Hindi films have come a long way. It is definitely getting close to reality but in the attempt to do so, they are missing the heroic charm. Earlier the true definition of a protagonist was that of a good-looking sharp man, who would emerge victorious after grappling with worsts in life. But the films made these days have been portraying the heroine’s knight in shine armour as a loser of first order.

While taking a look at few films that have been made in the recent times, it shows the Hindi film hero in situations, where he is no Mr Perfect, instead, is a failure-stricken. Among all the new league actors, we see the next generation Shahrukh Khan in Ranbir Kapoor, whose claim to box-office grosser has been the films like Wake Up Sid and Azab Prem Ki Gazab Kahani, in which he is no ideal beta or pati but a laid back young chap.

Not just the reality flavour in the film but also the wave of comedy that has gripped the filmdom has toned down the larger than life image of a hero. The string of newcomers, who have just entered the industry, have devised their image that of a good-dancer, who can also do comedy to match the flavour of the season. Apart from Ranbir, the salable youngsters like Shahid Kapoor and Imran Khan have also made the choice of films that would project them in the category of romantic hero, who are fit to do romcoms, which is an in-thing in Bollywood today. Niel Nitin Mukesh did start well with an action-thriller like Johnny Gaddar, but later when the serious action films took a back seat, he too turned to play the hapless characters in the films like New York and Jail.

The trend has also changed the pattern of scripting a film. Earlier films used to be bi-narrative, in which one would be the main track that would be the serious inspiring story of our hero and in the parallel would run the track of comedians. Such sequences would serve as breathers at regular intervals, as and when the films would get heavy on melodrama. At the end both the parallel stories would converge in to a happy ending. That was the era when we had special place for the comedians to the like of Johnny Walker, Mehmood, Jonny Lever and Tun-tun (Uma Devi) in our films.

However, now the scenario has changed. Comedy is so much in demand that even the lead actors like Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt and Akshay Kumar, who had set a strong image that of an action hero in their early days, have moved to the greener pasture. We do have Rajpal Yadav and Boman Irani holding such special place for themselves in films but the heroes too have got attenuated in the same category. Hindi film hero use to be someone, who can knock down even the muscular villain just by one punch. He would save the heroine from gang of gundas all alone. Audience would be awed by seeing all this and each one would want to be like him.

But what we see about our new-age actors is something that is non-admiring. Certainly, seeing the hero goofing-up onscreen in some slapstick sequence does not inspire cine-goers to imitate them. Dabangg no doubt is a brilliant action film but heroism goes for the toss, when we see Chulbul Pandey’s histrionics in the scenes, where he is cracking toilet-jokes. It has become rather difficult to define a Hindi film hero in the era when comedy calls the shot.

This does not mean that the yesteryear’s macho-men do not have viewers in this generation. Larger than life image of a male protagonist is still welcomed with open arms and that’s the reason why, even today the action films like Wanted and Kaminey do marvelously well at the box office