By Sakshi Verma
Indian moviegoers are all set to witness the release of the biggest Bollywood film of the decade this Friday. After eight years of hard work, the makers of Brahmastra are all set to present it to the world.
Apart from Gangubai Kathiawadi (released in January), no Bollywood film has been able to impress both the critics and the audience, can Brahmastra turn the table? If the advance booking and hype for the film is to be considered, then the film seems like a hit already. But it won’t be that easy for Ayan Mukherjee directored film.
Brahmastra will not only have to fight the boycott trends but it will also have to deal with the current Indian prejudices. The film stars Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, who are still under scrutiny for being star kids. With trolls having elephantine memory, any old statement of the actors is fairgame for attack and hyper outrage.
The film is produced by Karan Johar, who’s a favoured target of trolls and boycotts. Apart from that, the Indian audience seems to have grown tired of Bollywood. Viewers are done with the same regressive, action-masala formula peddled over and over by Bollywood. And their arrogance of being the big daddy of the Indian entertainment industry has led to the death of innovation.
Hindi filmmakers are not even pretending to note the change in the audiences’ tastes. Otherwise films like Heropanti 2, Ek Villain Returns, Ligers and several others shouldn’t have seen the light of day. Nor is it that they didn’t venture from good concepts like female foeticide in Jayeshbhai Jordaar and Infidelity in Jug Jugg Jiyo but their staid screenplay and poor portrayal didn’t help the audience.
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Despite all the baggage, critics are keeping their fingers crossed for Brahmastra. This is also because the film caters to all the recent Twitter trends like Bollywood vs South, Outsiders vs Nepotism, Hinduism, and Ban Remakes.
Brahmastra is an original movie made at a cost of Rs 400 crore, featuring Telugu actor Nagarjuna to Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone and Shah Rukh Khan. The film is said to be inspired by Indian mythology and Hindu culture.
Still, if people somehow can’t stomach Brahmastra, then who’s to get the stick? Awakening to such a possibility, Ranbir Kapoor, who returned to the screen after four years with YRF’s Shamshera dud, noted that only the script should be held responsible for the success or the failure of a film.
At the end of the day, a film is its script. If the audience is not impressed with what they watch, it should be because of its plot and not due to actors’ personal opinion and lifestyle choices. But now that several Bollywood films have failed to even mark a blip at the box office, it will be interesting to see if Ayan Mukherjee’s Brahmastra can pull it off. It is releasing this Friday, September 9 in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi. So much for fail-proofing it.
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