The landscape during the early years of the nineties in the Hindi film industry was eerily dreary, littered with the ghouls of mundane, soulless, almost a loathsome array of films that were rolled out with amazing regularity from some moldy spinning mule within the precinct of a Mukesh Mill-like facility.
It would go on to kindle a sense of detachment from them of the young urbane crowd dazzled by Metallica, Nirvana music videos and warming up to the indie rock bank Rock Machine on MTV, while they scurried to devour Hollywood films on hard-to-get scratchy, static-laden VHS tapes, having waited for eons for these to release in the few single-screen cinemas in the country.
If today, Varun Dhawan says that actors cannot give mediocre films to audiences, in those days it was their abiding responsibility to lure the audience with inane films by the dozen, no questions being asked.
It was a time when Salman Khan and Aamir Khan had broken out with smash hits announcing their arrival, while a clueless Amitabh Bachchan appeared in a line-up of atrocious films that sank steadily at the box office, even before their producers knew they had come and gone, and Shah Rukh Khan was still waiting in the wings, honing his open arms pose.
This left the field open for the two star sons, Sanjay Dutt and Sunny Deol, and a fiery Anil Kapoor to warily push and prod their way to plot a coup to gain passage to the crumbling Bachchan bastion, as the likes of Dharmendra, Mithun Chakraborty, Jackie Shroff and Govinda preferred to appear in scores of listless films that made it look as if every day was a Friday.
No one noticed or even paid heed to a radiant little star that had appeared upon the Bollywood zodiac, an Asterisk that came in from nowhere and noiselessly settled among the starry array, with a rare twinkle that he would go on to preserve for himself.
Akshay Kumar was that free-spirited interstellar, a willing workhorse to boot, untouched by the claptrap of filmy connections of any sort, with only a surging hunger to prove that he had it in him to rewrite the ‘made for star-son only script' and tons of the rugged Punjabi steely resolve.
Kumar went on to rattle the pedestals of all the reigning actors then, ziplining his way to star in several action thrillers that kept the audiences and, most importantly, the producers happy.
That patina of Kumar's Asterisk went on to glitter for many years during the nineties, facing intermittent dark clouds for a while before he turned into a virtual pole Star, a one-man industry leading light for almost a decade till about 2019, with steady, multiple back-to-back hits in Bollywood, a period that truly belonged to him despite the continuous onslaught of big hits coming in from the Khan triumvirate of Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh at the box office.
The superstar's propensity to deliver consistent hits across different genres even had him playing the poster boy for various government initiatives, with some political and policy narratives creeping into the films he did, keeping everyone satisfied while attracting the mandatory brickbats too.
However, after his last success Sooryavanshi in 2021 (Rs 195 crore approx.), none of his releases have hit the box office bullseye, all of them of varied genres. The latest Ram Setu (Rs 150 crore budget approx.) released on Oct. 25, a day after Diwali, went on to struggle too, despite having an extended holiday release.
The film could only manage to collect around Rs 64 crore (in 13 days) with sharp drops after the initial five to six days, and is headed to close in the vicinity of Rs 75 crore for a lifetime cumulative.
Kumar, it seems, is cresting the waves of a flop cycle currently, lost at sea as to what the expectations of film audiences now are.
A poster of the film Ram Setu. (Source: Akshay Kumar/Facebook)
A Bridge To Nowhere
This year, Kumar had Bachchan Paandey, Samrat Prithviraj, a straight-to-OTT release in Cuttputlli and Raksha Bandhan, before Ram Setu. Sadly, for him and his fans, none of them worked the magic at the box office.
Upon release, Ram Setu, a mythical bridge that figures in the ancient epic Ramayana, was demolished by disappointing reviews that hit out at the film's poor production values, abominable VFX and a hard-to-believe premise.
Whatever be the minuses, the film went on to record somewhat better figures compared to his earlier releases this year, thanks to Kumar's popularity, but as with the other leading stars in Bollywood, he knows the way things work in filmdom post the pandemic has changed. Even a genre-shifting approach, as his immediate past failures have indicated, may not be the way forward.
In addition Kumar has been gradually losing his popular pull at the overseas box office too, and with the young brigade of Varun Dhawan, Tiger Shroff, Kartik Aaryan and Vicky Kaushal snapping at his heels, he will know better than any trade analyst or filmy pundit that he will need to think different, that one is only as good as your last Friday or holiday release.
According to Boxofficeindia.com, Akshay Kumar tops the list of actors from the Mumbai film industry to deliver the maximum number of successes, with 53, followed by Ajay Devgn and Shah Rukh Khan.
No surprise then that Kumar has one of the highest number of followers on Twitter (45.4 million) (on Instagram, he has a whopping 63.5 million), followed by Salman Khan (44.5 million), though Amitabh Bachchan (with over 48 million followers), leads the Bollywood actor/celebrity pack.
Kumar is not new to debacles. There was a period from 1997 when the star had about 15 consecutive flops before Suneel Darshan's Jaanwar resurrected his career in 1999.
In light of that extended miserable phase, Kumar would have made his peace with failures, and the flopping of half a dozen or so of his films now may not give him sleepless nights as they did before.
However, the stakes are definitely much higher now, especially with the penetration of OTT and how the whole cinema-going experience has witnessed a major overhaul in the last couple of years.
