Happy Birthday Lokesh Kanagaraj: Why Leo director is a game changer in Tamil cinema

Kalam also has an important characteristic of Lokesh Kanagaraj’s cinema–hyperlink storytelling. Though the short film doesn’t exactly have multiple storylines converging at a point, its narrative pans out in three different areas to tell a story. In a way, Maanagaram, his debut film, is an improved version of Kalam as the former is also about a guy, whose certificates get stolen. Now, Maanagaram is an out-and-out hyperlink film, which in a way introduced the genre to modern Tamil audience. The film was a sleeper hit, which got the attention of the audience purely based on word-of-mouth as it didn’t feature big stars. The success of the movie led Lokesh to direct Karthi in Kaithi, which was the beginning of a new cinematic universe, literally.

With Maanagaram, Lokesh just converged different storylines in a single film, and with Kaithi, he further upgraded the idea and made a window for a bigger universe. All he had to do was include a random scene about an unknown person called ‘Ghost’. Until his fourth feature Vikram was announced, nobody understood the significance of the scene, and until the film came out, nobody realised the importance of Lokesh Kanagaraj.

In an industry, where heroes are weary of doing multi-starrers, Lokesh Cinematic Universe is a huge achievement. Big stars joining hands for a film has happened in the past. Even Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan have worked together on numerous films. But one should remember that Kamal was already a star when Rajinikanth started teaming up with him, and hence the latter mostly played the antagonist or a supporting role in their collaborations. After they took a resolution to stop collaborating, it became the end of the trend of collaborations between big stars of the Tamil film industry. That is not to say that collaborations between actors stopped altogether, but one cannot come across a film with stars like Vijay and Ajith sharing screen space. This is where Lokesh’s steps towards building a cinematic universe have turned out to be a game-changer. After bringing together Suriya, Kamal Haasan, Fahadh Faasil, and Karthi in the same film, if the rumours and the numerous hints in Leo teaser are anything to go by, Vijay might also be inhabiting Lokesh Cinematic Universe aka LCU. Kamal Haasan sharing screen space with Vijay is the stuff of Tamil cinema fans’ wet dreams.

On top of the novelty of watching multiple stars in the same film, multi-starrers are also a commercially profitable venture, and Vikram’s earth-shattering success is an example. One has to give a lot of credit to the last few minutes of the film and Suriya’s menacing cameo, which elevated the success of the movie by several notches. To even imagine the Ghost, Leo, Dilli, and Rolex on the same screen sounds just bloody sweet!