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Mirroring The Industry: It’s time for Salman Khan to work with better directors and make better films
Over the years, Salman Khan has established himself as one of the biggest crowd pullers of Indian Cinema. The stardom is still intact, but his content has now started to erode.
The letter S in Salman Khan stands for Superstardom. Over the years, Salman Khan has established himself as one of the biggest crowd pullers in the history of Indian Cinema, whose films have taken a start at the box office. The stardom escalated to the next level when he amped up his game by working with deserving names of the film industry. But the ball game on the content front changed in the last few years, when Salman took the decisions of working with some of the under-deserving names from the Hindi Film Industry. The stardom is intact, but the content has eroded massively.
Salman Khan's streak with below par directors
It started with Remo D’Souza in Race 3 – a film that was made out of commitment to the filmmaker, as Salman was planning to do a dance based emotional drama with Remo, which went to the cans following Tubelight. This was followed by back-to-back films with Prabhudeva in the form of Dabangg 3 and Radhe. And the tradition continued with Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan, wherein he teamed up with Farhad Samji. Interestingly, every person in the fanbase of Khan as also the general cine-lovers were more or less aware about the fate of the aforementioned films on the content front much before their release. And the outcome was not really a surprise.
The last five years has seen Salman team up with not-so-good directors, making him the captain of the ship taking all the crucial decisions. However, filmmaking has always been a collaborative process. The content and the film shines when actors and directors team up, rather than it being a one-man show. Through the years, Salman has been involved in all aspects of filmmaking, but it leaves a mark when the director knows what to take and what not to take off the suggestions given in by Salman. Of the 10 suggestions given by SK, 5 might be good and 5 might be bad - and it's always on the captain of the ship to identify the right ones. While Antim was not really an out and out Salman film, the film looked better than all his previous work as the captain of the ship was a director like Mahesh Manjrekar – who had the aesthetics of shooting a film right. His work probably went wider due to suggestions by Salman, but that happened because the source material was in place. Same with the Ali Abbas Zafar directed Bharat, which though had some flaws in second half, was mounted well and had a good performance by Salman. It’s probably the last ‘film’ that Salman did with a ‘director’, as post that it has been a scenario of working with undeserving names for commitment.
Coming to the point, Salman deserves to do better films and work with better directors. There's constant chatter about him being the hero who can drive action films, and it’s this noise that certainly pushes him to do films in the action space. But a glimpse at his track record indicates that Salman’s strength also lies in drama and comedy. This is the right time for Salman to shift his base and explore other genres too rather than just focusing on the ‘multi-genre’ format of films. Salman in the last 5 years has boxed himself to just masala and action films, but there lies a wide variety of genres which can bring variation in his line up. He is a force to reckon with in all genres, provided they are made well, with a director on board, who can extract a performance off Salman. The last few films have seen him in disinterested space and that’s certainly due to the fatigue factor of doing it all on the set. A professional set up with an able director can change the tides as Salman’s focus could rest on acting side-by-side with some inputs here and there.
The writing was also on the walls for Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan when producer Sajid Nadiadwala backed off not seeing commercial prospects and that was probably an indication for Salman also to leave the project. But the commitment factor came into picture again, and there you go with an Eid opening this year. There’s a misconception that big directors are not coming with films to Salman. Most of them are willing to do a film with him, and many more will come if the word is out in the market that Salman is on the look-out for a good script. The last 5 years gave him the opportunity of teaming up with some of the bigger directors from across industries including Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Sriram Raghavan, Rajkumar Gupta, Lokesh Kanagaraj (Master Remake), Farah Khan, Anees Bazmee (No Entry 2), Abhishek Verman, and Vishnu Vardhan (In Talks) to name some.
The initial push from the fans will take Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan past the Rs 100 crore club, making it 16 in a row for Salman. It’s an achievement, but is that a number one must celebrate for a superstar like Salman Khan – who has the potential of hitting unheard numbers at the box office? We have seen his dominance at the box office last decade wherein he scored big with every film, and we would see that again with Tiger 3. Yes, all the films can’t be as big as the Tiger franchise, but what’s needed at the moment is the intent to collaborate with bigger directors on better scripts. The idea at the moment has to be to make a good film, rather than just doing any film to fill up the dates and bring a feature film during the Eid 2024 weekend.
Making the right use of Salman Khan's superstardom
Hopefully, the collections of Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan would be an eye-opener and push Salman to team up with better names, as the fans deserve better, the audience deserve better and most importantly, Salman Khan himself deserves better. The tides have changed post the pandemic and he is among the lasts of the superstars we have here in the film industry alongside his clan from the 90s. Content plus stardom is always a lethal combo, but content plus stardom plus Salman Khan is even bigger a box office weapon. As SS Rajamouli once said one, ‘Stardom is like an arrow, which will always hit the bulls eye with the right archer.’ Salman is the arrow, and all that he needs is the right archer now. Hopefully, his upcoming choices would be the right ones to get back the cash registers ringing like never before.
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