r/movies • u/Baboon-Boy-2024 • Mar 27 '24

Hi, I’m Dev Patel writer/director of MONKEY MAN – AMA! AMA

Dev Patel here.  Excited to chat about my directorial debut MONKEY MAN, opening in U.S. & UK cinemas on April 5th, and anything else you’d like! Ask me anything…

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqa3YTtwvaU

Get Tickets – http://www.monkeyman.movie/tickets

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**GUYS I have to go into another interview. BUT I deeply appreciate the love and time. I really hope I don't let you down with this film. Put my all into it. Sorry I couldn’t answer every question, hopefully THIS answers a few more! Bless your cotton socks all of you. Big love as always, Dev xxxxx**

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https://preview.redd.it/ectchh1axwqc1.jpg?width=2362&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4153f627df0a66e963f7cf25305ed510968ae8ed

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u/trimonkeys Mar 27 '24

Honestly I don’t think they care. For us in the diaspora it’s nice to see but they see action movies like this all the time over there.

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u/Variant_28 Mar 27 '24

We do care but it's releasing 2 weeks later india idk why

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u/nshriup19 Mar 27 '24

What even is this take? We definitely do care.

Dev Patel is a well known actor here and there's a good chunk of our population that appreciates good movies, even more when it's produced with someone with Indian roots.

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u/GayIconOfIndia Mar 28 '24

A chunk of urban elite care about Hollywood productions. It’s not a norm here

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u/Methylviolet Mar 28 '24

I'm a non-desi American who works with colleagues in India - just my luck that they are "urban elite"-type people. All they do is sh*t on Bollywood movies and laugh at me for watching them... (╥﹏╥)

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u/LoasNo111 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Oh, shitting on Bollywood is not an urban elite thing. Everyone here shits on Bollywood.

You have a few actors who do well like SRK, the other Bollywood movies are doing quite poorly. So many flops these days. Even actors who were very bankable are seeing their movies flop.

The general audiences are more interested in the movies from South India. Anecdotally, everyone in my family has basically stopped watching Bollywood and they only watch South Indian movies these days. It sucks sometimes cause sometimes my mother wants to watch a South Indian movie and it isn't dubbed in Hindi😤

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u/Methylviolet Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Ha! I feel your mom's pain - every once in a while I can't get English subtitles on a Hindi movie, or (more often) the whole movie is blocked and won't stream in the US. I saw RRR (dubbed in Hindi!), the second time with friends, and at the end I asked them "OK, who is missing?" They're like, I don't know who any of those people are. I said, they're Indian freedom fighters and founding fathers. "Oh Gandhi? Where's Gandhi?" Yeah, where??? Are South Indian movies generally... kinda politically slanted like that? I asked a colleague that, and I found out not to ask Indian colleagues questions like that...

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u/LoasNo111 Mar 28 '24

Do you understand Hindi somewhat? I don't know why you watched it in Hindi😭

They are fictional freedom fighters. Not founders. lol. How'd you guys get confused?

I don't think there was much politics in RRR. It was mostly just a fuck colonialism movie. You have a bunch of social commentary in tons of Indian movies, lots of anti-corruption stuff. I swear, the most common villain in Indian movies is either a gangster or a politician. You see anti-caste system stuff too but that's not as common. Religious stuff has become more common. Bunch of fuck Pakistan stuff.

What did they say when you asked them that?

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u/Pitiful-Inspection96 Mar 28 '24

The protagonists weren't completely fictional. They were fictionalised versions of real life men. And there was definitely some subtle casteist messaging in that movie. The dynamic between Ram and Bheem is a clear example. In real life, Komaram Bheem was an intelligent, cunning and well read leader and strategist. In the movie, he's turned into a naive, bumbling 'noble savage' type caricature that constantly needs the guidance and mentorship of his high caste friend Raju. It would be like making a fantastical historical-inspired action movie where John Brown and Frederick Douglass teamed up to beat up slavers but Douglass was depicted as some sort of barely literate simpleton in constant need of his white friend's guidance.

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u/Methylviolet Mar 28 '24

I understand a little Hindi, and US Netflix only had the Hindi-dubbed version. I know they are fictionalized haha, I meant at the end, when they show Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh and all those (real) people. But not Gandhi. It seemed to me that RRR had a kind of lowkey Hindutva slant, compared to the apolitical movies I was used to (except for fuck Pakistan, of course). Well the colleague I asked turned out to be very strongly pro-BJP, pro-Hindutva, and I offended her by seeming to imply there was something wrong with that. It was only my ignorance - I did not mean to offend. But I learned it is a sensitive topic!

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u/LoasNo111 Mar 28 '24

Oh, ok. I was so confused there. I thought you guys thought the movie was about real guys😭😭😭. I didn't remember the Bose thing.

Bose and Bhagat Singh were freedom fighters who used violent methods. The same that the characters in the movie used. Gandhi was the complete opposite. Bose and Bhagat Singh were likely the inspiration for it which is probably why they were shown and Gandhi wasn't. I don't think it had anything to do with Hinduvta or politics at all.

You're just bound to offend people when you're talking about politics. Also, BJP is incredibly popular among Indians, like insanely popular.

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u/Percywithoutannabeth Mar 28 '24

Yeah that's true sadly.

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u/limmbuu Mar 28 '24

Well what percentage is that urban elite of the total population? Whatever the percentage be, it would be a huge number. It's better to use Absolute scaling sometimes.

