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Vijay-starrer ‘GOAT’: A “Fan Film” as an Election Manifesto
Written and directed by Venkat Prabhu, GOAT is Vijay’s penultimate on-screen outing, meticulously designed as a fan service film.
The Vijay-starrer GOAT is a film, sure. But instead, it’s more interesting to read it as the death of cinema as one knows it, or the use of cinema — an art form — as the means for political ends; a scaffolding for Vijay’s imminent career swerve, from Chennai’s Kodambakkam film studios to the administrative facades of Fort St. George. The announcement, in February 2024, of his impending entry into politics and the formation of his party, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam or Tamil Nadu Victory Federation, was made while GOAT was being shot. The film bends to that announcement, building upon it.
Written and directed by Venkat Prabhu, GOAT is Vijay’s penultimate film. His tentatively titled Thalapathy 69, directed by H. Vinoth, will be the curtain call to his filmography before he plunges into the 2026 state elections.
Flipping like a game of Atlas, GOAT snakes from Kenya to Thailand to Russia, to finally converge in the concrete corridors and green screen terrace of the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, in the middle of an Indian Premier League match between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. You can roam the world, but, in the end, where else will you return but home?
Vijay plays Gandhi, a former Special Anti-Terrorism Squad (SATS) officer. That Vijay would don Gandhi as a name is not unusual. MGR, the late actor — and later the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu between 1977 and 1987 — would mandatorily have an image of Mahatma Gandhi in the homes he lived in in his films, besides pictures of other spiritual and political figures. It is, as the late social scientist M.S.S. Pandian had written in his book The Image Trap: M.G. Ramachandran in Film and Politics: “MGR’s own greatness being affirmed…his personality automatically overflow[ing] and merg[ing] what that of [the images] displayed.” GOAT merely makes that tether indisputably clear.
Jibes are punctured into the film’s text; the champagne-campaign wordplay, for example — ‘campaign-ah dhan thorakattuma?’ (“Should I inaugurate the ‘campaign’?”, campaign also being the name for a brand of champagne). There is a scene, dangling awkwardly in the film, of Gandhi being called by someone to yank a favour from him because of his clout, and Gandhi refusing on principle. A flat interaction — almost destined for the chopping board — the scene stains merely for implying that Vijay, like Gandhi, will use his power responsibly. These films work best when you see the character and the actor bleeding into each other, the seams being a mere formality.
The climactic fight sequence of the film is intercut with archival footage of M.S. Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, and Ajinkya Rahane on the field. It is not random — the image of Gandhi, the freedom fighter eliciting blind respect, and cricketers, public figures evoking blind fandom, settling on the surface of Vijay’s image (not Vijay, not Vijay’s character, but Vijay’s image) as he makes his foray into politics. It would be clever if it were not so front-footed.
GOAT is, predictably, being framed as fan service. In an interview with film critic and journalist Baradwaj Rangan, Prabhu notes how star-films these days are trapped by the genre in which they are made, “I wanted to break it.” He unabashedly wants the film to be a “celebration of Vijay sir” — “spy thaandi commercial genre”, or the idea of going beyond genres itself.
Fan service is neither new nor rare, but for a film to so egregiously do away with character is chilling. When a film’s director-line reads “A Venkat Prabhu hero”, as opposed to “A Venkat Prabhu film”, you see how love has tumbled into self-effacing submission. Gandhi’s antagonist in the film is his son Sanjay, who is also played by Vijay. The film’s posture is such that both Sanjay and Vijay are given space to flex their muscular charm, as it pauses these gestures in the hopes of a rowdy audience flinging confetti at the screen. The very act of spectatorship is rendered fragile. You are not cheering for Gandhi or Sanjay; you are cheering for Vijay — the facade of character, too, lifts.
Besides, the link between fan service and political campaigning is thin in Tamil Nadu, and so, to see a film as fan service is also to see it as election pamphleteering. Vijay Makkal Iyakkam, the actor’s fan club, not only transformed itself into a welfare organisation, but also contested local body elections in Tamil Nadu in October 2021. His face is often used while campaigning, with many candidates having emerged victorious, which is why, perhaps, they won 115 out of 169 seats in the polls. Vijay had consented to the use of his face.
Fan clubs have historically helped mobilise political support for their heroes. In an interview, MGR even remarked: “Fans associations and the party are not different.”
There is also the added fact that Vijay does not grant interviews. His films are the text through which he expresses everything he needs to — his affiliations, his broader political concerns. Even with the rare promotional tête-à-tête with director Nelson Dilipkumar before the release of their film Beast (2022), there is an alluring opacity. You can see his careful secular posture; when asked about visiting churches as a believer, he quickly adds that he also visits the Pillayarpatti Vinayagar Temple and the Amin Peer Dargah. The politician’s claws are out.
When asked if Thalapathy wants to become Thalaivar — that is, whether the “commander” wants to become the “leader”, hinting at his political future — he answers that it is the fans who made him Thalapathy, so it will also be up to his fans, his rasigar, to decide if he becomes Thalaivar or not. Of what use now, then, is the distinction between a fanbase for an actor and a politician?
It is not surprising that Vijay would make his last two films with directors like H. Vinoth and Venkat Prabhu — ‘sound-and-fury’ genre directors who do not have a particular voice, swag apart. But a swagger cannot possibly be a political position. Rajinikanth’s announcement in December 2017 that he would contest elections in 2019 to usher in a “spiritual, political leadership”, for example, came months before the release of Kaala (2018). This film showed Rajinikanth as a subaltern hero, sculpted by Pa. Ranjith, whom the BBC called “the Spike Lee of India”, with his fierce, unyielding Ambedkarite foundations. Rajinikanth’s health would make him press pause on his political ambitions, but the films he makes are in productive dialogue with the future he flirts with.
Unlike Kamal Haasan, who brings a forceful, specific political clarity into his films, sieved through poetry and myth, Vijay’s films carry a sterile malleability that can be bent per will, as though the only conviction is glory.
Venkat Prabhu’s interviews showcase the director’s pliability as much as his affection for the star. He merely wants to produce fan service, knowing fully well what good fan service would mean in the broader context of Vijay’s political debut. In interviews, H. Vinoth has already noted the target audience — families, across political parties — and the blessings he has received from Thalapathy to reverse engineer this success. It is crafted as a theatrical success, but also, as a smooth ramp that successfully launches him into the spotlight — a different spotlight, a different performance even, but the same old cheering squads whose love spills from reel to real.