Tamil mass films are largely built on the hardly fought tussle between the good and the bad guys. Hard to break, strong and intelligent villains give a more exciting play for the audience to savor. How difficult is it for a director to zero in on the lead antagonist for a top mass Tamil hero’s film? What would be the thought process that would go behind a director’s mind while selecting a villain?

Long time ago, there was a period in Kollywood when a mass hero like MGR commonly associated himself with couple of menacing villains like Nambiar and PS Veerappa. You would find these veteran actors in many of MGR’s films as antagonists. But today, the audience prefers something out of the ordinary. They don’t want their favorite star to fight the same baddie over and over again as the chance of the tussle getting mundane or redundant is high. Similarly, when you rope in a top actor as an antagonist, the hero’s fans will expect the villain for the next film to be bigger than the earlier one.

The concept of importing villains from Bollywood or even Hollywood is also an option, but how effective are they? They mostly look super fit and smart, but their lip-sync in most cases are taken for a toss. There is also a certain degree of artificiality involved when a non-Tamil actor speaks the local lingo. Sometimes roping in a big actor as your lead antagonist could turn into a serious spoiler and work against the film. The director plans his biggest twist with his big actor, only to look so obvious for the viewer to guess, ‘Yeah, he is a big star and he would have a better role to play as a baddie rather than being a side-kick’. This has happened in a lot of cases.

On the other hand, some filmmakers, mostly small-timers have been shrewd in the recent past. On aiming to break the typecast, they look for unconventional bad guy. This has given a considerable rate of success but it all depends on how well the director establishes his villain. Making one of K-Town’s most adorned chocolate boys into a menacing villain, Mohan Raja brought a different Arvind Swami in Thani Oruvan. Such outlandish experiment turns out to be fruitful but do top commercial directors have too many options to maneuver?  Especially if the director is looking for a poster boy rather than an actor who would fit his character sketch.

Let us take Ajith’s upcoming 57th film as an example, as the evil lead spot is still open for grabs. His previous film Vedalam had three deadly looking non-Tamil speaking villains. Now for argument’s sake, anything less than four black hats would be less on paper or they should at least go in with one heavy weight actor who is established enough to battle solo with Ajith. The film is based out abroad, so the likes of local ‘karai veshti’ dons are already out of question. After Raghuvaran and Prakash Raj, there are hardly any villains who have created a niche for themselves in Tamil. The game has changed now; Tamil cinema cannot guarantee an actor as a fixed antagonist anymore. In that case which actor would you pick if you’re asked to cast for a villain in Ajith’s film?

When we want to portray a powerful hero, we need to balance it with a powerful antagonist as well and that’s when the battle gets interesting. Otherwise, the content will not hold the interest of the audience. In fact, some of the best battles that you find in Ajith’s films have been when Thala himself has played both the good and the bad guy of the film.

Therefore, let’s wait and hope that Siva brings in the best baddie for Ajith in Thala 57 to make the film more interesting, colorful and well balanced.