Hindi films have never been short of super heroes. In the early years, there were mythological films where the hero was actually a god who wrestled with a thousand demons and emerged victorious. Then came films where the hero was godlike ? a man with near superhuman powers who could flatten a roomful of goons or rescue a girl hanging precariously from a cliff edge.

Cut to the present and you have films where the hero is being pumped up to hit superman status. Take photographer turned producer Subi Samuel’s Alag, for instance. The film’s protagonist is a super hero endowed with special electromagnetic powers. Then there is Rakesh Roshan’s Krrish, which is a sequel to Koi Mil Gaya, and where Hrithik Roshan plays the role of a man with superhuman powers.

Alag’s hero is an “alag sort of a superhero”, claims Samuel. “Whenever he is upset, electric bulbs in the room start flickering and when he’s angry the energy reaches such a point that bulbs and other glass objects in the vicinity start shattering.”

Interestingly, Rakesh Roshan prefers to call his hero in Krrish “differently-abled” rather than a superman. “It is an original idea of a man with special powers,” says Roshan, adding that his film is different from other supermen films.

So why is Bollywood going the way of Hollywood and trying to do its own version of a Superman or a Spiderman? The principal reason, of course, is the enduring appeal of superheroes ? an appeal that usually translates into good business at the box office. Explains Tinnu Anand, the director of Shahenshah in which Amitabh Bachchan played the larger than life title role, “We Indians seem to fulfil our dreams through Bollywood stars when we see them do the things we may have wanted to do. Also, we love to see good triumphing over evil.”

Anand says that Amitabh Bachchan as a superhero went down well with the audience. “He always had a huge fan following as in his films he fought the system single-handedly. He could beat up a gang of villains even if he was down in the hospital with multiple injuries. The audience loved it,” he says.

The willing suspension of disbelief is rarely a problem with superhero films, even though sometimes an attempt is made to offer a rational explanation for the hero’s exceptional powers. For example, Spiderman is said to have derived his powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. Again, if Hanuman is gifted with exceptional abilities, we take it as a given simply because our mythology says so!

Of course, the motif of man battling against gargantuan odds and thereby achieving superman status has been played out in movies for as long as one can remember. Whether it’s the heroes of the Wild West struggling to master a hostile terrain or the action-packed James Bond flicks or more recently The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings or even the Harry Potter movies, the fight between good and evil has always been the right backdrop for the exploits of sundry super heroes.

By and large, super heroes also yield super returns ? in the West as well as here in India. While Spiderman made Rs 26 crore in India, Spiderman II made Rs 35 crore. Terminator II made Rs 18 crore but The Incredibles (dubbed as Hum Hain Lajawab), an animation super hero movie, made a meagre Rs 3.3 crore. The animated Hanuman, on the other hand, made over Rs 16 crore. In fact, Hanuman’s success has made producers animated enough to announce a sequel at almost four times the cost of the original.

Rakesh Roshan too has pumped more than Rs 40 crore into making Krrish, although Koi Mil Gaya was made at a cost of only Rs 25 crore. But reportedly, Krrish has the potential to make a table profit of over Rs 10 crore even before it is released.

Meanwhile, made at a budget of $300 million, Superman Returns will soon hit the theatres in India. Apart from the original English version, there will be three other versions dubbed in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Krrish too is to be dubbed in Tamil and Telugu.

All these movies are set to clash at the box office this summer. Will that affect their prospects? Observes Tinnu Anand: “The Indian audience has an emotional attachment with Bollywood heroes. As long as they do not stop adoring super heroes, they will never experience an overdose of super hero films.”