There’s been some controversy of late concerning Hollywood heavyweight directors discussing the merit of the MCU – a familiar news-line which has seemingly been on repeat across the last couple of years, with Martin Scorsese and James Cameron involved. Now Quentin Tarantino is the latest filmmaker to pass comment on the impact of Marvel on a contemporary cinematic climate; an unavoidable discussion considering the current dominance of the aforementioned blockbusters.
The latest comments that triggered much debate on social media came when Tarantino was a guest on the “2 Bears, 1 Cave” podcast, where the director said, “Part of the Marvel-ization of Hollywood is that you have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters, but they’re not movie stars. Captain America is the star, Thor is the star.”
When we were guests at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) last week, we went to a truly fascinating in-depth discussion with megastar Rana Daggubati, who spoke in front of a live audience for upwards of an hour, to deep-dive into the current state of the Indian film industry, and how it has been affected by the pandemic + the encouraging future that beckons.
Now, Bollywood is an industry where the movie-star is such a huge facet, that inevitably the conversation with Daggubati turned to recent quotes from Tarantino, as he offers his two cents (or rupees, in this instance) on the ongoing debate as he is inclined to agree with the American director, in that audiences are paying for the characters and franchises, and not necessarily for the stars within.
“Let’s take a global example, today you watch a big star like Tom Cruise, in a big tentpole film like Mission Impossible, if he is in a film like Lions for Lambs with Meryl Streep, you wouldn’t even know that film is released. The same Tom Cruise, the same Meryl Streep,” Daggubati explained.
“India is going to see that sea change pretty quickly,” he continued. “When Wakanda Forever came out, everyone left the office and went to watch it. It’s engaging you beyond a person, it is engaging you with the world, the characters.”
The whole notion of a movie star is one that Daggubati believes is changing anyway, and in large parts that is down to social media and the way audiences now interact with their favourite stars of the screen.
“What is a star concept? The further you are away from a person, the more mythical or mystical he is? So it’s like wow, that’s a star. The minute people start getting closer and closer I don’t think you’re going to have the phenomenon’s of yesteryear, because there is so little you knew about them and the only way to consume them was film,” he said. “Today you have social media, you want to be constantly engaged, and are also not treating them not like stars but as entertainers, that’s a different job. The way we see stardom is starting to change, the younger generation are more into games and are engaging in that kind of storytelling. You don’t want some character telling you what to do, or telling you what he is doing, you want to be that character.”
Daggubati does concede that are exceptions to the rule, and actors who do transcend the character they are playing. “The star system will keep changing, there will be characters that will last beyond the star, but the star or the actor will help immensely in enhancing that character. For example Robert Downey Jr, all of that flamboyance helped Iron Man. That’s what a star can do.”
“There are many characters, like Chris Hemsworth as Thor, or Captain America, you know them because of the character much more than you know them as a person. But if you think for example Robert Downey Jr, or Christian Bale as Batman, I mean Christian Bale is not just Batman he is far more than what Batman can do. You will find stars like that who will cut across and be inside superhero films and come out with characters, but these characters will survive longer because they don’t age. Look at Spider-Man in his mask, it can be any teenage boy from anywhere in the world once the mask is on, so it’s things like that people will engage with much, much more.”
“But Is the same stardom possible, because the times are not the same?” he asks. “Greater things could be possible, you could see a star from some part of India who has global stardom. Look at Stallone and Schwarzenegger, why do we know Rambo? Everyone knows who Rambo is because of the way Stallone plays it.”
Thanks to the current accessibility of Indian productions, due to the rise in streaming sites such as Netflix, Daggubati even believes that movie stars from India could go global in their stardom.
“That stardom could be possible to Indians today,” he says. “Look at that RRR is doing right now, and what Rajamouli has done during his career, you are seeing people take the global stage. Today you see platforms taking Indian content and Indian culture, and Indian films that are large and big cutting across markets, so you have new types of stardom, new types of ways people engage with their stars. It’s not going to be the same as what it was, it will be a different star that you will want, and a different star that you will like. “
The International Film Festival of India ran from November 20th – 28th. Read our round-up of the festival here.
