Bores of Hindostan: Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan are smart. But the trailer of 'Thugs of Hindostan' isn’t
Just after a white man utters “Maza ayega”, Katrina Kaif has to enter the trailer.
There’s nothing in the trailer of Thugs of Hindostan that you haven’t seen before.
You have seen Thugs’ Aamir Khan version in Pirates of the Caribbean, Hindi-speaking Brits in Lagaan and many Indian films, unbelievable VFX in Baahubali, Amitabh Bachchan performing larger-than-life stunts and dancing Katrina Kaif everywhere. Fatima is fierce as she was in Dangal — but she is not wrestling here.
So, there’s precisely nothing to speak about the three-minute tell-all trailer, which leaves nothing to the audience’s imagination either. The setting is India in 1795, under the rule of the East India Company. The Brits want to rein in their enemy Azad or Khudabaksh, a character essayed by Amitabh Bachchan. In this process, they apparently take the help of an Indian thug named Firangi, who, we felt, was supposed to be an equally formidable character.
But he turns out to be Aamir Khan, not of Dangal but of PK, trying to make everything fun.
However, he has some sinister designs up his sleeve too, as he apparently pretends to be joining Amitabh Bachchan in this fight against foreign rulers. But probably there lies a twist somewhere.
In-between comes Katrina Kaif and dances, as she has done in many films, and then you helplessly click on the screen to find out how much of the trailer is still left.
A lot.
Clashes, more clashes, flashes of swords, brave but mute women — and then, the trailer finally ends with the hint of an epic battle between Azad and Firangi, Azad saying, if longing for freedom is a crime, then he is willing to embrace the punishment.
And the trailer finally ends.
Interestingly, the trailer of the much-awaited Bollywood movie with Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan together for the first time could not become the talking point of the trailer launch party.
The smartness with which both these towering personalities of Bollywood — Amitabh and Aamir — skirted the issue of Tanushree Dutta calling out Nana Patekar for allegedly sexually harassing her 10 years ago became the talking point.
And rightly so.
Aamir Khan, who has been associated with several non-fiction shows on television, spreading social messages, said that he could not comment without knowing the veracity of the incident. But if that had happened, it was indeed sad and needs to be investigated by “people”.
Amitabh Bachchan, on the other hand, reminded those listening that his name was neither Tanushree, nor Nana Patekar, justifying his inability to answer such “unrelated” questions.
Very smart indeed.
Exactly what their film trailer lacks.
We know that they are not the persons to have decided that the trailer should have glimpses of the women characters — so that the message of 'women's empowerment' is there — but not any dialogue by them.
Also, just after a white man utters “Maza ayega”, Katrina Kaif has to enter the trailer. And shake a leg.
We know Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan are not to be blamed for the dud their trailer looks like; they are just part of the industry which chooses its real-life heroes and victims cautiously, and expects the audience to jump and clap every time it drops a multi-starrer, multi-crore bomb.