In the tamil film industry, MGR set the tone for an action oriented, unrealistic, larger than life characters. He attracted an unimaginable fan following through his portrayal of a “good-man” who will fight for a “good-cause” image and who will win against all odds. He couldn’t act anything out of his image for he believed that his fans would be disappointed.

Rajinikanth followed his footsteps. Got into the same “cannot-disappoint-my-fans” mindset and got into the image trap. Despite his proven acting skills, he is acting in stereotyped roles, rather he is confined to such roles as no producer is ready to risk him doing an anything other than larger than life characters.
Now Vijay and Ajith are dying to fall into their image trap. In a sense, Vijay has fallen into it already. This seriously limits their potential to explore multitude of roles and characters.

What is you problem? One might be prompted to ask. It affects the tamil film industry’s reach. These heroes are not making any effort to make a film for the audience outside their fan clubs. If you can see, Hindi movies enjoy a bigger market across the world (even among non-hindi speakers) as their heroes are ready to do new roles and are able to surprise their audience with their well crafter characters, new identities and versatile acting skills with every new film. As they know their reach and revenues are huge, people like Shah Rukh, aamir Khan, Salman, even Amitabh are trying out different types of stories and many different roles.

When a hero falls into the image trap, the story line becomes too predictable and the movie fails to surprise viewers. In kollywood only Kamal Hassan managed to escape the image trap and able to bring coveted national awards to tamil films through his unmatched acting skills. Now suriya and bharath are in line to break the image trap and undoubtedly they will soon be rated among the best actors in India.
But, the scenario is slowly but definitely changing. Now tamil film industry doesn’t need big heroes to pull the crowd to theatres. Thanks to some creative, new generation directors we have some of the best movies made such as “Subrmaniyapuram” “Chennai 28” “Saroja”, Anjathe”, “Poi solla poram” which featured unknown faces, yet enjoyed wide reception and acceptance. The above mentioned movies proved that stories are the real heroes.

What heroes should do? To explore new roles and encourage directors with fresh ideas… should respect story line and experiment…. Should give importance to good stories…. As good stories are the heroes which can keep them alive and growing…. Take the case of kamal…