The silver lining

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. There are so many of us who are either Aamir or Amitabh or fans of both stars, who would have been feeling a bit low and some of us might be getting involved in the war of fans on social media.

However, in every positive news there is an 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. ‘Race 3’ was the first warning and ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ is almost a final decision from the courts of the audience.

The decision is, give us a cinema of content or we prefer to watch TV or cricket at home, or we will still walk into the cinema but go for the better content film. How many of you would have bet on the fact about three weeks ago 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 it is a clear possibility now.

This is good news any which way you look at it. For sure it will hurt the egos of big filmmakers 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 sent 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 ‘Thug of Hindostan’.

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 crore and not how much content is ending with an Aamir starrer. Given ‘Race 3’ and now ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ makers will be brushing up screenplays, those who don’t are signing the death warrants of their films.

- cinemawaalebaba.blogspot.com