This is an open letter to all anti-Vijay fanatics not as a Vijay fanatic, but as one of the common movie lovers in Tamil Nadu. Like it or not, the anti Vijay fanatics have to accept certain facts.

Over the last 19 years as an actor, Vijay generated good fan bases (who are called as fanatics by people who don’t like Vijay) and a substantial amount of anti-fan base (called as anti-fanatics by people who love Vijay). The anti-fan base was formed because of poor script selection and performance of some unbelievable stunts by Vijay in his movies.  

Whenever, a Vijay movie releases, every fan wants it to be a blockbuster and every anti-fan wants it to be a super flop. But, when the movie releases, there are more number of comments and reviews from anti-fans in informal online forums than the comments of Vijay fans. By posting some bad comments, the anti-fans target the neutral fans to prevent them from watching the movie. But, the sort of pleasure the anti-fans derive from posting those comments is unknown.

Every anti-fan of Vijay is not happy with him mimicking MGR. MGR was a great actor of his times and the formula followed by him is a tested formula available for success in cine industry. In fact, this great personality also used movies as means to build his political career. Hence, any actor who wants to succeed in film industry can use the same MGR formula. When there are actors who want to mimic the ‘Super Star’ by acting in remakes or at least mentioning his name in songs, there is nothing wrong in Vijay following MGR, especially when he has political aspirations.

A typical anti-fan of Vijay thinks that the fanatics of Vijay, will watch him on screen as many times as possible and will make the movies super hits. But, the typical anti-fan forgets the fact that there were as many as five continuous duds in Vijay’s recent film career. Had the Vijay fanatics watched all those movies ‘n’ number of times, as perceived by an anti-fan, all of those dud movies would have been minimum super hits.

There is no disagreeing that there is nothing new or great in his recent release ‘Velayutham’ also. But the movie is different from his previous mass masala ventures. Though the basic premise remains the same, the script is different, thanks to the work of the director. Vijay has tried to avoid all the mistakes that he made in his formulaic movies and he has fairly succeeded in it. If the previous Vijay movies are looked at, it is ‘Vijay’ itself who gets glorified. But, in Velayutham, not to forget it’s a super hero subject, it is the character ‘Velayutham’ which gets glorified and not Vijay. Racy screenplay and effective portrayal of Vijay as super hero made the film work well, though there are some glitches. The film also had adequate doses of comedy, sentiment and peppy songs which suited well for the movie. As far as people who just want entertainment, Velayutham will, definitely, be liked by them.

With Kavalan, Vijay showed character and with Velayutham, he established his credibility as a mass hero. With Velayutham, Vijay is definitely back as a performer, but it’s not with a bang. But, by looking at the kind of projects with Vijay now, his future movies definitely look promising. Like it or not, the anti-Vijay fanatics have to accept Vijay’s emergence in Tamil cinema yet again.