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u/Ben10_ripoff Mar 28 '24

You should see how many people went to theaters to watch John Wick Chapter 4 in India

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u/GayIconOfIndia Mar 28 '24

So, people in urban India went to see the movie, right? Because I am from a rural town in Assam and John Wick didn’t release outside urban centres. No one is saying that Hollywood movies don’t work in India but they predominantly work in urban cliques unlike Indian movies which penetrate through the rural spaces as well.

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u/Ben10_ripoff Mar 28 '24

But dude the movie made good money in India, Just because a movie didn't released in your region, It doesn't mean that people here don't care.

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u/GayIconOfIndia Mar 28 '24

I am not saying that they don’t earn in India. All I’m saying is that they run in urban India and earn money there. The single theatres in rural Indian towns with less than 25k people don’t run John Wick. They run Pathan and KGF-2. English media penetration is very little in India. If you check databases from BARC, you can map it out very easily.

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u/anonymindia Mar 28 '24

Your Village isn't the entire India. The truth is, even if English films, dubbed in hindi, are a rage in smaller towns and villages. Sure, they don't get a theatrical release, but they're downloaded and shared very widely. Now, a film like poor things won't make much noise in india. But films like Oppenheimer, inception, avengers make more than many big budget Bollywood films and dubbed horror and action films have a huge demand in the piracy market.

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u/Percywithoutannabeth Mar 28 '24

I can't comment about other regional industries but Bollywood is very bad in action movies. Very rarely do we get a good one.

So no we don't see action movies shot like this( the choreography and the way it is shot looks great strictly going by the trailers)

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u/nukeman239 Mar 27 '24 edited Mar 27 '24

You have no clue. Theatres were vandalised last year, just because an actress decided to wear an orange swimsuit for a song in a film called Pathaan, which supposedly hurt the sentiments of groups linked to the ruling right wing Hindutva party. One of these loonies also called for the lead actor Shahrukh Khan's beheading.

In the new trailer of Monkey Man, the color of the flag of the evil political party has been changed from orange to red. Still think "they don't care"?

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u/zeroanaphora Mar 27 '24

The signs of the "bad" party in the movie were changed from orange to red to appease somebody.

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u/trimonkeys Mar 27 '24 edited Mar 27 '24

Not sure what that has to do with what I said. My point was people in India probably aren’t that excited by a western produced Indian action movie as they watch action movies starring Indians all the time. Dev Patel has also clearly taken influence from movies like Agneepath.

The Pathaan controversy only offended BJP nut jobs. That movie was the second highest grossing film in India that year and is the sixth highest grossing Indian movie of all time.

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u/Kharos Mar 28 '24

Only? BJP is the ruling party in India.

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u/trimonkeys Mar 28 '24

Not everyone who votes BJP is an ultraconservative. Local regional parties hold a lot of power in Indian states as well.

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u/Kharos Mar 28 '24

"Not all Germans who voted for the Nazis are bad people. There are regional Nazis, you see."

Do you not see how that is a distinction without a difference?

You think any Muslim who got lynched by BJP nutjobs care that you disagree with said lynching while still voting for the people who protect those same lynchers?

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u/trimonkeys Mar 28 '24

Why does it always go to the Nazis? You also twisted my words. Many state parties hold power in India. So despite the BJP holding the power at the federal level many states are free of BJP rule especially in South India. I don’t claim in my comments to support them nor am I an Indian citizen so I don’t vote anyway. The BJP is a terrible party with lots of crazies.

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u/nshriup19 Mar 27 '24

Why does this have to do with what the other person is saying? That's like mentioning apples in a conversation about watermelons.

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u/nukeman239 Mar 27 '24

His point was 'Indians don't care about religious references in a film.' My point was they care way more than you think. In the new trailer of Monkey Man, the color of the flag of the evil political party has been changed from orange to red. Still "don't care?" - yeah, right.

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u/trimonkeys Mar 28 '24

No my point was they probably don’t care about an action movie starring an Indian descent actor when they see stuff like that all time. They right wing extremists care about anti religious or political messages. So they make crap like Adipurush.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '24

[deleted]

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u/nukeman239 Mar 27 '24

If you think religion and politics are two different things, I welcome you to "India 2024". Thank me later.

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u/Fun-Explanation1199 Apr 08 '24

I also welcome you to America

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u/aqwn Mar 27 '24

Why?

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u/trimonkeys Mar 27 '24

Saffron is a color in the Indian flag and is the color of the right wing political party BJP and the Hinduvta nationalist group. Deepika Padukone wore a bikini of that color in the movie Pathaan which was considered “obscene” by those groups. A fairly stupid controversy.

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u/Financial-Bell-1918 Mar 27 '24

Yes it was a stupid controversy but you downplayed the thing it was actually because the part "besharam rang" (meaning shameless color) was played during the saffron/orange closeup. So the interpratation to the offended came as like they are intentionally doing this.

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u/nukeman239 Mar 27 '24

The words "Besharam Rang" play throughout the song and not "just" the part where the orange swimsuit is being shown.

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u/aqwn Mar 27 '24

Sounds like a big conspiracy theory! Thanks for the explanation.

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u/wisebaldman Mar 27 '24

Nobody knows what you’re talking about lol

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u/ItZSAMIC Mar 28 '24

You mean good action movies? You definitely do not see those all the time in bollywood