Well, to be frank, the only reason I would have taken the effort of watching Dhoom-3 was because it had Amir Khan as antagonist, and that meant there was a scope of some creativity in the movie. Of course, considering how the entire plot and some of the characters in the movie "Talaash" were "adapted" from the movie "Elephant White"; and considering how the antagonist in the previous movie Dhoom-2 that was played by Hritik was "inspired" frame-to-frame from the antagonist of "Ocean's Twelve", I had my doubts about originality of the Dhoom-3 Plot.
And then, when one of my cousins could not resist to narrate how he was awed by how Amir Khan steals the show in Dhoom-3 and told me the entire plot of his character, I could not help assign the label of "inspired-from-'The Prestige'" to it.
Damn it !! I mean there were days in Bollywood's history when some music composers were occasionally blamed for plagiarism and it was always the case with only select few names.
But more and more I keep watching the recent Bollywood movies, more I see all the inspirations and adaptions crowding in, more it reflects the dying creativity in Bollywood.
Well, some may argue that I cannot make such a statement based on a couple of examples I have cited above - well, want a few more? Here you go:
1. The Classic "Awara Paagal Deewana": If you thought the plot of this movie showing a married woman falling for protagonist is too bold, it was just because except one scene, the movie was entirely copied from "The Whole Nine Yards" and that one scene was copied from "The Matrix" where hero goes on shooting whole bunch of guards and concrete pillars.
2. The recent "D-Day" is a brave attempt portraying a fiction where Dawood is finally brought to justice in India, but then I could not help to notice how it was inspired from "The Inglorious Basterds" with the character of Arjun Rampal revealing inspirations from Jason Statham of "The Mechanic"
3. Raajneeti was based on Mahabharat, as is popularly known, but it also wonderfully integrated the plot of "The GodFather"
4. Even the biggest star of Bollywood could not save himself from this whole inspiration thing and his movie "Ek Ajnabee" was entirely copied from Denzel Washington's "Man on Fire"
5. "Shagird" was adaptation of another of Denzel's movie named "Training Day"
6. Recent "Players" was a classic copy of "The Italian Job"
7. "Ra.One" was an adaption of "Tron".
Examples are plenty - in fact, these days there is rarely a Bollywood movie where I don't see either a character or the entire plot inspired or adapted from some foreign movie - and that makes me worried.
In a country with so much talent, in an industry where thousands are struggling to make it, why are these film makers resorting to all of this?
Is it that some star walks up to them one fine morning and says, "hey, I want to play a Jason Statham in my new film. Can you make that happen?" OR the actor doesn't sign unless the film maker says "Please sir, I would give you the same stunts as Arnold in the movie Commando"
OR
Is it a cost cutting measure? Why go after looking for new talent and new stories when we can just pick up a film which is old enough or unseen enough for Indian audience and use its entire story?
But then, can't these big production houses just dub the original movies in Hindi, make money out of it, and employ some creative people to write original scripts and characters? I mean that's the least expenditure to show that foreign movie plot to Indian audiences - that of dubbing it in Indian languages, and with absolute profits that they make of these, making some original films would also prove to be easier for their pockets :-)
Besides, in the era of reality games, most of the film making functions are not only getting cheaper by the day; but are in fact helping the production houses earn money. Want a singer for real cheap price - launch a reality tv show on one of the many channels, award the winner with 'opportunity' to sing for a movie and earn revenue from commercials and SMS for the tv show. Not to mention, this also saturates the whole singer market for the industry forcing big names to charge lower prices as well, because now a cheaper alternative is already out there.
Can't a similar thing be repeated for story and screenplay writers? And is it really needed to do all this - considering that there would be thousands already knocking the doors of various studios in Mumbai with real good scripts !!
Of course, not all is bad - surprisingly and also ironically, I see some low budget films coming up with some real good and original plots, which tells us that although creativity is deteriorating in this field, its not absolutely dead.
Most of the television industry has already moved on to template based productions in form of either the daily soaps or the reality shows, where the producers tick various elements of the mix as they need, shuffle the beginnings and run the same plots for at least a couple of years.
I just hope that the glorious Bollywood doesn't give itself in entirely to easy means of scripting movie plots and building characters of stars through inspirations and adaptations; otherwise with this slow death of creativity, soon, Bollywood would become just a place to have a delayed remake of Hollywood - and being a movie buff I would hate to see that happen !!
