Films like KGF 2, RRR, and Pushpa have proven that linguistic barriers no longer exist in today’s world. It has also called into doubt Bollywood’s dominance as the country’s principal film industry. Hindi cinema is seeing weekly bloodbaths as south Indian films continue to proliferate throughout India and the world. Every week, large, well-publicized films with budgets above ‘100 crore are devastated due to a lack of spectators.
I’ve been reviewing movies for over a decade and have attempted to make sense of this tendency. The aim appears to be the most significant distinction. South Indian films, whether comedies, action flicks, or horror pictures, are developed with a one goal in mind: to entertain the audience. You may not agree with the aesthetics or the film’s cinematic voice, but the purpose – to amuse — cannot be questioned.
Bollywood films have relocated from the country’s core to South Bombay when Shah Rukh Khan’s films began to perform tremendous business internationally. The country’s largest film industry has forgotten that there is a country beyond the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. Even if film critics acclaim a picture as cutting-edge, the majority of Indians still see movies on single screens after paying actual tickets. They still want a hero who starts from the bottom and rises to the top. They want to dance in the aisles, laugh, weep, and yell their lungs out. Attend an uninvited three-hour tuition class on values and morality.
Bollywood films are also afflicted by the copy-cat problem, in which they continue to create pictures that ‘trend’ in a given decade. The 1990s were the decade of action heroes, with an equal number of heroes and women. The adversary was a wicked father who built a Ravana-style empire that had to be infiltrated and destroyed. The decade of the 2000s was marked by romance, with brawny heroes such as Sunny Deol and Suneil Shetty whispering sweet nothings into the ears of fearful heroines. Solo action films, as well as comedy, made a resurgence in the 2010s.
The stars of South Indian cinema aren’t all tall, fair, and well-built. They honor the commonplace, the ordinary. Abs aren’t required, but the ability to captivate audiences is. The audience is the most important aspect in South Indian films. They recognize that a picture must be adored. This is not always the case. Not to be researched in order to bring up societal concerns. It hasn’t been rationalized. But she was adored.
