Year Ender 2024: Malayalam mainstream to return of crazy villains

Cinema like popculture rolls as much in a continuum as itrsquos cyclical Which is to say that for instance Pushpa 2 The Rule as the biggest blockbuster of 2024 is merely an extension of the totally unexpected sleeperhit that Pushpa The Rise turned out to be in 2021Heralding thus a full blast of onscreen heroism with a majority of mainstream hits hinged on a man with a gun at the centre of the poster But what is this if not simply the 1980s actioners cycling back in fashionA still from the Malayalam film Manjummel BoysYou could argue that such herovillain pictures were always the mainstay of Telugu commercial cinema in particular Wherein you saw a lot of Bollywood actorsmdashSayaji Shinde Mukesh Rishi Pradeep Rawat etcmdashregularly go over to Hyderabad to get beaten up by local heroes before the cameraOnly budgets and technology have got amped up Because these movies pander to a panIndia audience What has that also led toReturn of the crazy villainAudiences believe or at least producers do that the hero is only as strong as the insurmountable villain he vanquishes Except that since the hero himself appears on the screen without much contextmdashthe villain neednrsquot have a backstory eitherItrsquos good enough that this pure evil wrapped in human skin growls snarls shows up in an atrangi odd attire burdened with no redemptive qualities for you to care once hersquos done withPayal KapadiaItrsquos kinda the return then of the Gulshan Grover type khalnayaks that we thought were long gone Hence Abhishek Banerjee in Vedaa Raj Arjun in Yudhra Arjun Kapoor in Singham Again Prithiviraj Sukumaran in Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Fahadh Faasil in Pushpa 2 Bobby Deol in KanguvahellipBack in the day Bollywood awards would have a separate category for Best Villain Think they did away with it at some point when the stars themselves began to play more and more antihero roles with multiple shades of greyIf that award gets reinstituted as it must Saswata Chatterjee as the eerie intriguing Commander Manas might make the nomination for Kalki 2898 AD Although looking forward more to how Kamal Haasan expands on his villain Supreme Yaskinrsquos part for the filmrsquos sequelThe Malayalam mainstreamEasily our favourite moment at the cinema in 2024 was Manjummel Boys in Week Four packed from front to back rows with audiences hooting out of excitement hissing from anxiety biting their nails all through a weekday midnight showThat was a Malayalam movie hitting boxoffice gold in Mumbai the way mainstream Telugu Tamil or Hindi movies are more likely to As did The Goat Life or Premalu nationally registering footfalls worth over Rs 100 croreWhat do we usually love Mallu movies for The strength of its scripts and the understated quality of its performances Also inevitably if actor Fahadh Faasil FaFa to fans is in the lead roleLaapataa Ladies L was sent as Indiarsquos entry to the Oscars Laila Majnu R earned Rs 10 crore on its rereleaseHe was in Aavesham another huge hit Except we saw him as a proper badass with a good heart kicking ass killing it with his moves in a different kinda Malayalam movie suggesting a new mainstream of sortsWill this go the same route as other mainstreams As we write this therersquos news of a Malalyalam picture Haneef Adenirsquos Marco thatrsquos picked up R50 crore over five days and is being compared to Animal for its grotesquery and violence Hoping thatrsquos an aberrationRerelease as the latest releaseIt all started with Amitabh Bachchan That is right after the pandemic when the fear of people never returning to theatres seemed quite real to someAs PVRINOXrsquos head honcho Ajay Bijli put it a National Cinema Day got rolled out with tickets at throwaway pricesmdashthatrsquos the one time ldquothe needle movedrdquo because people started entering cinemas to watch old Amitabh Bachchan movies were having their theatrical reruns as part of an ongoing festivalCompare that to the number of old Bollywood movies that have rereleased in 2024 Subhash Ghairsquos Taal Rakesh Roshanrsquos Karan Arjun Nikkhil Advanirsquos Kal Ho Naa Ho Imtiaz Alirsquos Jab We Met RockstarhellipSpeaking of the latter two which was the biggest theatrical hit of the year in terms of pure return on investment Quite likely Laila Majnu produced and written by Imtiaz that pocketed R10 crore in footfalls on its rereleaseWhich is over three times it made when it opened first in 2018 and itrsquos been on an OTT platform all along What was the net investment for the rerun Nearabout zeroWill this trend dissipate Well canrsquot wait for the rerelease of Ram Gopal Varmarsquos Satya in January 2025What happened to OTT partyWhere do all of the above leave OTTs and their desi contentmdashmost of the original Hindi films on which seemed subparThe others had a theatrical run first that people didnrsquot turn up for Because they knew the movies would show at home in threefour weeks anyway So OTTs ate into theatrical footfalls as wellBudgets for their own productions got slashed Sword of selfcensorship dangles over their heads Fear is the party that produced risky cuttingedge content is over Which could be an exaggeration since the same peopleaudiences are very much thereFeminine gazevoice goes globalFirst Indian film in 30 years to compete at Cannes that too taking home the Grand Prix That was Payal Kapadiarsquos All We Imagine as Light AWIAL set around three womenKapadia became the first Indian director to be nominated for Golden Globe Many felt AWIAL was a sureshot Best International Picture Oscar nomineeKiran Raorsquos Laapataa Ladies got sent as the entry instead and got knocked out Itrsquos still among the most universally loved Hindi films of the yearMeanwhile Sandhya Surirsquos Santosh centred on actor Shahana Goswami is UKrsquos entry to the Oscars still in the raceItrsquos not like the Oscars are all that matter globally So do top festivals like Sundance Berlinalemdashboth of which hailed Shuchi Talatirsquos Girls Will Be Girls with awardsAnd guess what 2024 was the year that an Indian actor for the first time won an award at Cannesmdashthat was Anasuya Sengupta for The ShamelessThatrsquos a lot of film history getting made with desi feminine voice and gaze simultaneously finding global resonance Is this a trend Definitely the present as likely the future