CINEMATIC UNIVERSE: AN INCOMING FATIGUE

Sometimes success of a few can do damage of many, Indian cinema has proven this phrase true many times. Whenever there are any trends, the filmmakers start following the same trend again and again for monetary benefits. At first, there was a trend of remakes and when makers saw this formula working, then there was no looking back. After the recent failure of remakes, a new trend of sequels was started and it was also successful. However, now a latest trend has started and that is of cinematic universes.

Is this formula bad?

There is nothing bad in this formula, except it creates a fatigue in the audience.

For instance let's look at Marvel's content only. When Iron Man came in 2008, everyone liked it for what it was, a simple story told in an entertaining manner. A billionaire genius Tony Stark arrogant and proud of his knowledge and wealth, nears death at one point, kidnapped, kept in a cave with another scientist and has the option of either to fight back on his own or give up. In a cave only, Tony Stark created the arc reactor and in that cave only, Iron Man was born. With the sacrifice of Yinsen, whose last words to Tony were "Don't waste your life", Tony ultimately sacrificed himself for the whole universe in Endgame.

Cut to 2022, what do we have here? Now we have She Hulk as the protagonist, explaining us (by breaking the 4th wall) why is she facing problem in maintaining her relationships with her many boyfriends, and this is happening in the same universe. The basic thing that in a single movie a certain group of people are involved, but in a franchise which started in 2008 had a different impact, the same impact would not be felt in that franchise because the people involved in that franchise have forgotten what was their ultimate motive of those movies.

West is already fed up with this

Until last few years, hollywood had found it's formula of making cinematic universes, which looked like a tried and tested formula at that time. However from last year things started to change when big marvel projects like Doctor Strange 2 and Thor 4 showed below par performance at the Box Office. DC was altogether another story with movies starting to bomb back to back as if there's no tomorrow. Even if Wonder Woman 84 and Suicide Squad have the reason of covid for underperforming, what excuse will Black Adam and Shazam 2 give? Shazam 2 especially was one of the biggest CBM disasters of all time.

On the contrary, the movies which succeeded, are the ones which took itself seriously and only provided the audience whatever they expected. James Cameron's Avatar 2 grossed more than $2 billion at the global box office, John Wick 4 grossing $315 million at the GBO, an animated movie Mario is on the verge of grossing the $500 million mark, all these are successes and I agree these are also sequels or adaptations, but there's no problem in doing that if you are honest to the source material.

So what's the problem in India doing this?

Indian cinema has seen many ups and downs in the last few years. Whereas Bollywood was struggling last year, South Indian film industries gave Global recognition to India with a movie named RRR. RRR was a global phenomenon and the sole reason it was such a big blockbuster was due to the kind of vision director SS Rajamouli and the movie grossed an unimaginable $160 million at the GBO. The success was such that hollywood actors like Samuel L Jackson and Jena Ortega are rumored to star in SS Rajamouli's next movie.

However let me remind you that bollywood also bounced back as in 2022 Brahmastra grossed more than $50 million at the GBO and in 2023 Pathaan has written a different story altogether with $129 million at the GBO and is currently the 6th highest grossing movie of 2023 worldwide currently (April 2023).

So where's the issue?

Suppose one person starts to watch any movie from the cinematic universe, then he won't be reaching any conclusion, but in fact, will be fed up with a post credit scene or cliffhanger and that is why the craze of Marvel movies have also died in many places. In India, Ant Man 3 was a disaster altogether and it didn't also performed any good in it's domestic market either.

There are many cinematic universes like Rohit Shetty's cop universe (in which one actor is playing 10 characters), YRF's Spy Universe, Lokesh Kannagaraj's cinematic universe, Maddock film's horror comedy universe and if that was not enough, Raj and DK have found their own spy universe in their web series' Farzi and Family Man.

And out of these universes, most of the universes have no base structure or the intention to make them is nothing but quick cash grab. For example, in Singham Returns (2014), Ashwini Kalsekar played a journalist and in Simmba (2018) she was a judge, In Simmba (2018) Amritpal Singh played the character of a rapist and in Sooryavanshi (2021) he was a cop, In Tiger Zinda Hai (2017) Anupriya Goenka was a nurse and in War (2019) she was a RAW agent. The major intention of most of these universes looks like to gather more audiences by casting multiple A listers in one movie as to why will anyone miss the opportunity to watch Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn, Ranveer Singh in one frame, fighting the goons, or Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan in one frame fighting the goons. Definitely it's a win win for the audience who have followed the movies since the beginning, but the excitement overshadows many aspects of those movies which is not at all a problem if the audiences are happy at the end of the day.

The problem lies here that is whenever these guys have tried following any trend from the west, the ending results have never been good as we have seen that remakes are being outrightly rejected or making bad sequels of some classic movies damages our memories of the old movies.

Still let's hope to see many good content from such cinematic universes as well as some good standalone movies which are worth the bucks we pay!