Originally posted by: atominis
Dangal is a male dominated film as father is making daughters fulfil HIS dreams and rather imposing his own dreams on little girls who seem unwilling. It seems like a female oriented film but it is not. It is all about the father fulfilling his own unresolved dreams through his daughters. It was all about Aamir and the father's character he played. It faced criticism rather for glorifying father imposing his dreams and standards on his kids even if they were unwilling themselves or not that interested in the sport to pursue as a profession.
It is not about labels and I would not like to deviate from topic by counting on small budget offbeat films which are not even marketed to masses and have niche audience even on TV/DVD.
Taapsee does try different concepts and must be praised for it but her films are never really ones with mass appeal nor out and out entertainers. They are small budget films that do moderately well or flop but win critical acclaim. Such films were made dime and dozen by theatre background artistes in 80s. Nobody cared except for film festivals and critics.
She is at a certain level. But not even comparable to Kangana at box office let alone any past actor like Hema or Sridevi or Nargis.
I am not interested in diverting from topic by discounting entertainer and commercial, mass appeal films aspect which is the main focus of my opening post. The 'quality' factor is irrelevant to my post because films like Khoon Bhari Maang and Nagina can hardly be called quality cinema but they are good timepass, commercial entertainers that had mass appeal and set ticket counters on fire at BO, still get decent TRPs on TV on old movie channels.
Quality is usually given as a counter to make up for lack of box office success or cover inability of stars to draw audience to theatres. Aamir fans used to do the same when his films were not doing well. Until he broke records with Raja Hindustani and later Ghajini, 3 Idiots, Dhoom 3 and Dangal.
Anyway I agree audience is demanding, fickle, often unfair and unpredictable. They want their entertainment and are not bothered about quality of acting or script and these days they are more dependent on hearsay, perception, marketing unlike old days when they went to watch any film with an open mind and regardless of whether film was widely marketed or not.
I feel these days films with strong female leads or films that look even remotely female dominated have begun to be trolled before release itself by MRA type trolls who begin to spread propaganda that film will be anti men, preachy or 'against family values'. And pseudo nationalists also attack trailers itself judging if film will defame India or spoil image or if a certain actress is fit to do X, Y, Z role or not.
Gunjan Saxena had to be heavily censored thanks to trolling and later IAF also objecting to portrayal of sexism in it.
Male actors are also no longer like Dharam, Sunny, Rajini, Shatru, Rishi etc who will be ready to act in film that has female in more prominent role.
Taapsee did share how even newcomers have attitude and dislike doing films with actors like her and object to heroine dominating the scene. If even newcomers are so insecure then what can be said about senior stars?
I heard Chaalbaaz is being remade now? I wonder if stars as prominent as Sunny Deol and Rajinikanth of 80s will be there in the film or it will have less known heroes? I doubt today's insecure heroes agreeing to do a film like Chaalbaaz.
Out and out commercial entertainers and mass appeal, U rated films with female leads are even more rare now.
The films you listed are not massy commercial films. Kajol's film about parenting dilemma or Taapsee's films are not commercial entertainers at all. Those are small budget films and marketed to one segment of audience or sometimes hardly marketed at all. Kind of like Basu Chatterjee's small budget family films of past era.
for you because you are looking at them with yardsticks of 70s and 80s. 
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