India’s biggest movie superstars need to reinvent themselves. Here is why
I know. They are the biggest, the best. Larger-than-life demi-gods of all things celluloid. The can-do-no-wrong brigade has begun to falter. Not that the chinks are showing in the armour yet. At least not in Salman Khan’s armour. His latest film Race 3 has not been liked by anyone that I know. Yet the film has made over Rs 180 crore in the first week.
Take that.
So, should Salman change his ways? Yes! He must, because the status quo won’t support him for too long. He is not getting any younger. Judwaa is no longer Salman Khan. It’s Varun Dhawan. Too many indifferent performances in films that lack true magic won’t help Salman’s career. But then, Salman can look over his shoulder at his peer, adversary, foe and friend Shah Rukh Khan’s career and decide it’s better to flow with the status quo than change the course of your career just because the critics think your latest film sucks.
It does. But then why did Race 3 make its mandatory Rs 100 crore so quickly?
Shah Rukh Khan’s films have lately gone into the experimental mode with near-calamitous result, His last two films Fan and Jab Harry Met Sejal have proven boxoffice non-starters. In the first, he played his own fan, in the second he played a fan of the Gujarati road movies, where two unlikely characters travel together to exotic destinations.
Somewhere in his quest for a new horizon Shah Rukh’s films are getting lost in translation. But at least he’s trying. Salman isn’t even trying to change tracks. Even Sultan and Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which he is rightly proud of, were performances steeped in populism.
