What Our Blockbusters Say About Who We’ve Become


Call it peer pressure, FOMO, curiosity, or whatever you will—last weekend, I succumbed to the temptation of watching the Malayalam movie Marco on OTT. After a lot of fast-forwarding and watching mostly on mute, I survived the ordeal. What surprised me was that this was one of the biggest box office hits in the Malayalam film industry! The fact that it became a hit, while surprising, isn’t entirely unexpected. There have been numerous movies across languages that have followed the same template—hyper-masculine, ultra-violent, larger-than-life spectacles with slick production. A few that come to mind: Animal, Jawan, KGF, Pushpa, and so on.

Cinema has always been a mirror. The smouldering angst of the Angry Young Man in the ’70s reflected a generation’s disillusionment. The Yash Chopra-fied romances of the ’90s were love letters to an aspirational, globalised India. Even earlier, post-independence films explored a society in transition—grappling with socialism, poverty, and change. This makes me wonder: What makes this template relevant now? What do these new movies say about the times we live in?

At their core, these films are about dominance—physical, moral, and financial. The hero isn’t just an underdog fighting the system; he is the system. He doesn’t merely seek justice; he dispenses it, with no room for ambiguity. Where Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay fought against corruption and injustice, Ranbir Kapoor’s Animal embraces the beast within, revelling in primal brutality. The moral greyness that once shaped layered characters has been replaced by hyper-stylised certainty—where strength equals righteousness, and nuance is a casualty of speed-ramped action sequences.

This shift isn’t accidental. In an era of uncertainty—where institutions feel fragile, power structures are opaque, and digital noise is deafening—people crave clarity, power, and an unflinching protagonist who doesn’t hesitate. There’s no time for doubt when everything around feels chaotic.

And this isn’t just a cinematic phenomenon—it’s a global one. The rise of strongman politics—whether Trump, Modi, Putin, or Erdoğan—follows the same psychology. Leaders who project invincibility, who dismiss deliberation as weakness, who thrive on a black-and-white worldview—this is what appeals today. The age of the reassuring diplomat or the soft-spoken intellectual is over. Much like at the box office, where heroes now rule not with restraint but with excess, political arenas are filled with leaders who embody dominance, not diplomacy.

History suggests that every cinematic phase is a reaction to the last. Just as Junglee followed Anari, Zanjeer followed Bobby, and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge followed Ghayal, a new counter-narrative is bound to emerge.

Until then, happy viewing—slam, wham, OTT-style.

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