With two and a half weeks to go until its release, the upcoming superhero film "Ra.One" is surrounded by super-hype. This week, the promotional machine of "Ra.One" included a launch of a special-edition "Ra.One" deodorant. Yes, deodorant.
While certainly the most ridiculous, the deodorant is among one of the many "Ra.One"-themed items up for purchase. In the G.One store, you can buy everything from car air fresheners to notebooks to tattoos. While this (except for the deodorant) may not seem odd to American audiences who can find Superman T-shirts and even underwear in every store, "Ra.One" is being heralded as India's first major superhero film. (This seems to somehow ignore the 2006 sci-fi hit "Krrish," which featured a superpowered and masked crime fighter, but that's another argument for another day.) And along with that, the film's huge marketing campaign is being called unprecedented in Indian cinema — its marketing budget of 40 rupees crore (about $9 million) is bigger than the entire budget of many Bollywood films.
But if you're going to call yourself India's first superhero, you may as well go superhero big. But the idea of breaking new ground always comes with mixed excitement and reservation.
The question of superheroes in India stirs two reactions in me. The first is best embodied in a comment from the film's star, Shahrukh Khan, about "Ra.One": "In the entire world, the only country in the world that has superhero films is America," he said. "Why it should be so? We (India) are the largest film-producing nation in the world. Why should we not have a superhero?"
The second, however, runs somewhat counter to the first. Indian films are often made around and sold on the male star as the hero. The hero of Bollywood films is, in many ways, larger than life. In particular, the hero character, who is an "ordinary" man, often can do amazing things best called superhuman. The trailer of the film "Singham," which released this summer, may best show what I mean.
It's easy to see how the trailer sells the film based on Ajay Devgn, the hero. But in particular, the film shows hero character Bajirao Singham, a small-town police officer, doing superhuman feats: running alongside a speeding car, downing bad guys with a single slap to the head and running across a man in midair. Isn't that already somewhat of a superhero? Just because Ajay Devgn playing Bajirao Singham is running around in a police uniform instead of spandex and a cape doesn't mean he's any less a hero than Christopher Reeve was as Superman.
And India certainly loves its heroes as much as America loves its superheroes. According to American standards, Hindi films go out of their way to glorify and celebrate the hero of a story, and audiences love to love a hero. Salman Khan is certainly evidence of this. He has a formula that includes him removing his shirt to unabashedly show off his muscles at least once in every one of his films — a formula that audiences adore. His most recent film, "Bodyguard," is built around that same hero-glorifying precedent and has been shattering box office records.
It's not uncommon for Hindi audiences to applaud the first time a hero appears on screen. Check out this video of an audience wholeheartedly reacting to Salman Khan's first appearance in "Bodyguard."
If Bollywood loves to love a hero, one has to wonder wouldn't the audiences love to love a superhero? It's a logical progression, right? But at the same time, looking at Indian heroes shows that "Ra.One" isn't really as different or as new as it may at first seem. I'm as excited as the next person for it, but "Ra.One" isn't the first Bollywood film to have a hero that's super and larger than life. It's just the first one to put a hero in spandex and stop pretending that his physical feats are commonplace.
Posts in The Filmi Gator appear on Mondays.
The upcoming film "Ra.One" is being marketed as India's first superhero film, but Bollywood's heroes are already larger-than-life characters.
