DC is an extremely disappointing movie: Tamil cinema needs to move past this formula

⚠️** SPOILER AL**ERT ⚠️

I went to watch DC mainly because of the music, and honestly, Anirudh nailed it once again. The soundtrack and sound design were probably the best parts of the entire experience.

Unfortunately, as good as the music was, I thought the movie itself was extremely disappointing.
The biggest problem for me is that it feels like we’ve seen this exact movie so many times before. Tamil cinema keeps returning to the same template: a larger-than-life male protagonist, police corruption, a supposedly “powerful” social message, and the classic “if a citizen does something wrong, the police question them; but if the police do something wrong, who questions them?” argument.

At this point, this trope is completely exhausted. We’ve seen variations of it over and over again, and I genuinely don’t understand why we keep presenting it as though it’s a fresh or profound idea.
And then there’s the female lead.

Before anyone misunderstands me, there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with casting a fair-skinned actress who doesn’t speak Tamil. My issue is with the larger pattern. At a time when people are increasingly questioning the unrealistic beauty standards imposed on South Indian women, it feels incredibly dated to keep seeing Tamil films predominantly associate female desirability with extremely fair skin, particularly when the target audience is overwhelmingly Tamil.

The character of Chandra could have been interesting, and I actually liked the idea of having her as a character in the story. But the acting did not work for me at all. Some of it felt extremely unnatural, and the dubbing honestly made it worse.
And this brings me to another problem: the female character is once again written around the male character.

The male lead is the big, intimidating rowdy who is emotionally complicated and larger than life, while the female lead is essentially obsessed with him and emotionally dependent on him. We’ve seen this dynamic countless times in Tamil cinema. Apparently, the woman can be strong, but she still has to revolve around the hero.

And honestly, I think this is part of why some Tamil audiences resist movies where the woman is genuinely as important as the man, or, god forbid, isn’t obsessed with him.

Lokesh’s performance was alright, but I don’t think good performances or good music can compensate for a screenplay that feels this recycled.

What frustrates me most is seeing people praise this movie as though Tamil cinema has done something groundbreaking. We need to demand more from our industry.

We are living in a time when audiences are being exposed to films like The Odyssey, Marty Supreme, and Heretic, alongside increasingly ambitious filmmaking from other industries. Even Bollywood has been producing films that take bigger creative swings and have created mainstream successes like Chennai Express and Gangubai Kathiawadi.

Meanwhile, we keep getting variations of the same Kollywood formula and calling it great filmmaking.
I’m not saying every Tamil movie needs to be experimental or arthouse. I just want better writing. Better female characters. More original conflicts. More interesting protagonists. More willingness to take risks.

DC is just one of many examples, but I’m genuinely tired of this format.

Tamil cinema needs to grow, and audiences need to start demanding that it does.

What do you guys think?