Rgv: Ram Gopal Varma defends Ranbir Kapoor’s Animal saying ‘movies don’t influence society’: ‘Sholay is the biggest hit, nobody became a dacoit’

The Sandeep Reddy Vanga directorial Animal has become an all-time blockbuster with its roaring success, minting Rs 757 crore gross worldwide in just 12 days of its release. While the Ranbir Kapoor starrer has been labelled misogynistic and brutally violent by a section of viewers and critics, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has defended it saying that movies don’t influence society but it’s the other way around.
To back his views, RGV cited an example of Sholay, which is one of the most successful films of all time. He said that people loved Gabbar Singh and saw the film multiple times mainly for Gabbar Singh, who is evil, cuts off the cops’ hands and massacres his family.
He mentioned that filmmakers are basically creating entertainment and no one takes a film seriously. “When you saw Mad Max, nobody started going on bikes in high speed. Sholay is the biggest hit; nobody became a dacoit. Because Satya worked, nobody became a gangster. It’s a stupid argument to say a film can influence. At most, it can influence clothes or hairstyle,” he told News9 Live.

RGV said that the Hindi cinema changed in the 90s because music companies started producing movies mainly to sell cassettes. This led to rise in romantic films and the industry moved away from the Angry Young Man cinema, that came to define the 70s.

He added that the trends changed again in the 2010s when Aamir Khan did Ghajini and Salman Khan did Wanted. The success of KGF 2 cemented this trend only recently. “I don’t think Animal falls in that category. The masala hero, the so-called Angry Young Man, he works for good. He kills only bad guys; he’s very considerate about his love, his romance. This is not the case with Animal,” RGV said.

In the same interview, RGV called Animal the only original film in the history of Indian cinema, adding that the South shouldn’t take credit for director Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s sensibilities.