With The Paradise raking in Rs 100 Cr (worldwide gross) in two days despite its atrocious content, many are wondering if actors like Akkineni Nagarjuna and Victory Venkatesh were unwise in not attempting to break into the mass cinema genre.
In an old interview, Nag honestly admitted that he was aware of his inappropriateness for mass movies. Giving the example of Balakrishna's kind of mass movies, Nag shared, "In one of the films, a fast-approaching train halts because Balakrishna garu gestures to it to stop. Such scenes are not my cup of tea. They won't suit me. You need to have a certain level of stardom to get accepted when you do such scenes."
Nani, however, didn't stop himself believing his audience expect only family-friendly movies from him. He joined the mass hero bandwagon gradually. He tested the waters with Dasara, Shyam Singha Roy, and Saripodhaa Sanivaaram on the action cinema front. With The Paradise, he went full bonkers and daringly so.
But then, Nag and Venky couldn't dare to do a Nani for a reason. During their heyday (the 1990s and 2000s), the mass cinema genre had certain limitations. Filmmakers didn't think beyond the Rayalaseema factionalist backdrop, patriotic action, and the vigilante drama. For these, Balakrishna and Chiranjeevi were the go-to actors.
After KGF, Pushpa, Vikram, Salaar and, to an extent, Kantara, the grammar has changed completely. You can glorify extreme levels of violence by staging night scenes and/or by spiritualizing the hero's character with divine imagery. Kateramma (Salaar), Dhumavathi (The Paradise), etc...
Had B Gopal, VV Vinayak, and even Sreenu Vaitla had that vision, they might have done some good mass cinema with Nagarjuna and Venkatesh. To be sure, they even had the advantage of completely in-form composers like Mani Sharma, Devi Sri Prasad, RP Patnaik, Harris Jayaraj, and Yuvan Shankar Raja. Today's filmmakers thirst for just one composer: Anirudh.
