Dawn of new era

Why all Bollywood buffs should be happy that ‘Naam Shabana’ is even attempted!

Quick… I will ask you a simple question. How many of you have seen this epic series by Rajkumar Hirani called ‘Munnabhai’. If you are a Bollywood buff then chances are that you may have watched it more than once. If I were to ask you; do you like Circuit as much Munna then again the answer will probably be yes.

Circuit is the kind of ‘Man Friday’, who almost gains an equal status as his master. Have you ever wondered why Circuit is so loyal to Munna? How did they become friends? Where does Circuit come from? What is his past? Somehow most sequels that get attempted never really go on character building further, instead they are more about getting more “Moolah” out of popular characters being recaptured on screen.

This is where whether you have watched ‘Naam Shabana’ or not, but you should be happy that such an attempt is being executed now in Bollywood. You need to look at the example of ‘Avengers’ to understand why we all should be happy about ‘Naam Shabana’ too.

‘Avengers’ is one of the most intriguing and awe-creating bunch of superheroes till date. Within the movie, you can see people rooting for a Captain America or Iron Man. People connect with characters either because they see reflections of their own or something they cannot be or they just like the character.

The makers of ‘Avengers’ keep attempting a simple creativity trick. They come up with a movie, which has all the superboys and girls, now we have magicians and mutants too, in one epic visual feast kind of a movie.

Then they keep going back and build stories on each of the superheroes, their pains, their past, their good memories, why are they; where they are today? All most all questions are answered. To such an attempt that we start connecting with fictional characters as if they actually exist.

The purists will scoff at this but the fact is for the average Hollywood superhero fan, an Ironman is as real as probably the American President -- at least till the movie plays on screen. Trust me such a creative connect is easy to talk about but very difficult to deliver.

‘Naam Shabana’ in that sense attempts to go back into the life of one character. Those of you who saw ‘Baby’ will remember that in the brief moments that Shabana comes on the screen, she is used as a honey trap for a murky terror liaison agent, she drove solid screen impact.

The slimy bad guy realises in a very well-crafted scene that this butterfly can actually sting. A lot many of us got curious about Shabana. Probably the makers always had this in mind to build a spin-off or may be after the super success of ‘Baby’ the creative team came up with this idea. Whatever is the reason and whatever be the actually creative quality of ‘Naam Shabana’. The team of Neeraj Pandey deserves our standing ovation in trying to give that much-needed depth to the thriller genre in Bollywood.

The benefit of this strategy is simple - each time the next ‘Baby’ franchise takes place on screen; we know why Shabana will react in a certain way to a certain situation. Maybe one day we will know the story of Shukla ji too and why he is such a sarcastic man.

Imagine that Bollywood, which is still looking at reattempting old movies to establish the thriller genre has this example of here and now kind of relevant content, which the audiences would for sure love to see. This is a here and now kind of characters, which talk of terrorism; the most relevant of our current problems.

The biggest plus point of such spin-offs is also that they keep the next sequel fresh and relevant. It builds a continuity to the characters which, makes a sequel series epic like a ‘Munnabhai’. It is the lack of this creative depth, which makes sequels look like half-hearted attempts to get some extra cash on the value of the first hit, like a ‘Commando 2’ or a ‘Raagini MMS 2’.