Nostalgia is a dirty business. It’s the grease that keeps the franchise gears turning when the actual creative tank is running on fumes. Right now, the PR machine for Mardaani 3 is spinning up, and they’ve deployed the most reliable weapon in the arsenal: the ghost of a legend.

Abhiraj Minawala, the man currently tasked with steering the Rani Mukerji-led police procedural, recently sat down for an "exclusive" to talk about his time assisting Yash Chopra on Jab Tak Hai Jaan. The headline-grabber? A reverent look at an 80-year-old man working on his final film. It’s a touching sentiment. It’s also a calculated bit of branding.

Minawala describes Chopra as an unstoppable force, a man who lived and breathed the frame until the very end. It’s the kind of story that makes for great copy. But if you look past the misty-eyed reverence, you see the massive gulf between the era of the "Grand Old Man" and the clinical, data-driven world of modern Yash Raj Films.

Chopra represented a version of filmmaking that doesn't exist anymore. He worked with intuition. He worked with 35mm film that had actual texture. Today, Minawala is deep in the trenches of a "universe." Everything is digital. Everything is sharpened in post-production until it hurts your eyes. The shift from the soft-focus chiffon of Jab Tak Hai Jaan to the brutalist, desaturated grit of the Mardaani series isn't just a choice in genre. It’s a pivot in the industry’s soul.

Let’s talk about the friction. Back in 2012, assisting an 80-year-old legend meant dealing with "the feel." It meant waiting for the light. Now, directing a massive sequel like Mardaani 3 means dealing with spreadsheets and test screenings. There’s a specific trade-off here: we’ve traded the poetic messiness of a master for the optimized efficiency of a product. Minawala’s anecdotes about Chopra’s stamina are meant to bridge that gap, to give the new film a sense of lineage. It’s meant to convince us that the same DNA that gave us the "King of Romance" is somehow present in a movie about human trafficking and police brutality.

It’s a tough sell.

The budget for a film like Mardaani 3 isn't just about the cameras or the stunts. It’s about the "protection" of the IP. When you’re dealing with a ₹100 crore-plus production, you don’t get to have "vibes." You have deliverables. You have a star who needs to look tough but relatable. You have a script that needs to hit specific beats at the 20-minute mark to keep the audience from checking their phones. Minawala’s memories of Chopra feel like a postcard from a world that the current studio system helped dismantle.

There’s a certain irony in using the memory of a man who filmed poetry to sell a movie that’s essentially a high-octane procedural. Chopra’s sets were famous for their long lunches and a sense of family. Modern sets are more like construction sites with better catering. They’re high-pressure, high-definition environments where every minute costs more than a mid-sized sedan.

The "exclusive" interview is a neat trick. It humanizes the director. It links the new guard to the old guard. It suggests that the wisdom of the 80-year-old man has been passed down, like some sacred fire, to the guy making the gritty crime thriller. But let’s be real. The industry doesn't want another Yash Chopra. He was too unpredictable. He was too human. He took risks on songs that lasted seven minutes.

Today’s studios want reliability. They want a director who can deliver a 125-minute cut that fits perfectly into a streaming window six weeks after the theatrical release. Minawala might have learned a lot from assisting on Jab Tak Hai Jaan, but the lessons that matter in 2024 are the ones about managing a brand, not capturing a feeling.

We love to hear about the "magic" of the old days because it makes the sterile reality of the present easier to swallow. We want to believe that the guy behind the camera is thinking about Chopra’s legacy while he’s looking at a color-grading monitor, trying to decide if the fake blood looks "realistic" enough for the 4K render.

Minawala is a talented filmmaker. He’s proven he can handle the weight of a franchise. But wrapping himself in the mantle of Yash Chopra feels like a defensive move. It’s an attempt to give a corporate product a heartbeat.

If the 80-year-old man were around to see the way the "content" is made now, would he even recognize the process? Or would he just wonder where all the color went?