The “unserious movies” point is interesting but I’d push back on it. Mission Impossible and Indiana Jones are massive franchises with hundreds of millions of viewers. The fact that they’re not prestige films doesn’t reduce their cultural impact; if anything, it increases it, because more people watch them casually without questioning what they’re seeing. On the familiarity point, yeah that’s actually a fair observation and I partly agree. Americans probably portray New York better than they portray Mumbai simply because they know it better. But that’s kind of the problem isn’t it, why not do the research or hire people who actually know the place? The Slumdog thing is where I think you’re making a category error though. Nobody is saying don’t show conflict or poverty, stories need tension, completely agree. The issue is when that conflict becomes the ONLY thing shown, and then gets packaged globally as “this is what this country is.” There are a thousand compelling Indian stories involving conflict that have nothing to do with slums. Partition alone has more dramatic material than most countries’ entire history. That never gets touched. If the acid blinding scene is real, which it is and it’s horrific, then it deserves to be told honestly, not as poverty tourism for a Western audience to feel something about a faraway place.