DHURANDHAR respects the audience’s intelligence and #TOXIC presumes their dumbness.”



He contrasted Yash's Kannada hit franchise ‘KGF’, which played to “the dumbness in the masses,” with Dhurandhar's appeal to their “intelligence,” propelling it to global success and knocking ‘KGF: Chapter 2’ (2022) off its perch as the fourth highest-grossing Indian film worldwide.

‘Dhurandhar 2’ vs ‘Toxic’ truths

RGV listed "10 savage brutal truths" to compare Dhurandhar 2 and Toxic. One was "mindless hero worship vs the audience themselves discovering heroes through their moral actions in the story." He said Toxic's action scenes "mocked physics and insulted every school kid who studied Newton," but Dhurandhar's fights feel "so raw and real that one can actually feel the punches." He added that Toxic's music screams "claps and whistle now, you idiots" every five minutes, while Dhurandhar uses "dead silence that lets brilliant performances do the talking." He also said Rs 700 crore went to Toxic to make Yash look like an invincible God, but just Rs 130 crore for Dhurandhar to make every character "feel equally human."

‘Dhurandhar’ ensemble cast

‘Dhurandhar’ stars Ranveer Singh but has a strong group of actors like Akshaye Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, R. Madhavan, Sara Arjun, and Rakesh Bedi, plus others. RGV kept ttacking Toxic. He said Yash’s flying hair in slow-motion hero shots looks “straight out of a shampoo ad.” He added that big “vulgar budgets” went to waste on “VFX fireworks, eyesore sets, and stars just to hide creative vacuum.”

Hope for Indian cinema

RGV concluded his post, “A film that begs the audience to switch their brains off to enjoy it versus a film forcing you to think, feel, and question every frame,” said Varma. He added, “Money being poured versus money being put to use.” He ended his X post saying it's not his love for Dhurandhar director Aditya Dhar that made him write it. It's his “hope for Indian cinema,” to see if “India is Dhurandhar or Toxic.”

'Dhurandhar - The Revenge' and ‘Toxic: A Fairytale for Grown-Ups’ are set to lock horns on March 19, 2026.Get the latest entertainment updates from the Times of India, along with the latest Hindi movies, upcoming Hindi movies in 2026 , and Telugu movies.”