Science fiction has a sadly short history in Bollywood, thinly stretching across Shekhar Kapoor?s Mr India, Rakesh Roshan?s Koi?Mil Gaya and Krrish to forthcoming flicks like Shankar?s Robot. Now, with Love Story 2050 having bombed at the box office, what?s the future of the genre in India?
Komal Nahta, editor of the Film Street Journal, predicts: ?Our industry has a herd mentality, flocking around successful formulas. The flopping of 2050 means that filmmakers will now be less likely to work on sci-fi projects.? On the other hand, as shown by ?the very good weekend collections raked in by the Hollywood biggie The Dark Knight, which has broken all opening box office records out in the US, our tastes are becoming more international.? Independent filmmaker and Jamia Millia Islamia professor B Diwakar also thinks, ?people are becoming more open to non-traditional work.?
But both Nahta and Diwakar underline that what’s crucial is a film’s emotional connect. Saying that Harry Baweja’s film has no heart, Nahta contrasts its sentiment deficit to Mr India and Koi?Mil Gaya: ?Anil Kapoor went around feeding hungry kids and Hrithik Roshan played a sick guy uplifted by superpowers. That?s very lovable and strikes an emotional chord with us.?
In Hollywood, it?s been a summer of sci-fi blockbusters and comicbook heroes like Hancock and Iron Man. Does director Harry Baweja offer anything that is unique to 2050? He says that ?the dancing robots and the floating dance stage, nobody has ever seen those before.? Add on the aircars, hoverbikes, rotund residential modules half sunk in the sea, teleporters and so on, and you understand why he sees 2050 as a milestone.
Baweja is very disappointed by Indian critics: ?They keep complaining that we don?t risk working with new ideas, but when we do, they go on a rampage. Do they even have the training to value all the hard work that goes into rendering a special effects scene, to appreciate how our film has brought Bollywood online with Hollywood standards?? The climactic chase sequence for instance was finalised at the Rising Sun studios, linked to projects like Warner Brothers? Chronicles of Narnia. The talking teddy Boo, which Priyanka Chopra insisted on taking home because he was ?the cutest creature on earth,? was designed by John Cox who has an Oscar in his kitty.
The most sci-fi thing in Kapoor?s film was a wristwatch that made its hero invisible. Roshan represented a certain advance in a) giving us an extra terrestrial ? la Steven Spielberg and b) showcasing a masked superhero who could fly-fight in the style of the Wachowski brothers? Neo. Drona is the next big thing in the special effects pipeline, but it will not be travelling to the future at all. Delving into ancient myths and legends, it will show a world populated by magicians rather than machines, more Lord of the Rings than Matrix.
Madhava Prasad, film professor at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages at Hyderabad, points to how ?the ability to imagine a future comes from a certain kind of confidence. Americans are so self-assured that, whether it is in Independence Day or War of the Worlds, they can only imagine the future happening in New York or its sister cities. We had to wait for the India shining story to catch on before we could imagine the future taking place on our shores.? Imagine a Mumbai that is automated and funky enough by 2050 to put most fantasies to shame.
Diwakar says, ?These days, even a movie that is declared a flop can go on to make merry via satellite sales.? Perhaps 2050?s talking teddy may not go on to become a pop icon like Koi?Mil Gaya?s Jadoo, but its financial muscle will extend beyond the theatrical revenues. Baweja adds, ?Even films like Taarzan: the wonder car get great TRPs because the youngsters are fascinated by all that is hi-tech. So we have good reasons to expect 2050 to do well on TV. Because people are also interested in knowing how special effects sequences are actually created, we have already sold DVD rights, including for a film about the making of 2050, at a huge price.? Another example of moneymaking synergies is the 2050 video game. It has been developed by Rocking Pixels whose CEO Sanjit Daniel says he found the futuristic 2050 an ideal vehicle for ?showcasing 3D gaming in the Indian market.?
But Prasad is doubtful about the future of science fiction films in India: ?Hollywood audiences have had 40 years to adapt to different genres. In Bollywood, this is a time of transition, which always sees a mismatch between films and their audience.? Even Abbas Tyrewala, whose Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na beat down Baweja?s film at the box office, has called 2050 a very brave film that Indian audiences were not ready to receive. Still the pursuit of novelty is surely here to stay.
