Javed Akhtar says Ranbir Kapoor’s Animal character was a ‘caricature of a strong man’: ‘The kind of man who wants a woman to lick his shoe’

Previously, at 9th Ajanta-Ellora International Film Festival, Javed had said that success of films like Animal was “dangerous.” Responding to this, Vanga, in a chat with Siddharth Kannan, brought up Mirzapur, which is produced by Javed’s son Farhan Akhtar and said that Javed should be “checking his son’s work.”

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The idea of ‘angry young man’ in the movies largely spoke about the problems of the youth who were failed by the system. In the 1970s, unemployment was at an all time high and the younger generation could actually see that the promises made by the government were largely hollow, which resulted in an angst towards the system. Javed was asked why men in movies are angry today, and the writer asked a counter question, “Who are they angry with? Women?” When the interviewer expressed his affirmation towards the same, Javed said, “Don’t they have the courage to go against the establishment now? They think women are the soft target?”

He shared, “I don’t think by and large they are all anti women. They are changing although not at the speed with which women are changing. But there is no choice, they will have to change. Because this was a fraud that had been going on for a while.”

Javed also spoke about the women in his films and admitted that he has never written any “female oriented film.” He described it as a “handicap” as a writer but added that despite this, the women in Salim-Javed films were never subservient characters. “When you see women in Salim-Javed films, even if they have five scenes, they are women in their own right. They are not dumb blondes. They are working women, be it in Zanjeer or Trishul. We had working women who had their own opinions about everything. She didn’t treat her husband like god,” he said.

Javed Akhtar, along with Salim Khan, is known for writing films like Sholay, Deewaar, Mr India among many others.