The Never Ending Love For Commercial Movies

“Bhai what is this nonsense!”, “This makes no sense”, “Who needs such movies?” if you are from India and if you follow Indian films then you should be quite familiar with these phrases. In India movies are seen as celebration and most them don’t defy physics, chemistry or let’s say any sense. But then again these movies are still celebrated and more of these films are going to be produced. Well it is fair enough to ask the makers to make these movies with a bit of realism at least in their universe but we are not going to discuss that here. We are here to say why these movies are a part of every Indian Movie goer and why it’s not joining stop.

There’s always confusion between “Commercial” and “masala” movies and the worst part is many think both are same. The term “masala” means a mixture of many genres; the mere word “masala” means that and in movies it’s no different. Masala movies could also be a well crafted film which touches upon different genres/aspects and yet makes sense in the real world. On the other hand a commercial film is one where that carries a tag of “celebration” with power packed action blocks and dance.

Having understood what a commercial film is we’ll try seeing why we(re) are a fan of them in one way or the other and also why it won’t stop flooding the screens.

Most of these big projects have big names on the poster. The very reason why these movies are a celebration or are being celebrated is because it has stars in them. In the north we have the Khans and in the south we have regional heroes and us being a fan of them(at least once were) we don’t miss out an opportunity to see them on screens once a year. Having stars in the same kind of movie again and again as type casted the actors and also built a market around them when makes it nearly impossible for them to change and hence this is going to keep running.

Imagine the case where there are only craft based films being made, movies that offer many flavours but less to celebrate how much of audience will this get? To be honest very little. In a country like India where people work round the clock they see cinema hall as a place for relaxation. And most of them see it as a place to “escape from reality”. Serving realistic cinema is the least they would expect.

Despite the shortcomings there is new wave of different cinema making its way to the big screens. Few of these collect what they expect and most of them don’t. The competitor for these films is the commercial cinema that we’ve been discussing. A standardised formula has been developed and following this guarantees big money in the box office and everyone wants to make money, what’s the easiest way to make huge money? Cinema.

As long as these factors remain the big screens are going to be flooded with commercial films.