Dear B’wood – Where are the superheroes?

For long, this is that one question, which has remained so ignored by the entire clan of Bollywood makers. Where are our superheroes? Indian superheroes! Bollywood has long hidden behind an excuse to start with and the excuse goes - superhero movies do not work in India.

For a long time that excuse did seem to hold good barring a few honourable exceptions like ‘Mr. India’. There have not been many superhero movies, which really did well. Even when the biggest of our superstars Amitabh Bachchan attempted the superhero genre thrice in ‘Shahenshah’, ‘Ajooba’ and ‘Toofan’ he ended up delivering box office duds.

The fact of the matter, however, is that the Indian audiences have always been hungry for superheroes. The way we lap up stuff from Hollywood is only because it is presented well to us and the content has some depth to it.

The success of ‘Mr. India’ as a movie and the cult status both the movie and its villain Mogambo got over the years is an indicator enough that Indian audiences have always wanted superheroes. ‘Mr. India’, at the time of its release, had an innovative presentation from its director and a very well written screenplay.

‘Hanuman’, which released in 2005, is a movie which came out of the blue and reaped success. No one, actually, gave it a chance but it underlined a simple fact for all of us that there was indeed a market for superheroes. Yet not many in Bollywood were willing to invest in a superhero movie, simply because they thought that ‘Hanuman’ worked because of his cultural hold on Indian audiences.

Then came ‘Krrish’, the money-spinning success of this movie made Rakesh Roshan reattempt it again with ‘Krrish 3’, now that the third instalment is also in the pipeline, which is again being called ‘Krrish 3’! Krrish for all its major money-making record has again proved the major irony about Bollywood and that is it would rather make another film around love triangles than attempt a superhero movie.

One of the major reason behind Bollywood never attempting a superhero movie is the fact that it is dependent on big stars system; which means that for a superhero movie the cost of production in itself becomes a deterrent when you add the fat paycheck of its main stars along with the technical investment that a superhero movie needs. So, for a superhero movie to recover its costs you need a higher audience appreciation than the normal Bollywood hit will need.

The biggest weakness of Bollywood in not being able to deliver good superhero movies is similar to what is its weakness in every possible genre - lack of good content creators or in simple terms – screenplay writers. If you look at some of the recent big superhero hits of Hollywood there is a content justification. The Avengers series is a brilliant example of superheroes coming together and then their individual story threads based individual superhero movies which are put back into the main movie. The snowball effect it creates for its fans is reflecting in the cult status of ‘Avengers’.

Bollywood works in a pathetic order when it comes to content creation. For a superhero movie, the character should become bigger than the actor. Tony Stark or Ironman is way bigger a character than Robert Downey Jr today. In Bollywood, however, the superhero character becomes an apology to the star's screen image. That is why our superheroes are nonexistent.

Add Bollywood's reluctance to look at the Saboos and Fauladi Singhs that we have in our local comic book scene and the circle of non-belief is totally complete.

Bollywood will have to be a little brave like a superhero to give us some worth remembering movies. Till then ‘Krrish’ remains our only one hope.