Bollywood Movies Mkv
Thomas Merino
If you are wondering which Bollywood movies were released this week, browse this page for the latest updates from the world of Hindi cinema. That includes the latest Hindi movies available in theatres or on popular OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ Hotstar among others.
On this page, you can also search for your favourite actors to discover which movies they will be seen in next. For the latest movies, you will find their release dates, trailers, songs, reviews, and more.
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We have all grown up watching #Doordarshan which on Sunday showed a classic Bollywood movie at 12 noon which we eagerly used to watch because we didn't have any other options. Surprisingly, we used to like them - the classics. The stories, the action, the dialogues, though not top-notch, were still enjoyable. We used to love watching them, and as evening approached and we stepped out of our homes to play on the street - we used to reprise the role of the protagonist and repeat the dialogues with as much vigor & pomp as we could muster for the imitation. We used to love these movies, they used to take us away from our daily routines to a world of great stories (some copied) and exciting possibilities. The attraction and hold of these movies were such on the public mind that people used to run away from homes to go to Mumbai either to become an actor or to meet their favorite 'hero'. We are all aware of these facts.
A movie is created through the collaboration of different entities working in tandem, performing different roles - the actors, screenwriters, director, producer, distributors, songwriters, singer, etc. This is a productive process which results in a movie. What we see on the big screen is nothing but the final Product. But from the above scenario there are two things that can be interpreted -
- We used to love #Bollywood movies when we had very limited viewing opportunities in the form of either Doordarshan or going to the local movie theatres.
- We used to enjoy the stories that they offered which used to fire our imagination and made us forget about our mundane lives for a little while.
What happened to Bollywood then? How did it fall to such lows? The answer is not so simple and cannot be attributed to just any one reason. There are multiple reasons which have attributed to the fall of Bollywood industry from being a mass entertainer big money gainer to being a laughing stock big money loser. Some reasons are prominent and played a major part while some acted like catalysts to bring about this change. To keep this short, let's list major reasons out here in points (there were exceptions of course):
As time progressed, people got many options available to them in the form of cable TV, VCD, DVDs, then DTH and now OTT platforms. With time, people got exposed to movies of different genres made in different parts of the world. (Seriously, can you compare Karan Johar's movies with that of Alfred Hitchcock? It's laughable!). This was a slow change attributing to gradual increase in the average income of an average Indian household. As spending power increased, people started providing the best things to the next generation, which included entertainment. From watching 'Kaante' which was a Hindi remake of the critically acclaimed 1992 Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs' to watching 'The Matrix' on the CD players, the next generation started getting exposed to the glorious stories the world had to offer.
It was a slow process. We loved watching what Bollywood had to offer but we still wanted to get more of the Hollywood action and survival flicks. It was such an appealing idea. Remember watching Jurassic Park or Anaconda? We grew to appreciate good stories be it Bollywood or Hollywood or Spanish cinema or French cinema. We were still attracted to the Bollywood stars though.
At that crucial time, what Bollywood did can be called stupid for the lack of a better word. Instead of diving down to find the best stories from the plethora of great writers and novelists in our own country (like Munshi Premchand, Jayshankar Prasad, etc.), what Bollywood did was to copy the Hollywood movies, their stories and make an Indian version of that story even though it didn't fit or resonate with the cultural ethos of the societal structure. This was done in order to make quick profits and it worked for a while too.
Although copy culture had been prevalent in the bollywood industry for quite a while. For example, the legendary movie 'Sholay' is a mixture of 'The Good, the bad and the ugly', 'The Magnificent Seven', 'Once Upon a Time in The West' and 'For A Few Dollars More Each' - all hollywood classics. The movie 'Satte pe Satta' was a copy of 'Seven brides for seven brothers', and the list goes on. Then what changed?
The answer to this is people slowly started becoming aware of it. 2000s marked the explosion of the internet and as the average middle class next gen Indian gradually became acquainted with it, they got to know about the copies. This too was a slow process. And Bollywood kept making copy after copy after copy. It was everywhere! The posters were a copy, the music a copy, the dialogues just a translation or sometimes not even that, the action and comedy sequences most of all. It still is. Bollywood has not managed to grasp the fact that people know.
This point could be a subset of the first one. It was in the later part of 2010s that we got introduced to the OTT platforms in India as Amazon Prime and Netflix came marching in. This just increased our reach to the global content which was now available at our fingertips. Earlier we used to download tv series from torrent and share in pen drives with our friends but the age group was limited and the internet connections quite slow. But then, we got fast and cheap internet connection available to us using which we could just stream the content and choose from suggestions after completing the first one.
And then Covid was gifted to the world by China. As death toll increased and there was mass panic, it being declared a pandemic, a curious thing happened in the Indian entertainment industry. People locked themselves inside their homes to limit exposure to the virus. There was nothing much to do except work from home and household chores, people started feeling claustrophobic. Humans are social creatures and the pandemic led to a complete shutdown in social interactions. Online interactions were not going to cut it (and it never will). People wanted to make themselves not feel trapped.
And OTT did just that. It offered an escape. The entertainment industry started churning out more and more content specifically created for OTTs as all the movie theatres and PVRs were shut. This led to a massive boost in OTT platform's revenue from subscriptions. Which led to more people than ever having access to global content with which they can now make comparisons. They got exposed to the feeling of just how good a story can be and how well it can be portrayed which had bollywood at a sore disadvantage. The standard increased. The same formula of copy paste could not work now.
With so many options and an increased standard for what they should be consuming in terms of entertainment products, people got bored of the pretentiousness with which Bollywood behaved in real life and on screen. They already had access to the culture in the form of content which bollywood was trying to push onto the people. It was disrespectful. This led to a demand for original stories which resonates with the culture, belief and life of people. And Bollywood, which grew to massive proportions on the diet of copy paste and remake formula, could not satiate the hunger and demand of the people for big screens. OTT were doing just fine, with many independent creators now being able to showcase their stories which resonated with people - something which they were not able to do before due to a kind of monopoly which big names in Bollywood had.
People started noticing all kinds of things about the type of content Bollywood has and had been trying to push onto people and it was infuriating. The only conclusion was that Bollywood was trying to demean and disrespect the beliefs and lives of people. Hence people started accepting original stories which showed the glory of their culture and which did not try to change, deny or demean it in any way. This is good.
People have started holding an animosity towards the mainstream Bollywood bigwigs who enjoyed a cushy high-profile lifestyle, peddled culturally/religiously insulting narratives in their movies and then came out to lecture, preach and virtue signal the public on how to live their lives which people saw it on social media while they were fighting for survival during lockdown. Copied, badly acted, terribly researched or demeaning movies are no longer tolerated.
For example, if you take a look at the recent Aamir Khan's 'Lal Singh Chadda' which suffered a huge loss and disappointment because it was a remake of 'Forrest Gump' (an Oscar winning Tom Hanks masterpiece movie), it has bad acting and worst adaptation showing Indian Army in a bad light. Consider Anurag Kashyap's 'Do Barah' which is a remake of Spanish movie 'Mirage'. It was removed from screens within 4 days! Given the smug arrogant remarks of the Director and the lead Actress, movie being a horrible copy of the Spanish movie and terrible reviews of whoever did watch it led to it being a disaster.
On the other hand, consider 'The Kashmir Files' which was a massive blockbuster despite being made at a very low budget. It was based on true events and was the history of the genocide of Kashmiri Pundits which happened in 1990 - not a happy story and yet was original, sincere and well made. People loved it.
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