Real Reason for downfall of Telugu Cinema: Baanisatvam
This will be in English and Telugu, so please bear with me.
There is a downfall happening in Telugu Cinema and I don't think most people are realising it. All the star hero movies are now outright bad. The only good movies are made by the indie makers or heroes with no substantial stardom.
This is for one reason alone. Baanisatvam. Slavery. Frog in the well laanti situation.
Star heroes are making terrible movies. Their baanisalu are hyping it up as always. Because of this baanisalu, heroes have entirely stopped looking human in their movies. When is the last time a star hero was able to act vulnerable in his movie? Where he was able to show that he is human? I can't think of any. No hero is going through any sort of struggle or difficulty that he needs to overcome. He is always an invinvible superman like character, everything just happens to work out for him.
I bring your attention to NTR, for example. NTR is the actor I liked the most, because for me, he was an actor more than a hero. Kaani cut to now, he can only do invincible roles where nothing can ever happen to his character. Even if the character is shown as having some weakness, it is because he is pretending to be like that (Vara sequence in Devara). I can only reminisce a performance like in Adhurs.
This is happening with all heroes, and I think Prabhas and PK are the worst in this regard. Their baanisalu are never letting them do good movies, because they are satisfied with this. As long as their fans are satisfied like this, there is no incentive for heroes to make movies where their characters actually has a depth.
Recently I was arguing with someone in this sub about the problematic scenes in Peddi. He was still defending it so blindly, and said 'aritikaya motham thini thokka tho problem undha'. He even called me a baby for expecting a hero in a movie to not be glorified for molesting a woman. This is the situation in a T'Wood critique sub. We all know how worse the situation is in pro T'Wood circles.
Tl;dr: baanistvam is ruining telugu cinema, because heroes have no incentive to better as long as their baanisalu keep defending them for their mediocre projects.
Posted Jun 5, 2026, 4:45 AM UTC