Once known to dominate the popular Hindi film template, the larger than life A-List male star is finally at a crossroads.
Earlier this year when the trailer of the Hrithik Roshan-starrer Super 30 dropped, there was much criticism about the superstar blessed with Greek God looks playing the real-life mathematician Anand Kumar. Trigger-happy enthusiasts and even some film commentators were quick to judge Super 30, but in the end, the film made money and garnered some decent reviews.
The idea of casting Roshan as the everyman from Bihar who helps 30 smart but underprivileged students prepare for entrance exams for the Indian Institutes of Technology is both as inspired as it could get within the reality of all things Bollywood and a sign of despair among the traditional A-List male Hindi film star.
In the past few years, things haven’t been smooth for the A-List Bollywood male star. The changing demography of the audience, the onslaught of online streaming portals and the gradual change in the depiction of women in commercial Hindi films mainly in the minds of the trade pundits, have pushed the ‘hero’ to the brink. This is the reason why the typical Bollywood hero is trying all sorts of tricks to remain relevant.
The male stars that have dominated for a better part of two decades (read the three Khans, Akshay Kumar, and Ajay Devgn) witnessed a phenomenal second lease of life after Ghajini (2008) and Wanted (2009). Both films were remakes of a Tamil and a Telugu film, Ghajini and Pokiri, but more importantly, the scripts gave others in the film precious little to do.
In the last decade, the A-list male stars’ films mostly don’t seem to require a classical leading lady—Singham, Sultan, Fan, Dangal, 3 Idiots, Taare Zameen Par, Raees, Secret Superstar and Raid to name a few.
Although most of these films raked in big bucks, it’s more than apparent that the template is dying. For starters, the return on investment makes it a risky business proposition but the transformation in the viewer’s content consumption in the last five years is compelling the leading man to reconsider the characters they play.
Traditionally for the male superstar, the feeling of being lost and desperate, falls in the same category as the sense of optimism and certainty. In other words, on some level, the bigger the star, the smaller the gap between a blockbuster and a washout.
A Wanted spawns more films on the same lines such as Dabangg instead of giving the star the freedom to do something off the beaten track.
A few years ago, the common man was given the hero makeover while now the hero seems to be getting the everyman treatment such as Roshan in Super 30. In a day and age where the regular people are considered ‘influencers’ and ‘disrupters,’ it was only a matter of time before the Bollywood superstar’s larger-than-life ‘reel’ image got a reality check.
(The writer can be contacted at gautam@chintamani.org)