GOAT, featuring South star Vijay, released in theatres today. Directed by Venkat Prabhu, the film narrates the story of a retired secret agent who comes back to work for one last mission. Vijay plays the dual role of both the father and his son. Ever since the GOAT's trailer released in August, Vijay's de-aged look drew mixed responses from the audience. In a conversation with NDTV, Venkat Prabhu revealed what inspired him to use the de-ageing technology. The director said, "For the first time we have used the technology of de-aging in the movie. We got to know about this technology a few years ago. It was also used in the movie Gemini Man, done by Will Smith in which they made a 50-year-old Will Smith look like a 20-year-old.
The GOAT filmmaker said, "I thought it would be good to use that technology in this film to give a new feel to the audience. Even Jawan had used this technology with young and old Shah Rukh. We were thinking how different it could be from the previous films where the same actor played the double role and father and son roles. I think we have achieved it to an extent."
Previously, Venkat Prabhu had addressed the criticism surrounding Vijay's de-aged look in GOAT. At the trailer launch of the film, the director was quoted as saying by The Hindu: "I wanted to show the second character as a 22 to 23-year-old man. In fact, even Vijay sir wanted me to make sure the character resembled him. He is such a familiar face, and so it's difficult to get used to drastic changes.
Venkat Prabhu said that they listened to the audience's criticism and have made some changes in the movie, which led to the delay in release. "This was a learning curve for us as well...after the kind of responses we had after fans saw the de-aging in the Spark video, we realised that we shouldn't experiment more and so we reworked it. That's also a reason for the delay in the release of the trailer. The de-aged look in the trailer is the closest to the final version that will play in theatres,” he added.
GOAT cast also features Meenakshi Chaudhary, Sneha, Laila, Ajmal Ameer and Vaibhav in key roles. Bankrolled by Kalpathi S Aghoram's AGS Entertainment, the film released in theatres on September 5.
