Malaikottai Vaaliban -Reasons for its failure at Box Office

Malaikottai Vaaliban -Reasons for its failure at Box Office

Mohanlal's Lijo Jose Pellissery film Malaikottai Valiban failed at the box office. Let me tell you what I think are some of the shortcomings in the storyline of the film that I found while searching for the reason of its lack of popularity.

1. Slow rhythm – The large canvas with minute movements from the beginning create a kind of boredom in the audience. Although there are some excitements in the action scenes, after those the audience are lulled to sleep along with Valiban.

2. Story - The natural growth of the story and the development of the character become two branches growing in two different directions. Their harmonious growth is not seen in the film.

3. Storytelling. - The journey of the protagonist deviates from the Hero's Journey Pattern, tries to bring something different and fails. According to the Hero's Journey, at a critical point in the life of the protagonist, he has to pursue an unavoidable goal or dream. On his journey to achieve this, he overcomes many obstacles and succeeds in the final test. But not only does Valiban seem to have no such goal, but the challenges he faces in his journey of victory, which he does not know why, end without causing any excitement or concern among the audience. The reason for this is that the need for his journey is not clear to the audience at all. In short, the film has not been able to create the kind of identification with the protagonist that the audience feels even with the characters in a Tom and Jerry cartoon clip. Only the second half is slightly different.

4. Even if the director intended a tragedy, the reason for the misunderstanding between Valiban and his brother did not seem to have the seriousness befitting a tragedy. It has become a completely clichéd reason. It would have been better to avoid such serial-level story elements in the big cinematic canvas of Valiban. Especially in the parts about Valiban's birth, we can see that there is a "vulgarity" that contradicts our hero concepts. This must have also hindered the audience's enjoyment.

5. The visual storytelling is beautiful, but it did not seem to communicate with the contemporary audience. Even the techniques that Lijo often uses to arouse curiosity in the average audience did not work in this film. In the director's own words, this is a commercial film, and he himself said that there is no point in searching for various meanings in this.

6. The hero, who conquers everything and advances, faces a vicious challenge from his own family. But it doesn't seem like this strong twist of the story was conveyed to the audience in the right way. When the father, who is the rival of Valiban, is shown in the final scene, the audience doesn't seem to be able to absorb it. They can only see it as a twist that was brought about with effort. Because without reading that Valiban, who has no rivals, finally comes to the realization that he himself is the ‘Mahameru’ he has to face, the audience can only see this scene as a comic strip. While the argument that this movie is an Amar Chitra Katha transposed into celluloid is correct, it seems that the reason for the box office failure of the movie is that it rewrote the methods followed in the storyline of mainstream movies.

7. In short, the movie Malaikotte Valiban was an experiment that was ahead of its time. In the future, this film may be hailed as a masterpiece of cinematography or a new paradigm for storytelling.

Diverse discussions await.

Malaikottai Vaaliban -Parallel Readings to be Unveiled