Changing Bollywood as we saw it - Page 2

One thing that was prominent in 90s was the family in Hindi films. HAHK, MPK, DDLJ, Raja Hindustani were all involving families. The focus shifted to individual...I guess from movies like DCH, Kal Ho Na Ho, KNPH. Several films don't even mention characters' families. Or families are broken (with single parents or a grandparent or lone sibling). No khandaan, mummy ji, papaji, Doctor kaka, Vakeel chacha.

I personally like this change as it allowed for exploration of the individual characters and their conflicts. DCH trio, Mohan Bhargav of Swades, Hrithik's character in Lakshya, Prateik's character in JTYJN - some real good examples of characters grappling with their selves.

Sometimes I do miss family films purely out of nostalgia or when films on individuals are wannabe type and lack depth.

There's no masaaledar gossip now!!!

Instead of flowers or birds kissing

Now we have leggit kisses 😉

The whole BO scenario has changed drastically. Gone are the days of movies running for many weeks, forget months. Now it's all about the opening weekend (and the definition of this 'weekend' has been stretched beyond imagination, from 2-3 days to 5 day weekends, 6 day weekends, 7 days and so on 😆) and to a lesser extent the first week. At best you'd talk about the second week. That's it. Movies go in and out of theatres in a flash. Back in the day the real verdict wouldn't be determined for weeks, even months. Now the verdict is almost instantaneous, sometimes before even the movie is officially released. 😲

The short shelf-life of movies today at the theatres means that they are out on home media and tv incredibly fast (thus reducing the desire to go to a theatre even more). In the old days you had to wait quite a while for that and even longer to watch them on tv. Some times it even took years for a movie to finally show up on tv. Today we can plan on skipping the theatre and watching the new movies on tv in a few months. 😆 A cool side-effect of this was the tv channels showed a lot of old movies. And not just the more famous/classic ones. No, they'd even show some of the smaller, lesser known films, B (even C) movies, art films, etc. Stuff that's just about forgotten today or very rarely seen. I managed to watch a lot of old, classical movies on tv and I got to see a lot of weird stuff. I have a taste for the "so bad it's good" type of movies (be they desi or videsi) and I've talked about it here now and then. See people, it wasn't that hard finding that stuff to watch back in the day. 😉 Today of course, most of the movie channels' programming tend to be newer movies and post-90s famous movies and that sort of thing. It's not that they don't show older films but the proportion is much smaller now. Esp since we are in the era of various networks fighting over satellite rights for the latest blockbuster.

I am also seeing the decline of the tv film (telefilm). I remember when Mahesh Bhatt made Daddy and Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Aayee and Hema Malini made Mohini. We don't get to see that anymore. There used to be a lot of short movies made for anthology programs on tv such as Rishtey and STAR Bestsellers and sometimes just a movie made to be shown on its own (i.e. not part of a tv show) during the weekend. Now it's basically just daily soaps and reality tv.

The aggressive and endless promotional activities of today are a far cry from what we used to have: a rare interview, some of the songs played often on tv and that's about it. Now the stars are everywhere, even appearing on soaps. Speaking of interviews, the celebs didn't really do the PR thing back then. That used to result in some of the funniest or weirdest gossip ever. 😆 Today's gossip is so lame compared to that.

I think the overall quality of music has deteriorated and a lot of good singers are either not even active or if they are, they rarely get any good work. It's mostly just the latest winner from reality show #234 or some such random dude, many of whom can barely sing and basically have careers solely because of the magic of auto-tuning.

The line between the "art film" and mainstream commercial cinema has been blurred to a great degree in recent years. Back in the day there was a clear divide between the two: the arthouse/parallel cinema existed almost entirely in its own pocket universe, on the fringe. There were those select few filmmakers and actors who made that kind of film. Not much money was involved because there wasn't a market for them. Today the scenario has changed a lot and for the better if you ask me. Mainstream cinema has become more accepting of "different" or "experimental" work. Script is actually getting some importance now. They can actually get a decent budget and they are even making money. And that's a big improvement. It's awesome that women can actually carry films and find acceptance at the BO. 👏

For a while there during the late 90s to the mid 2000s, we went through SRK-KJo inspired phase of rom-coms catering to the overseas audience. More and more of these movies were set in foreign locations. Thankfully we seem to be past that stage now.

People complain about the masala trend but I think Bollywood has largely forgotten how to really do good masala. Most of the stuff we get now are the mindless joke movies that come off more as badly done spoofs than anything good.

Originally posted by: Kal El

For a while there during the late 90s to the mid 2000s, we went through SRK-KJo inspired phase of rom-coms catering to the overseas audience. More and more of these movies were set in foreign locations. Thankfully we seem to be past that stage now.

People complain about the masala trend but I think Bollywood has largely forgotten how to really do good masala. Most of the stuff we get now are the mindless joke movies that come off more as badly done spoofs than anything good.

I agree I like/tolerate most Masala films cause after a while I realized most of the SRK movies I liked are for girls and I was always one of the fews guys in the cinema Rofl🤣. I realized that during KANK.

The Masala films are better than the 1980's and Dabangg 1 was on par with the 1970's. Ofcourse they could use help but koi cheez perfect hoti nahin.

All types of films can work at BO you just have to be semi-entertaining . So these days no one can use the excuse oh we need Khans. You don't you just need to get off your ass try hard 😉