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Kalyani Priyadarshan on Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra's international comparisons: I kept saying this is not Avengers
As the hit Malayalam superhero film Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra made its way to OTT recently, the actor talks about its impact and father Priyadarshan
Kalyani Priyadarshan's Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra broke new grounds in Malayalam cinema, emerging as the highest grossing film of all time in the language while being India's first female superhero film. As it made its way to its digital release recently, the actor feels grateful.
"I feel honoured that we were able to actually make a film that's a part of conversations, not just in the fraternity but also among audiences, and a film that people were really excited to go to theatres for not once or twice, but multiple times, especially at a time when movie watching is in the decline," she says.
Ask her about thr growing love for superhero genre in the country, and she says, "The reasons superhero genre hasn't really taken off here earlier is because all of our heroes are superheroes in many ways. They defy gravity and do things that really humans think arent possible. We've just not term them as superhero films, we always made them out to be the hero. You see this genre come out a little bit more in the Malayalam industry, mainly because they are rooted a lot more towards extreme realism. So in order to have the action believable, we had to root it into a superhero genre, otherwise, it may not have work at least in our state."
Revealing the biggest fear the team had before Lokah's release, Kalyani Priyadarshan shares, "The one thing we were afraid of is that when we say a female superhero film, there is nothing to compare it to here, and we as a culture love comparisons, so who would we be compared to, the international films. We would be compared to these films that have 20-30 times the budget that we had. So our biggest fear was that there is nothing here to compare it to and we may not even come close to those international films. I was so cautious in my first set of interviews where I kept saying this is not Avengers, please don't expect that my character is like Wonder Woman. It's just really nice to see that the comparison, even though it was made, it was made in such a positive light."
Having proven herself now, does she want to now delve into the genre of comedy her father Priyadarshan makes? "I have to prove myself there also for sure. I grew up doing nothing but watching comedies. So it's always the kind of genres that I've always been drawn towards and so obviously, that's something I want to be good at. But I'll have to keep doing it, learning my limitations. Yet that is also a space that I would love to explore," she says.
