Kirubhakar Purushothaman

Any criticism against Jana Nayagan hits a brick wall of an excuse, one that demands cinema be compromised for a superstar. Viewers are expected to overlook the film straying from narrative and form to cater to fans, because the film is a farewell gift made for the fans by a superstar who has built his career on such mindless commercial films. Hence, expecting anything out of the ordinary is dismissed as unwise. It becomes a matter of bargain. But Jana Nayagan can’t just be that. It has another job. While it’s a swansong for a superstar-actor, it also has to serve as a war cry for a new political leader. In the end, Jana Nayagan is less a film and more fan service, and even more a campaign reel.

There are several hilarious chunks in Idhayam Murali, but the funniest one is unintentional. In the second half, Sam (Preity Mukundan) tells Idhaya (Atharvaa), in the same breezy tone you’d use to describe wrapping up a work call, “Ippa thaan oru mission mudichom. So konjam naalaiku rest” (We just finished off one mission. We will rest for a while). By this point, it is well established that Sam is a NASA astronaut, which is exactly why the line lands as comedy rather than drama. It’s a very specific kind of silliness, one Tamil cinema has flirted with before. The film doesn’t hide that it’s chasing a Gautham Menon-ish vibe, and this scene recalls a bit from Neethaane En Ponvasantham: a throwaway line establishing that Varun’s (Jiiva) family has grown rich and posh, simply by mentioning that his retired parents are now off travelling the world. Both moments reach for a big, specific, hard-to-verify detail and use it as shorthand for status or drama, without doing any of the narrative work to earn it.

Superhero films have become synonymous with worldbuilding, and any film in the genre that does less — fewer interwoven narratives, callbacks, and inside jokes — tends to feel odd (this is more a critique of the trend than the films themselves). Maybe that’s why James Gunn’s reimagined DC Universe continues its existential struggle, because Superman (2025) and the latest release, Supergirl (2026), are less about being pieces of a larger puzzle. That means these films don’t have an easy way out and have to be self-sufficient. That’s both the boon and bane of director Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl — it is indeed a story- and character-driven movie, but it lacks the punch and fails to be the event superhero films have habituated us to till now.

The trope of the retired badass, or, to put it locally, the Baasha template, never grows dated because it is one of the most relatable tropes in cinema. Wait, hear me out. You could be anyone: a teacher, an autowala, a clerk, or a naive watchman; suddenly these films enable you to imagine a badass past life for yourself. After all, everyone is the protagonist of their own story in their head. That’s the allure. A sleeping giant finally rises from slumber to save the day, bringing a sort of catharsis for the viewer, who can imagine their own version of a bloody past.

Baahubali, KGF and Salaar’s success has set a trend: films increasingly become hype instruments for their heroes. The template is now painfully familiar: a stranger arrives in town, bewildered by the hero’s omnipresent worship. He then meets another archetype: the hypeman, clearly of the land, dispenses worldly wisdom like a street philosopher. The stranger, suitably elitist and condescending, serves as the audience surrogate. The hype rural man becomes the narrator. In Peddi, Boman Irani gets the thankless honour of the uber-cool stranger, dragged through a dense forest by the hypeman just to hear the legend of Peddi (Ram Charan).

Over the years, Tamil cinema has trained the mass audience to always root for the loser. For example, Maan Karate’s protagonist, Peter (Sivakarthikeyan), is the poster boy for this brand of hero. In essence, Peter has no redeeming qualities. He is a lazy and incompetent bloke who lives off a gang that has a premonition that he will win a boxing contest. For a villain, the film features a character who has toiled his entire life to become a professional boxer. Yet, the film encourages the audience to back the hero because he is supposed to be relatable to the masses. Isn’t it easy to imagine a person winning in life without any effort?