This article is for those who watched both Lucifer and Godfather. This is not only to draw a comparison between the original and the remake but also to express an opinion on the common sense factor in rewriting a political script.
It requires basic common sense while writing a story of a film. Moreover, when something was remade it requires more attention in order not to spoil the spirit of the original with the changes made. There is no rule that no changes should be made to the original script while remaking. But the changes shouldn't defeat the common sense. The changes made should look better than the original but shouldn't be inferior.
Godfather is the film remade from Malayalam hit Lucifer. The screenplay and the storyline of Lucifer is so lucid without any illogical stuff as far as the political story is concerned. After the death of the Chief Minister, the senior minister within the party was made the Interim CM immediately. Well, that's the constitution, and the chair of CM cannot be kept vacant for longer duration like in 'Godfather'. In actual sense, the character of Murali Sharma should be made interim CM immediately. But the clarity was not given.
Adding to this, the person with the stature of interim Chief Minister of a state goes all the way to Mumbai slums to meet the international drug mafia goons begging for funds. Is this convincing? Can any politician risk his political and personal life doing that nonsense? There should be a wise network in pooling the required funds without exposing the direct involvement if the story should be convincing. The minister in the Malayalam version didn't get into this act.
Then comes the point of funds. In the Malayalam version, the character of Vivek Oberoi needs funds to face the election expenditure. He wishes to make some dummies of the MLAs and also brings in Jatin Ramdas, the brother of his wife (deceased CM's son), to make him the CM's successor with a plan to run the show from behind. That character was totally thrown out from Godfather making it less riveting.
In Godfather, Satyadev needs funds to buy the MLAs. Well, why is there any need to buy the party's own MLAs? Are they jumping into another party followed by the death of the CM? When all 140 MLAs are intact with unity, why is there any need to buy 40 MLAs by Satyadev? By the time of this decision, there is no clue to Satyadev that Godfather is playing power politics from behind. If Satyadev wishes to see Nayantara as the Chief Minister everything is already set. He need not bear any headaches of buying the MLAs.
There are many contrived scenes and diluted factors but I am not going into those details. On the whole, the script of 'Lucifer' seems to have changed to 'Godfather' without basic political knowledge. Lucifer was taken only for a couple of fights and get ups and nothing else. This may appear big for fans but as a content it is very poorly written.
Usha Chowdhary
