Would The Pacific Rim  Monsters Gobble Up Rani’s Hichki?

“There’s no escaping these monstrous invaders , I tell you,” jokes filmmaker Sudhir Mishra whose Daas Dev which was due onMarch 23 has made a hasty escape to a safer week in April.

But Yash Raj Films doesn’t mind taking on  Pacific Rim Uprising, the sequel to the  2013 alien monsters versus earthly robots  sci-fispectacle  directed  by the redoubtable Guillermo de Toro who has since then, moved  on to the Oscar-guzzling Shape Of  The Water.

Apparently audiences are still stuck on the Pacific Rim formula. The sequel directed by Steven S DeKnight, is being unleashed in 4 languages in India,English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu as  compared with the uni-tongued  Hindi release Hichki which must rely on word  of mouth….No, not in the conventional way but in the way the protagonist’s speech  impediment  is  perceived  by the audience.

 This film is about the  value attached to  the spoken word, as its female hero Rani Mukherjee has a problem controlling her spoken words.That’s  just the start  of  the problems. There is  the  other problem of audiences’ acceptance level  of female heroes.

 Female heroes,  for all  our talk of women empowerment, are not widely  favoured at the  boxoffice. When  was  the last time  a  film with a female hero in the lead did really  did well at  the  boxoffice. Even Wonder Woman was not as  major a hit in India as it was theworldover.

As  for Hichki Rani Mukherjee’s last film Mardaangi featured her as the Shero. It did average  business.