Our biggest superstars are truly back, and it’s a great time to be alive
Star Gazing
Growing up as a teenager interested in cinema in a middle-class conservative household was tricky. In a family were drinking scenes were worse than gory scenes, and kissing scenes were considered to be a threat to the very existence of human dignity, movies were considered a waste of time, a source to corrupt our extremely innocent minds and feed us evil thoughts
What added to the misery was the absolute misfiring of the Old Guns at the box office – who, given my background, were Rajni, Kamal and SRK. While they were ruling the roost in the 2000s when I grew up watching their films, they all collectively decided to show me a big middle finger in the 2010s that began with What-is-happening movies like the barely okay Kochadaiyan and culminated with What-the-fuck-is-going-on movies like Annaatthe, Jab Harry Met Sejal, and the off-screen outings of Kamal.
One part of me was thinking if it was all over and if I should settle for the politically charged stabbings of Vijay or the uninterested offerings of Ajith (guy makes movies with the attitude of a toddler eating veggies – does it once a while grudgingly and goes back to doing what he actually likes). Another part of me was fed up of getting slipper-shots from parents for being a cinementally challenged loafer, who were pretty confident that I’m going to end up fit only for washing butts in the future (the whole thing sounds more intense in Tamil I swear).
Fast track to today, current me couldn’t be happier seeing the extra-terrestrial success of Vikram, Pathaan, Jailer and Jawan. There is something so personal about seeing your childhood superstars show the world that they have still got it. And now being old enough to just get a sigh from my parents for watching a lot of movies, instead of them giving me an existential crisis, it feels liberating (“En Paisa, En Urimai”). I watched all of them twice in theatre and have probably contributed a lot to India’s GDP through my multiple theatre visits.
Now coming to the movies themselves, I think Vikram is hands down the best comeback ever, period. There has been a lot of talk about mass vs masala and I don’t know which bucket it will fall under, but the way Lokesh teased Kamal’s entry throughout the first half, making the audience wait so much and then …BAMM was brilliant (if it had taken even one more minute and Kamal’s identity was still not revealed after that wedding scene, people would have walked out). Vikram gave us the Great Actor that we all know and acknowledge, but it also showed us what Kamal can do when positioned as a mass action star. I lost my shit multiple times during the second half, so much that my friend who met me the next day said “You sound like VTV Ganesh”
Pathaan and Jawan were both solid experiences as a fan, though I think Pathaan holds better as a film while Jawan is more entertaining. SRK has always had a soft spot towards Tamilians and Tamil (Dil Se, Hey Ram, the scene in Om Shanti Om were he’s playing a Tamil actor, Ra. One, Chennai Express, the list goes on) and it was terrific to see him play a typical mass Tamil hero in Jawan. And in Pathaan, combining his inert charm with that of an action hero was deadly –it was something I didn’t even know I wanted, till I saw it.
And with Jailer, despite its problems, all I could care about was how ‘mass’ Rajni is – I can get cohesive stories and character arcs with other movies, but only Rajni can be Rajni. And these kind of well-done mass moments were absent in his recent movies – though Petta as a film is so much more superior, it was more a homage/best-of-collection. I paid money to watch Rajni be amazing and I got it. My friend who met me the next day said “You sound like Batman.”
It’s a great time to be alive – yesteryear stars are returning to their thrones and giving us one half of the pie, which is familiar joy, while newer stars giving us the other half of the pie,by experimenting or paying more attention to stuff like writing (Rocky Aur Rani, Maaveeran, etc). It’s a good mix I feel, and as more lackluster movies tank despite having big stars, I hope our movies get better with time.
As I saw the announcement of Salman Khan’s next film recently, the upcoming potential comeback of yet another superstar who’s not-been-so-super recently, I was talking to a friend about these points, and he started saying things like “You can’t watch movies only for entertainment, it is not enough”. I agree that there will always be people who go to movies only for fun and people who analyze it. Though I mostly fall under the latter category, when it comes to these stars who made up such a big part of my childhood, I’m just happy to have a good time. My friend went on to say that Vikram worked for him, Jawan was a mixed bag, and Jailer didn’t come together as a movie. I told him “You sound like Baradwaj Rangan.”