Thala-Thalapathy Story!!

The tamil cinema’s first star or celebrity started off from the 1930s as his first hit tamil movie ‘Haridas’ brought fame to M.K.Thyagaraja Bhagavathar. This was followed by the famous rivalry of MG Ravichandran (also known as MGR) and Sivaji with MGR donning widely accepted do-gooder roles while Sivaji focused on performance oriented subjects. MGR was successfully able to utilize his popularity to jumpstart his political career and served as Tamilnadu’s chief minister continuously for 2 terms.

Rajni and Kamal Hassan followed the footsteps of MGR and Sivaji in the respective ways and achieved their intended fame. However, they also started the era of fandom where fans of actors would clash during the release of movies of both the stars. This peaked during the late 80s to 90s which also had a huge list of new actors making foray into field of acting, but 2 of them were able to pull through among the crowd of actors.

Introduction to late 1990s

Staring in Naalaiya Theerpu, Vijay made an unimpressive entry to movies under his father’s guidance and direction. It took him some time to warm up to deliver his first major hits in ‘Poove Unakkaga’ and ‘Kadhalukku Mariyadhai’. Finishing the decade with super-hits in ‘Thulladha Manamum Thullum’ and ‘Kushi’, he made quite a name with his dance numbers.

Mirroring Vijay’s career, Ajith started his career unimpressively only to find some solid footing with excellent performance in ‘Aasai’ and ‘Kadhal Kottai’. After a brief lull, ‘Vaalee’ established him as one of the scorching performers to look out for. He also ended that decade with super-hits in ‘Amarkalam’ and ‘Kandukondain Kandukondain’ (which is truly one of my favorite movie).

2000 to 2010 – Rise of the Action Stars

Both the rising stars understood that they need to convert their next door lover-boy images to action stars.

Ajith started on the journey a touch before Vijay to star in a highly appreciated titular role in ‘Dheena’ which earned him the nickname ‘Thala’. With a slew of movie failures, he seemed to lost interest in acting and focused more in racing F3 competitions. His ‘Varalaru’ earned him a good appreciation for astutely playing the role of dancer in one among his triple roles with remake of Rajni’s ‘Billa’ helping him solidify himself as one of the top heroes with plethora of fans.

Meanwhile, Vijay had quite a smooth sailing in the early 2000s with many average movies with quite some decent returns. His ‘Ghilli’ (a remake of Telegu movie ‘Okkadu’) was a chartbuster establishing him as a premier action hero followed by another remake movie in the highly successful ‘Pokkiri’. However, luck ran out for him as encountered a slew of nearly 6 super-flop movies on the trot.

2010 to 2020 – Bigger Hits

The start of the 2010 decade saw the biggest commercial and critically acclaimed movies in the career for both the stars.

Ajith rode on the back highly successfully ‘Mankatha’  movie where he played a character with grey shades sporting the salt and pepper look for the first time. It departed from the traditional handsome do-gooder hero movies of all the actors we had been exposed to and he soon moved to sporting his original shades in nearly all his movies. His association with Director Siruthai Siva ran quite deep and long with 4 of movies, the last of which (Viswasam) running quite successfully.

Vijay experienced quite a similar fate as his competitor, with him roaring into action with highly acclaimed ‘Thupakki’ stealing the show. He too combined with Director Atlee (liked 'Theri' movie) and Murgadoss in three of their movies to sustained and reasonable success earning him a huge mass of fans who also celebrated the singer in him as well.

2020 and Beyond

The last movie of both Vijay (Beast) and Ajith (Valimai) did not stand up to the expectation of the audience and performed underwhelmingly. In a industry where you are known by your last movie or success, both the stars would like to deliver a good movie and there is no better time than this festive season to belt out a highly successful one.

I along with millions of fans of both the actors would be rooting for both Vijay’s Varisu and Ajith’s Thunivu to rock the theatres this Pongal.

P.S: Contrary to expectations I am no fan of either actor, but just of all the good movies that entertain us.