Kollywood and the changes its going through
Bygedra deur sssjvsss op November 5, 2009
True that I am a big fan of legendary Kamal Haasan. It took me a lot of pain to make sure, the UNKH fan inside me is hidden while writing this article. Hope its appreciated….
The year 2001 marked a new era in Tamil cinema. The new stars started to shine. Vijay, Ajith, Surya and Vikram were reaching a new heights in terms of fan following, and the way business looking at them. Kakha Kakha brought Surya as well into the race. With consecutive hits like Dhil, Dhool and Samy, Vikram was certainly the top star. Ajith’s miserable run at the box office took a ‘u’ turn with Villain while Vijay saw his own share of succes with Kushi and other super hits.
On the other side of the card, Prabhu, Murali, Karthik saw their end. Sathyaraj was in and out for some time before completely fading out. Vijayakanth was made to see one disaster after the other with only Ramana being the lonely hit. Kamal Haasan saw disaster in the form of Aalavanthan and Anbae Sivam while Panchathanthram, Pammal K Sampantham and Virumandi were considered just Hits or Super Hits rather than being a blockbuster or mega hit. Big directors Shankar and Mani Ratnam faced flops in the form of Boys and Aayutha Ezhuthu. Ajith and Vijay who transformed from rising star to top star saw their own falls later onwards..
The era between 2000-2004 could very well be called as an era of Small Budget Movies with absolutely no big budget movies being box office grossers. The two possible exceptions here could be Thenali and Vasool Raja, both had Kamal Haasan but still made on comparatively lesser budget but ended up big in box office.
This trend contined to an extent that even Rajnikanth and Kamal Haasan were releasing their movies in a comparatively lesser budget in 2005 with the former having a good run in box office while the other was disaster. But it’s really Vikram’s Anniyan which had put the alarm and the high budget movies again started to come.
Vettaiyadu Vilayadu and Dasavatharam for Kamal, Billa and Varalaru for Ajith, Shivaji for Rajni all being super Blockbuster, the producers started to cash on big budget movies heavily. But the last two years saw more and more big budget movies being disasters, but still going unnoticed. With Dasavatharam and Ayan being the lone exceptions, we saw more and more and more disasters in the form of Bheema, Kuselan, Sathyam, Sarvam, Naan Kadavul, Kanthasami, Aadhavan, Aegan, Villu all being huge let down. Though Kanthasami and Aadhavan could be considered as average grossers.
Already Karthik is involed in a 32 crore-budget movie, Airathil Oruvan, which is unable to get released! When will this sitauation change? Saroja, UPO, Nadodigal, Eeram all made in very small budget made their marks on the box office!! The days are over where people watch any movie for their hero. Guys like Barath, Vikram, Surya wanted to transform themselves into mass heroes has been shown door to exit by people. We hardly seen any complete pure masala movie doing well in box office in the recent time!!
Are we going see the era of small budget movies yet again? Are we coming out of this hype driven era in Tamil cinema? What ever be the answer, the movie makers just cant get away with a stupid because of the star power or because it has enough masala or because of super hit songs. We want content —- says the general public.
