As we have seen a few days ago (The Travails of Hindi Cinema: Part 1), the Hindi film, as we have known it for decades, is sinking. In a morass created by short-sighted forces that have not ever been open to a reality check. The success rate of 60 percent plus (of releases) in the 1970s and earlier has gone down to single digits.
The decline began slowly but surely in the millennium and burgeoned in the second decade. We are looking at the causes one by one, while hoping and praying for redemption and revival. After the avaricious multiplexes, let us move on to one more cause.
How audiences perceive movies today
Ever since stars evolved and became major attractions, we would get those infrequent movies that became huge at the box-office and the question would arise: Do stars really matter? Well, of course, they did!
Because exceptions proved this rule right from Rattan in 1944 to Murder in 2004 and The Kashmir Files in 2022 as some of the crème-de-la-crème films that topped their respective years in return on investment (profit levels).
The cry, ‘Content is King!’ would emanate each time these and even lesser such examples happened. But let us be honest: stars mattered, the bigger the better and the more the merrier, though obviously the content too mattered.
It was noticed in the millennium and beyond that the films of Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar worked more when there were top-rung heroines, even if they had decorative roles. In 2003, a director of a good film that flopped totally told me, “Replace my lead pair with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, and without changing a frame, my film would have done 50 weeks!” And she was right, her film would have at least been a 25-weeker and a huge hit!
But today, stars have not just lost their charisma (due to the ever-spiraling social media) but also their exclusivity. The anticipation for a new Aamir Khan or Ajay Devgn film has gone down notches because these stars are visible or available not just on Instagram, Twitter and the likes but also in person—through publicity campaigns all around the country.
The decline in a star’s pulling power is also due to faulty selection of work. Filmmaker Subhash Ghai points out to a mega-blunder: almost every star seems to have lost their script sense because the offers they get are mostly vetted by—horrors!—secretaries, managers and management / PR agencies!
Also, mainstream stars are looking at “realistic” or “weighty” cinema and smaller names at mainstream entertainers. All this messy mélange leads to disastrous results. The wannabe global inclinations have created a massive disconnect between the star and the audience that craved for him or her . A classic case is of the Salman Khan actioner that has also witnessed a steep descent in interest (and caliber as well) after Tiger Zinda Hai (2017).
And Saif Ali Khan, Shahid Kapoor, John Abraham, Arjun Kapoor, Tiger Shroff and Varun Dhawan have all tried that route with disastrous results. The latest catastrophic imitator in the Salman-South actioner genre is poor Sonu Sood, who is keeping on attempting to hoodwink all into “proving” that his Fateh is a hit!
But generally, while interest in every kind of Hindi cinema is on the wane, especially because of the extortionist-like costs of watching movies in the theatres, the people are equally wary and thus ruthless about what or who they want to see. They just cannot relate to what is being generally palmed off as “Indian entertainment”. Not only have they rejected the alleged “pan-Indian South film” (with the very few notable exceptions proving this rule!) but have shown that the real Indian connect has been lost by 99 percent of the filmmakers 100 percent of the time!
What’s more, the audience was always attracted by a new star-pair—but not anymore! And they always wanted great music for such movies, and they are not getting that anymore.
Yes, the absence of songs that whet our appetite for a movie, the lack of buzz about the film in the way it should be, and the deficiency in the quality and aptness of movie titles add to this miasma. The latest news for this week’s releases is that Himesh Reshammiya’s Badass Ravikumar, a sequel of sorts to his modestly successful The Xpose, has sold an incredible 20 times the tickets in advance compared to the ‘trendy’ (?!) and supposedly youth-centric title, Loveyapa, featuring Aamir Khan’s son, Junaid Khan and star-kid Khushi Kapoor (so much for nepotism!!).
Audiences across all demographics (socioeconomic class, education, age, gender and locations) over the last few years in particular, have seemingly just lost interest in the Hindi film at all levels. Despite the “thematic variety” (including bold themes) we have alarmingly low openings and weekends and the fatal word-of-mouth in most cases kills a film even before Sunday. Not that reviews mattered significantly in the past, but today, every opinion maker and troll gets support, sometimes blindly, especially if his verdict is negative.
Normal audiences and families who were into watching at least a film a week now stay away or are even unaware of a new film (so much for social media reach!). If they are, they are interested more in the collections (and that’s another story!) more than the appeal or quality of a film.
In the last one month alone, I have met or encountered endless souls who were not aware, even after release, of films as varied as Azaad, Emergency, Fateh, Sky Force and Deva, let alone movies releasing on OTT directly, like a Hisaab Barabar. Count the movies that came in 2023 and 2024 and we will have a humongous quantum of such films, which sadly also include gems like Darlings and Maharaj.
The general impression is, “If we are told by someone reliable that ABC is a good movie, only then will we watch it. If not in the theatres than at least on OTT!”
And so today, we are in an era where reviews are watched (on videos) or read more and collections studied rather than movie hall seats filled. And the frequency of “Housefull” boards has been long replaced by the quantity of shows cancelled due to lack of even the minimum ‘quorum’ of viewers.
(Used with permission)
