What Explains Our Excitement For Sequels Of Films Like Pushpa & Baahubali?

It took three years for the sequel to hit the screens, but the excitement has not waned a bit. Pushpa – The Rise was released in 2021 and the next, Pushpa – The Rule, is just out. Going by the audience response, the saga of the daily wage worker-turned-sandalwood smuggler stayed etched in the public memory. They were in eager anticipation about how the character would shape up in the next. It’s an acknowledgement of the power of the story. It is also a tribute to the art of storytelling.

Baahubali: The Conclusion arrived nearly two years after its prequel. But the question left hanging – Kattappa ne Baahubali ko kyon maara (why did Kattappa kill Baahubali?) – was enough to keep the audience intrigued and waiting to find an answer. It was the same with the KGF series. The third part is due in 2025, and it won’t surprise anyone if it received an enthusiastic viewer appreciation. What’s common to them? Not much at the superficial level.

SS Rajamouli’s epic Baahubali drew inspiration from children’s fantasy books; Prashanth Neel’s KGF was about a crime syndicate involved in gold smuggling; and Sukumaran’s Pushpa is about a character striking it big in illegal red sandalwood trafficking. Each of them flourished in separate universes – the first in a royal household, the second at the junction of bloody feud over control of a gold mine, global smuggling and politics; and the third in the deep forests rich in the banned wood. The lead characters are different too. Baahubali is regal in all aspects, Rocky in KGF is urbane in taste and bearing and Pushpa is more of a character symbiotically linked to the rural underclass.

But probe deeper, and the similarities stand out. All three adhere close to the trusted success formulas in our movies. The good vs evil theme is a commonality as is the underdog emerging winner against apparently insurmountable odds. All three are built around hypermasculine characters who move in separate trajectories but exude the same aura of invincibility.

A majority of our movies, specifically those coming out of the Hindi film industry, deliver the same. So what makes the viewer so excited and expectant about a Baahubali, or KGF or Pushpa sequel? Why don’t the sequels of, say, a Tiger, War or Singham excite us as much? We must remember that these are genuine pan-Indian movies though originating in the South and made primarily for the Telugu and Kannada (KGF) audiences. They attract as much footfall in small towns in North India as they do elsewhere in the country.

Universality is the starting point. A good story transcends the boundaries of geography, culture, age and class, and its appeal remains undiminished across time leaps in human existence. The theme may get contextualised and the backdrop changed depending on where and when it is created, but the core hardly alters. The idea of formula in films draws from the universality factor. However, what makes a universal theme appealing is the treatment, critical to which is the art of narration. In the hands of Rajamouli, Sukumaran and Neel, the formulaic turns exceptional.

Here lies the skills and power of the filmmaker as a communicator through the medium of cinema. They are great conversationalists in the visual form. Their creative flight and depth of imagination translate into effective visual messaging to the audience. The visual grandness in their movies, combined seamlessly with the narrative pitch and graph, accentuates the viewing experience. Not everyone can achieve that level of excellence.

In the Hindi film industry it is largely missing. Does anyone have any expectations from Brahmastra, the action-fantasy movie released in 2022? The Mumbai film industry has a lot of growing up to do. The South has gone ahead by miles in terms of talent and creativity.

(By arrangements with Perspective Bytes)