Thursday, December 04, 2008

Lord of The Rings is just another hindi movie

Just a few days back, I was talking to a friend who was ranting about the hindi movies, and the completely over the top masala ingredients added in them to spice them up. After defending the Bollywood for a long time (hey, we Indians may make fun of those movies but we are One when some outsider does it), I went back to my recent re-reading of Lord of The Rings.

And I had an epiphany. Here are

10 Reasons why LoTR is just another Bollywood Masala film:

10. If you are a good guy and a father, you get to die at the hands of The Villain or his Henchmen. Which of course will inspire your kid(s) and others to vanquish the villain for revenge.

9. Things are going very badly for the good guys, when BAM! Help arrives in the form of the Hero.

8. The hero has a bumbling but faithful sidekick (or a group of them), who provides the comic sidetrack, but will lay down his life for the hero.

7. There's a costumed villain, sitting in his snazzy lair, surrounded by costumed henchmen and weird looking followers.

6. The "supporting actress" loves the hero, who cannot return her affections because he is in love with the heroine. But don't worry, she will find her life partner in the "supporting actor" before the climax.

5. The hero and heroine belong to different social groups, and hence her father is not exactly happy about their union, but there is a loving aunt who will help the lovers.

4. The heroine, the one belonging to higher social group in this case, will "sacrifice" her advantages in order to marry the hero.

3. The hero has greedy, conniving, thieving relatives who have their eye on his estate.

2. You can stab him, fire arrows at him, slash at him with swords, poison him... The Hero just goes on and on and on...

1. At moment's notice, there's at least one person who has got to sing up. Sometimes that quickly grows into a group song.

 

- The Great Eagle Has Spoken

 

P.S. The comparison is based solely on the books, and those misguided souls who know LoTR as only a movie trilogy may be confused. Solution: read the book.

12 Comments:

alosh said...

My good God!! Well, afterall Jaisingh Radeshyam Ramgopal Tolken was from eastern UP :D

Amey said...

@Alosh: Shocking, isn't it? Tolkien bhaiyya totally fooled us.

Now I just want somebody to make a hindi movie out of this :D

Princess Stefania said...

There. Tag carried out. :)

Princess Stefania said...

No! No no no. Lord of the Rings a Hindi Movie?! How could you want something like that?

Amey said...

@Princess: Thankye for the tag.

Can you refute any of the points?

Princess Stefania said...

I'm not going to.

I'm just going to point out to you that everything Bollywood uses is ripped off from Hollywood. And Hollywood owes its content to creative literature. All threads of creativeness can be traced back to Tolkien.

There ya go.
:P

Amey said...

@Princess: Aah, that's easy:

Masala movies as a genre typically originate from 70s-80s. And the movies from that time stand pretty much independent from Hollywood, specifically masala movies.

There you go...

Princess Stefania said...

I think most Indians were able to read by then, and some of them even managed English. Oh my. And the books have been around longer than Hollywood.

(and for all those patriotics out there, that was sarcasm. Mild sarcasm. I'm not putting Indians down. Really. Oh, and I don't like cricket. And since you don't know who I am, you can't burn life sized effigies of me, threaten my family and/or burn my house down. So there!)

:P Sorry. It's very impolite to rant into someone's comment space, I know. But it's always annoyed me that if you don't like cricket, it's because of THE WEST'S influence. And you are declared unpatriotic by default. You know, this can be turned into a post.

Amey said...

@Princess: See, this young generation doesn't know the glorious traditions of Masala Bollywood. Don't go by today's movies, masala is masala.

Anyways, the subject wasn't who influenced whom, the subject is LoTR = Masala movie. And you also agree to that, right? ;)

Princess Stefania said...

Oh dear. You like cricket, don't you?
-changes topic-
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
Our answers to that one are a lot alike, aren't they?

Amey said...

@Princess: Great minds and all that, you know :D

As for cricket, I am not a "fan", I won't stay up watching every test and ODI any team plays. But yeah, I like to follow it.

Princess Stefania said...

-declares all comments pertaining to cricket null and void-

How agreeable do you find my answer to point 12? :P The set makes my top ten list.