Almost all the reviews of Krrish 3 that I read before watching the movie warned me against going anywhere close to it. But when has logic ever prevailed, particularly when it comes to kids. And I must admit, I had enjoyed the first two installments of this trilogy.
Since then I have been wondering if Krrish 3 (K3 henceforth; I cannot get myself to type that double-r again!) was a good movie or not. Most kids seem to enjoy it a lot and hardly anybody walked out of the theatre during the movie. It is now reported that K3 has crossed Rs 250 crore revenues in the two weeks since release, making it one of the most successful Bollywood movies ever.
This is not a review of the movie, although I must point out what I found most jarring. There is no conflict between the two personas of the super-hero. Only the mask and black raincoat separate Krishna and Krrish; in fact, you see Krishna dancing and singing around a statue of himself. Contrast that with other super-heros like Spiderman, Batman or Iron Man... they are all reluctant "heroes" often unable to reconcile between their 'split' personalities. Not just them, eventheir loved ones go through similar struggles. This, I believe, creates palpable tension in their stories, often stronger than their conflict with the villain.
On the other hand, in Krrish's favor, his story is an emerging one. He does not have years of comic stories, back-stories, make-overs or reboots available. He is a super-hero created for movies (nay, Hrithik Roshan), one movie at a time. Maybe Marvel or better still, India Book House could adopt Krrish and make a real comic super-hero series out of him.
Anyway... the other issue that caught my attention was the relatively small scale of Bollywood movies. A 250 crore collection has made K3 the 2nd most successful in the industry. The Avengers (similar genre, Hollywood's 3rd highest grosser ever) had a budget 5X of K3 and earnings were 37 times more! In India itself, The Avengers earned Rs 65 crore. As pointed out in this article, the pertinent question is why Indian film-makers have no apparent desire to tap the much larger movie markets overseas.
In many industries, Indian companies have globalized, even when the Indian market was big enough (& growing), so that they might become globally competitive. Recognizing that products and brands from overseas have access to Indian markets, we needed to be able to compete with them in our home turf. And of course, many industries enjoy economies of scale and increasing the addressable market is a means to improving margins. Very high fixed cost businesses like movies clearly lend themselves to 'market expansion'.
Of course, as with any cross-border expansion, you cannot just transport products across markets. With movies, it is indeed tough to "customize" the product for each culture / language that one targets; at most you can dub the movie and maybe, edit it slightly differently. At the same time, the success of Hollywood movies like The Avengers or The Avatar has shown that good quality entertainment and story-telling is universally accepted.
So are Indian film-makers shortsighted, focusing on the 100-200 crore collections whereas much larger opportunities lie elsewhere. Will the increasing corporatisation of Bollywood lead to larger scale movies being made in India, by Indians for global movie markets? In fact, a Bollywood movie with pan-India appeal that can earn $1 from each of the so-called 100mn middle class Indias has a Rs 600 crore potential!