The Trend Of Good Cinematic Films

Bollywood has always been known for cheap-flicks, songs for every emotion the protagonist feels, and senseless action. Indian movie buffs are expected to leave their brains at home whenever they go to the cinema to watch a much-acclaimed blockbuster. It doesn't surprise the audience when movies like Golmal 3, Happy New Year, and more like these enter the 100 cr club, and movies like Tumbbad, Gangs of Wasseypur come and go like an evening breeze.

The fact that a film like Tumbbad gained prominence when it was available of Prime Video proves that Indian cinema lovers have grown accustomed to the likes of directors like Karan Johar, Zoya Akhtar, and Rohit Shetty. The typical love triangle from the 90s, cars in the air, and unrelatable cruise trips is assumed as the content that the masses wish to watch.

The Bollywood vs Hollywood debate

For years, the movie analytics and buffs have compared the two cinema giants, Bollywood and Hollywood. The topic of debate has two aspects, the money films earn and the type of content they put out. After reading the first two paragraphs, the quality of the content that gets released in India on a regular basis is quite clear. Year after year, commercial directors direct movies with similar plots and more gusto. Most of these movies enter the 100 cr club and even go on to 200, 300 cr. It's contemporary, Hollywood holds a different story.

The highest grossing movie ever is 'Avengers: End Game'. It won't be wrong to say that the film was grand. I remember the struggle of getting tickets, the hype all over the internet. It was wild. Let's draw a comparison from India cinema, Dangal. Dangal, earning over 800 crores worldwide is India's highest grossing film, and I won't shy away from saying that it was better than End Game. The typical Disney culture could not finish the Avengers story on a sad note. The good guys had to win, and they did.

The quality of content between the two cinema giants seems to be worlds apart. The quality of most Hollywood movies is as good as the rare occurrence of good cinema in India. The gap is vast because the people watching Hollywood movies are used to good cinema, on an average. The directors there are open to challenges and experiments, and if neither work, they have a safe backup of picking up epic literature through the ages.

Bollywood, on the other hand, is prone to stick to the tried and tested path of direction. As mentioned earlier, a similar pattern can be observed in the type of cinema that is created in India. When a director, let's say, Anurag Kashyap, strays from the ordinary creating films like Gangs of Wasseypur, No Smoking, and DevD, his work is labeled too bold, too bloody and too crass. What the elite critics don't realize, is that Kashyap brings to cinema the reality of India. Unlike Zoya Akhtar, who creates films that one 0.00005% of the demographic can relate to, Kashyap created content that seems unrelatable to the critics, yet very much relatable to the audience. The cult legacy of Gangs of Wasseypur proves the same.

A Content Shift

With the incoming of OTT platforms in India, there has been a noticeable shift in the type of content people watch on a regular basis. Films, that earlier seemed too ahead of the age we live in, that seemed to have a lesser viewership and contain content for a mature audience, have found a home on these OTT platforms. It seems absurd to call the Indian audience not mature enough to watch serious content, thus forcing Indian filmmakers to create content that requires people to leave their brains at home.

The facade art film directors create to justify the failure of this film is just that, a facade. In the name of creating art films, directors deploy uninteresting content, and pace of a snail, and they continue to do so. It's not that the audience is not mature enough, it's just that these 'art' films are not interesting enough. Plain and simple. There is no rocket science behind the failure of these films. Anurag Kashyap is more or less a director of art films and even so, his films work, if not commercially, for the simple reason that they are interesting.

Content in this age has found another outlet, and OTT platforms serve the purpose well. The hegemony some personalities have over cinema has found a little crevice and good quality content is being delivered to viewers. Platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, and several others have invested money right, left and center to bring all genres of content, big screen, and small screen to the audience.
Another thing OTT platforms have done is to bring these two cinema giants together. Cinema brilliance in any language is brilliance, and a great example of this is the oscar winner 'Parasite'. The Korean film is now available for the world to view on Prime Video. OTT platforms are burning the bridges created by different cinema backgrounds. Cinema, good, quality cinema is now available for viewing to all.

People are getting introduced to better content on a regular basis, more and more people are getting hooked to a better quality of content. This is evident when all three films by the Khans last year were big fat flops. Thugs of Hindostan, Dabang 3, and Zero failed for a very simple reason. They were not interesting. People have seen what Indian cinema is capable of, after masterpieces like Sacred Games, Hostages, Family Man, Choked, and many other TV series and movies released on OTT platforms.