None of this it seems has dampened his enthusiasm for remakes though. More than a dozen of his successful films have been southern remakes and in 2023, too, he has a few lined up in Selfiee based on the Malayalam film Driving License and the untitled version of the Tamil National Award winner Soorarai Pottru.
It's been a year since the cop universe made you whistle & hoot in cinemas halls. Celebrating #1YearOfSooryavanshi! #Sooryavanshi pic.twitter.com/JD4zpaA01x
A Lonesome Outsider
Three decades ago, Bollywood worked in a singular zone, no one cared about one's legacy or who backed whom, one's capability was defined by what one could bring to the table in terms of a smidgeon of acting, being adept at large doses of action, shimmying a boogie or a zing for comedy—if one had a smattering of all these in various degrees, the Gateway of India or, more precisely, Bombay Central station threw its flanks open.
It was here that an unsung Rajiv Bhatia hailing from Amritsar, brimming with a passion for martial arts and the skill to rustle up a mean Thai Green Chicken Curry made his incandescent entry.
He entered into a collective enterprise among other aspirants of having endless cups of tea with fight masters and junior artistes working in various films to see how he could get an arm or a leg in for a look-see that may impress directors or producers for any potential opportunities.
Akshay Kumar went on to redefine the action hero trope who could pull off romance and comedy with equal ease, freewheeling into doing his own stunts, never a dull sloth, always the live-wire with a penchant for adapting to Bollywood's myriad strange, obdurate ways.
With Saugandh in 1991 and a slew of single starrers from the Pramod Chakravarthy and Umesh Mehra stable to begin with, Kumar with his street-smart acumen and undying sincerity, stealthily glided into a space that would have normally been marked for Sanjay Dutt, Govinda or Sunny Deol.
Akshay Kumar outshone them all with his own naturalised flair for action, romance and dance, throwing in a bit of comedy too, and in tandem with Saif Ali Khan or Suniel Shetty satiated the audience craving of a winsome repeat of the Amitabh-Dharmendra hangover.
He went on to carve his own space even when Shah Rukh Khan and Ajay Devgn came in as blazing comets bringing on their own bravura natural flair to the screen, as they gleefully ticked the romance and action boxes, respectively.
But, if a producer with a wad of notes sticking out of his safari suit needed the whole package, then Kumar was the go-to, ever prompt, reliable and crucially devoid of any unnecessary starry turns.
A Pledge On Debut Torn Apart By Critics
A movie review of his first full-feature film as a hero in Saugandh (Pledge) (1991) is rock-hard harsh on the venture, calling it "intolerable" and crediting debutant Kumar only for his "muscular frame".
If one were to go by the opinion of reviewers of a majority of Akshay Kumar's films that appeared in newspapers, then probably Hindi movies could never be one's source of entertainment.
From Dancer (1991), Deedar (1992), Waqt Hamara Hai (1993) to Tu Chor Main Sipahi (1996), and in his numerous Khiladi avatars, film critics had a hearty time tearing apart his films.
However, at the box office, the ultimate barometer for any star, it was an altogether different story. His hits soon outnumbered his flops, and Kumar also ensured he delivered a bumper hit almost every other year working with everyone, unmarked by any film camp or any specific clique in an industry infamous for its fierce, often over-the-top loyalty to the big, traditional names.
Kumar upended these unwritten rules and went on to endear himself to a wide bandwidth of producers and directors, beginning with directors Raj N. Sippy, Pramod Chakravorty and Umesh Mehra, who belonged to an entirely different generation; then with Abbas-Mustan on Khiladi (1992); the Darshan Brothers with whom he has collaborated with the most, notably on Jaanwar (1999), Dhadkan (2000); the Chopras with Yeh Dillagi (1994), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997) in a cameo; the Bhatts with Angaaray (1998), Sangharsh (1999); Rajkumar Santoshi with Khakee (2004); with Priyadarshan for Garam Masala (2005), Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007); Nagesh Kukunoor for 8x10 Tasveer (2009); to Dharma Productions' Brothers (2015), Kesari (2019) and Sooryavanshi (2021).
Apart from the routine action, comedy, and romance dramas, Akshay Kumar did Special 26 (2013), Baby (2015), Airlift and Rustom (2016), Naam Shabana (2017) as well as Gold (2018), ploughing a different track from the usual potboiler route with amazing success, this time receiving the much-needed appreciation from hard-nosed critics as well.
Currently, there are thousands of Akshay Kumar fans deep scanning film clips on the internet to get a sight of their superstar's debut screen presence, as a teen sprinkling Randhir Kapoor with nuptial flower petals in a 1981 release Harjaee, or swooning over a poor YouTube copy of his first screen appearance as a Karate instructor hogging the first few seconds of Aaj in 1987.
Where does this leave Akshay Kumar in the here and now, in a turbulent year for Hindi films? What lessons does it hold forth after having spent over three decades in the industry?
For his fans, there is only hope that next year, the box office is kinder to their star and, more importantly, he chooses to work in projects that he believes in, rather than being dictated by a tempting genre or any passing flavour of the season articulated by directors or producers with their own agendas waiting to cash in on his huge popularity.
Akshay Kumar, on the other hand, would seek solace from the ever-calming words his mother used to tell him during the star's early struggling days, "Don't worry, son, whatever happens God will put it right".
Anand Mathew is a social development consultant based in New Delhi and writes on films.
The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.
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