Master Tames Beast

Its collectively agreed as to how Beast was such a missed opportunity at taking the flawed star hero narrative to the next level, considering the fact that we see a PTSD suffering Vijay, going to a therapist. But then everything goes downhill from there.

Comparatively, we had the much better Master the previous year, which had a really flawed Vijay, who goes through the Vetrimaaran-character arc of character to hero, despite already having some hero-ness (having Vijay play the character mandates it naturally). Now while it is quite common to acknowledge that Master is a far better film than Beast, I think an argument can be made that the downfall arc (in Master) of the character or the downfall moment (in Beast) of the character is handled better in Beast than in Master.

The reason Beast does the character moment well is because of the way it is built.  The opening portions convey the invincible masala film hero, who is loved by all (as shown with the opening shot of the little girl), who does no wrong, is pretty much a one-man army and of course goes by his own rules.

An important factor in the entire brilliant opening action sequence of Beast is the fact that, we don’t SEE Vijay wearing a bullet proof jacket. This is the most important detail despite all the other factors of why he is a masala film hero. All of us might be quite aware of the invincible masala hero trope. And that only peaks here, because we are constantly aware of the fact that Vijay is not wearing a bulletproof vest, while simultaneously evading the bullets from the terrorists.

Thus, the masala hero image has been firmly fixed in our head. And then when we lead to the shocking climax (of the fight), we realise that the image of the hero has been deconstructed to give a character- who has committed a mistake and hence fallen from grace. Thus, the twisting of the archetype hero, to give a more traditional character, elevates the moment from being a “character committed a mistake” to a “hero committing a mistake” which multiplies the impact of whatever is shown.

In Master, the fact that JD is a character at heart, meaning the character making a mistake seems to be a continuation of his arc rather than being something shocking and hence dampens the transformation arc, compared to Beast.

Only if Beast had scenes equal to the opening stretch, we’d have gotten an actual great Vijay film.