When Will Bollywood Learn? 30-Year-Old Disha Patani Cast Opposite John Abraham, 49

The trailer of the thriller Ek Villain Returns was released on June 30. This Mohit Suri directorial is a sequel to the hit 2014 film, starring Sidharth Malhotra, Shraddha Kapoor and Riteish Deshmukh. When the film's first look was released on Wednesday, it became clear that Bollywood continues to live in denial of its massive age gap problem between leading actors in films. This is despite the sad fate of recently released Samrat Prithviraj.

Ek Villain Returns' cast is led by John Abraham and Arjun Kapoor, who are paired opposite Disha Patani and Tara Sutaria. Abraham is 49, while his female co-star is just 30. On the other hand, Kapoor just celebrated his 37th birthday, while Sutaria is 26 years old. The jarring discrepancies between the ages of leading men and women in this film are nothing new. What does come as a surprise is that filmmakers are still not paying heed to all the backlash that is coming the industry's way for such problematic casting choices.

Ek Villain Returns Trailer

The &t=48s">trailer of Ek Villain Returns builds up on the notorious legacy of its prequel where a husband massacres 18 women because he "loves" his oppressive wife and can't be angry with her. Here we have a killer who is targeting women who have one-sided lovers. "Dil tute ashikon ka maseeha ban na chahta hai," the trailer tells us about this killer. The rest of the trailer tries to establish how there are no heroes in this story and that we shouldn't yet make up our mind about who is the "Ek Villain" here. What is clear from the trailer is that film wears the age gap between its male and female leads on its sleeves.

When Samrat Prithviraj's trailer was launched in May this year, social media made a huge cry about the film's awkward casting choice. A 54-year-old Akshay Kumar was cast as the Rajput king, while a 25-year-old former Miss World Manushi Chhillar was cast as Princess Sanyogita opposite him. The casting was one of the many reasons that had put viewers off the magnum opus. The film was panned by critics and viewers didn't show any mercy at the box office.

Suggested Reading: Suzhal: The Vortex - A Well-Crafted Mystical Thriller That Deserved A Better Ending

Bollywood's aversion to ageing in men

Yet, here we are, barely two months later, looking at another big-budget film that pretends Bollywood men are ageless gods whom we will worship as long as they continue to flex their muscles and can fight 20 men in a single breath. The idea that men do not age is rooted in the toxic idea of masculinity that our society and pop culture has been feeding us for decades now. Mard kabhi boodha nahi hota, we have often heard, hinting that men remain virile forever. According to society, this is what makes men indispensable and attractive, even past their youth, whereas an older woman must be forced out of the limelight. She must either focus on her roles as a wife and mother, or society labels her as unattractive after a certain age, shifting the focus on younger women.

Doesn't this explain why as soon as women would cross into their 30s, or get married and have kids, they were reduced to playing bhabhis, mothers, aunts and sisters of evergreen heroes in the past? Who can forget how Amitabh Bachchan's co-stars Waheeda Rahman and Rakhee were later on cast as his mother and bhabhi in films like Coolie and Shaan respectively?

But times have changed now, at least for the women in the industry. Actors like Kareena Kapoor Khan and Sushmita Sen are still leading films and web shows despite years of motherhood on their backs. They are getting substantial roles that not only focus on their talent, but aren't devoid of glamour. So finally ageing is sexy for women in Bollywood. But the industry's leading men? Well that's a different story.

Most leading men in their 40s and 50s are chasing six packs and the macho image that they had created for themselves during the 1990s and the decade after. As a result, these men are cast in action films that require them to display a level of fitness and youthfulness that makes them look desirable to women and role models to male viewers. The focus in such films is not on humanising characters but to spark the mythical aura around ageing superstars in a bid to spark a fan frenzy that leads to larger footfalls at theatres.

The footfall however, is gradually decreasing and the audience wants to pay for entertainment - glorified avatars of ageing superstars are not enough to motivate them to shell out their hard earned money. More than anything else, the film industry understands the language of profit and loss. So we can only hope that viewers continue to question films that promote a toxic idea of masculinity. That is the only way Bollywood films will address the age gap between the lead couple/s.

Views expressed are the author's own.