Star Vehicle

A star vehicle is a film built primarily around a single actor's screen persona, in which script, supporting cast, and production decisions are subordinated to amplifying that star's image. The term is descriptive rather than pejorative — many star vehicles are exceptionally well-crafted, and the form has produced canonical Indian films from MGR's Tamil productions of the 1960s through Rajinikanth's Jailer (2023). The mark of a star vehicle is that the audience expects, and the filmmaker delivers, a recognisable continuation of the star's persona: a Salman Khan film differs from a Shah Rukh Khan film not in genre but in the manner in which the lead is allowed to behave. Star vehicles have been the backbone of Indian commercial cinema for sixty years, and even art-house ecosystems now increasingly use star presence to broaden audiences.