Monday, November 12, 2018

There is good news in the debacle of Thugs of Hindostan !




I belong to the tribe of those who had heavy expectations from Thugs of Hindostan. Like many I did not exactly celebrate the failure of this hugely anticipated movie. Yes I did laugh at the army of humour filled memes that came out once the below average content of this movie started hitting all of us. So many of us who are either Aamir or Amitabh or both fans would be feeling a bit low and some of us might be getting involved in the war of fans on social media.
However in every big positive news there is a element of caution and in every story of gloom there is hope hidden somewhere , same is the case with this debacle of Thugs Of Hindostan. The message to an arrogant bollywood is loud and clear. You can hog the screens. You can monopolise the choice offered to a viewer. You can ensure that your movie gets extended holiday weekend. The audience will now put its foot down and show you the door. Beyond the weekend and blind fans there is no hope for such low on content high on commotion cinema. Race3 was the first warning and Thugs of Hindustan is almost a final decision from the courts of the audience. The decision is give us cinema of content or we prefer to watch TV or cricket home, or we will still walk in to the cinema but go for the better content three or five week old movies. How many of you would have bet on the fact three weeks back that Badhaai Ho will end up earning more than Thugs Of Hindostan. You can hold on to your chairs while you read this but so far as Indian Box Office is concerned that is looking a clear possibility now.
This is good news any which way you look at it. For sure it will hurt the egos of big makers and hopefully in a positive way. Imagine a determined Aamir Khan willing to make up to the audiences with his next and what if he chooses to have Amitabh a part of that one too. Indian audiences are always willing to forgive and forget. Imagine a studio like Yashraj going back to the Yash Chopra days when content had some respect. This is also good news for the audiences who for once seems to have send in a united voice. This debacle will also force the ready to hype it up Mumbai club of reviewers that audiences will not buy into their hyped up content either. To be fair to the reviewer community they seem to have been reasonably honest with TOH.
This debacle coinciding with content based movies still running strong purely on word of mouth is also restoring faith that slowly after almost a decade of shoot and scoot cinema its usability as an effective tool seems to be coming to an end. It can be termed as poetic justice that a trend of huge screen holiday releases which started with the Aamir superhit Ghajini which also made audiences look at how many crores and not how much content is ending with an Aamir starrer. Given Race3 and now TOH makers will be brushing up screenplays, those who don’t are signing the death warrants of their films.

It is good news that so far as commercial viability is concerned suddenly a Tabbu is coming across as a better bet than hear my accent shake my rear Katrina. People are now preferring to fall in love with a great actress and not a hyped up item girl.
Therefore as an audience and as a fan of Amitabh and Aamir, in that order, I am happy Thugs of Hindostan bombed. In fact its working at the box office would have been the bad news. Directors will now give these two war horses better stories. Producers will look at the thrill count and not the screen count. You have to look at this movie failing and movies like Andhadhun and Badhaai Ho as the great churn that is happening in Bollywood today. Those who do not respect it will perish. In that sense failure of  Thugs Of Hindostan is the best gift the audiences could give themselves this Diwali.




1 comment:

  1. Good take on Masala bollywood moviemaking & taking audience for granted.

    ReplyDelete

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