Krrish Cross Boom!
Doctor Strange is out there. Krrish 4 is on his way. It’s time we had desi superheroes to give Avengers and Captain America company
Hrithik Roshan probably heaved a sigh of relief when A Flying Jatt was grounded at the box office. Not surprisingly, the announcement of Krrish 4 came within a week of the negative verdict on Tiger Shroff’s superhero antics. I haven’t seen The Flying Jatt but it did seem like a promising franchise with a likeable young hero and a catchy name – a potential competition for Krrish. Lekin this Jatt ka jadoo nahin chala aur Krrish phir tayyar for another sequel…
The American superheroes have been surefire box office bets at our desi box office these days. Last year Avengers: The Age of Ultron crossed Rs 30 crore in the first weekend – faster than most Bollywood blockbusters. Captain America: Civil War crossed Rs 50 crore in its second week this year. These superheroes have been competing with our superstars with their opening weekend grosses.
This week another Marvel superhero, Doctor Strange, has been unleashed upon the Indian audience. In fact, Marvel studio head had apparently said that India is very important to them. Interestingly, the creator of Doctor Strange has admitted that his inspiration was a 1930s radio show called Chandu The Magician. Even earlier, in The Avengers, Dr Bruce Banner aka The Hulk was shown living in the slums of Kolkata – how did that cure his anger issues remains a mystery though.
India has been a recurring, though minor presence, in recent superhero outings.
So it’s probably time for our homegrown superheroes to come out and dazzle the desi folks with their antics and maybe give Iron Man & Co a run for their money. And it’s not that our comic book universe doesn’t have worthy superheroes. Anurag Kashyap was all set to adapt Doga with Kunal Kapoor a few years ago. But nothing has been heard of it since. Similarly, Ashutosh Gowariker was reportedly keen on making a movie version of Bahadur, who wasn’t technically a superhero if one were to go by his attire. He was always dressed in a kurta and didn’t wear his underwear over his pants. But he did do whistle-worthy heroics in a dacoit-infested territory of India.
Some of you may not know that there was once, in the early 80s, a superhero based on Amitabh Bachchan. He was called Supremo – a name by which Randhir Kapoor used to call the Big B on the sets of Pukaar. The character was an alter ego of the superstar and Gulzar was one of the creative minds involved in the early adventures. Supremo was active for two years before he hung up his cape and disappeared into the shadows…
While our mythology has the best superhero ever in the form of Hanuman, who made flying fashionable long before Superman even arrived on Earth, it was with Krrish that a desi superhero tasted box office success. Ironically, Krrish’s origin is in a movie that’s more ET than Superman. Koi… Mil Gaya, where Jadoo crash landed in Kasauli, was not so much about the birth of a superhero as it was about the friendship between a seemingly autistic boy and an alien without a return ticket. How and why Rakesh Roshan decided to take the story forward and turn it into a superhero sequel instead of creating a new franchise is not known. But it surely proved to be a masterstroke. I still remember the first teaser of Krrish being greeted with awe. Hrithik Roshan as Krrish was a hit even before the movie was released in 2006. But Krrish 3, seven years later, wasn’t half as much fun as its predecessor, with its archaic treatment and blatant product placements.
But there is hope. Let’s look forward to a superhero sequel that is about a simple yet solid story, contemporary treatment and a smarter way of telling us that Krrish drank Bournvita…
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of SpotboyE.com.
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