Ranveer Singh‘s ‘Dhurandhar’ franchise may have emerged as one of Bollywood’s biggest film franchises, but filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia has a very different take on its success. At a recent event, the filmmaker questioned the storytelling in the films, bluntly claiming that Dhurandhar has no story. He also used the films as a starting point to discuss what he believes is the larger decline of original storytelling in the Hindi film industry.Tigmanshu was speaking at an event. During the discussion, he criticised the premise of the Aditya Dhar directorial and argued that its storyline is difficult to define beyond its broad action-driven plot.“If someone asks you about the story of Dhurandhar, you can’t tell it. There is a guy who goes to Pakistan aur vaha tabahi macha deta hai. Is this a story? The stories are finished in films. Also, those who tell the stories are also finished and those who want to tell stories aren’t allowed to do so. They think that their films won’t work. They follow the same pattern,” he said at an event organised by The Wire on ‘The State of Media and Film Industry’.The filmmaker then broadened his criticism, linking what he described as the impact of extreme capitalism to the growing lack of individuality in cinema as well as society. According to Tigmanshu, the tendency to replicate successful formulas has extended beyond films and can be seen in everything from fashion to the way cities are designed.“This happens during extreme capitalism, people also start looking like each other. You see the fashion these days, everybody looks the same. They all have the same haircut. Even cities are looking identical to each other. The unique character of every city is finished. My city Allahabad, (named has been changed to Prayagraj) was known for so many different things but now it looks like any other city, same malls, same cars. This type of political system finishes your individuality,” he said.His comments, however, did not go down well with several social media users. Some criticised the filmmaker on X, with one person writing, “Another bitter, self-proclaimed taste merchant has crawled out of his cocoon.” Another user posted, “If Peak Jealousy Had a FACE 😈 .” A third comment simply read, “Sour grapes.”‘Dhurandhar’, meanwhile, was written and directed by Aditya Dhar and featured Ranveer Singh, Akshaye Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, R Madhavan, Sara Arjun, Rakesh Bedi, Gaurav Gera and Danish Pandor, along with several supporting actors.
