There was a time when film makers could brazenly lift ideas from Hollywood flicks and pass them off as their own because only a niche crowd had access to world cinema and even a crass imitation would go on to win great laurels from our movie-crazy audiences. Sadly for Krrish-3 that era has passed.
The first film of the Krrish trilogy ‘Koi Mil Gaya’ itself was a cross between Forrest Gump and ET but what sat well with the audiences was the novelty and honesty with which Hrithik played Rohit. Hrithik tried his best to reprise the role of Krishna with the same honesty and succeeded to a level but blatant lift-offs from various Hollywood superhero movies seem to have irked the audiences.
The rip roaring results at the Box-Office are testimony to the fact that Hrithik Roshan is an unmatched brand and that the idea of him playing an ass-kicking, plane-landing superhero is bought by a majority of the Indian audience. This is not to say that Krrish 3 is a total dud. The special effects used in this movie have only raised the bar set by some of its fallible predecessors like Ra-one(the lesser said about it the better). Hrithik looks every bit the Superhero a kid would idolize and fantasize about with bulging muscles and stunning good looks. If you can somehow overlook the fact that everything from its antagonist to certain key sequences in the film is lifted from Hollywood films, you can at least appreciate the effort put in by the director and his entire team.
One can go on and on about the inconsistencies and continuation loopholes in the movie such as Krrish managing to stabilize a plane that’s gone haywire but struggling to lift a truck or why can he only fly in some situations and prefers jumping otherwise. All the logic-defiance aside Krrish has heavily borrowed
from various good and bad Hollywood flicks. For example the plane sequence is a direct lift from Superman, Kaal’s character is a twisted version of Professor X from X-men. To add insult to injury, some of the visual quality of certain action sequences is reminiscent of video games of the bygone era.
There are two ways of looking at it. You can either get too critical or criticize the movie for simply stealing from bigger and better movies instead of offering something novel or you can applaud them for at least trying to make forays into a genre that is still in its infancy in India. Making a movie of such magnitude is not an easy task and Rakesh Roshan deserves every bit of the accolades he is receiving for the mere heart and effort he has put into the movie but this raises a very pertinent question:- What exactly are we lacking in more – Technical expertise or conceptual expertise?
By Ajay
