Akshay Kumar’s Villainy Worries Rajnikanth?
Shankar’s 2: 0 also know as Robot 2 finds itself in a moral crisis. To be mean or not to be mean? That’s the question this high-end spectacle’s arch villain faces.
The film’s makers and marketing team—the movers and shakers, so to speak—have discovered a bit late in the day that Akshay Kumar with his clean neo-Manoj Kumar image of an Indian patriot , never clicks with audiences in negative roles.
All his past films as a villain have flopped. So what happens to 2: 0 now?
Says a source close to the development, “Akshay Kumar has a very strong public image as philanthropist, do-gooder and social crusader. His roles as a bad boy have always been rejected. He tried it in Khiladi 420 which was his first flop in the Khiladi series. Then he tried it in Abbas-Mustan’s Ajnabee (where he played a wife swapper )and Guddu Dhanoa’s Aflatoon(a cold-blooded assassin). And his gangster’s role in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai 2 was so badly received it nearly put director Milan Luthria’s career to sleep.Audiences don’t like to see him in negative roles. Or , for that matter, with bizarre prosthetics. Akshay was rejected with buck teeth in Vipul Shah’s Action Replay.His outlandish makeup for the villain’s role in 2: 0 is hardly the stuff dream runs at the boxoffice are made of.”
The question now is, what happens to Akshay’s antagonism in 2: 0?
Apparently the makers are looking to soften the blow and make his character sympathetic towards the end.