Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Animal has been drawing flak for its misogynistic and toxic content. Recently, Siddhant Karnick, who plays the role of Ranbir Kapoor’s brother-in-law in the film, defended Ranbir’s character and called it entertaining.
In a recent interview with Time Of India, Siddhant Karnick defended Ranbir Kapoor’s character in Animal and said, “Ranbir plays a character who completely believes in being alpha and the alpha male tops the food chain and that's the psyche of the character. That's about it. If people want to draw parallels to themselves and society at large, then they are absolutely free to do what they want to. As storytellers, it's our job to tell a story and it's our job as good storytellers to tell a story intensely. We have no responsibility towards how society would respond to it."
He added, "His character is supposed to be an alpha man, now whether that be toxic or not is how you want to gauge it. I just see him as a very entertaining character. Does it reflect society? I don't know. Society as a whole has its own ways and triggers. If this film triggers them to act a certain way, that's upon their own conditioning, it's not that this film is a social message or an awareness campaign on how human beings should be or how an individual or a man should be in a relationship. I don't know why we are looking at this film as anything other than a film with these characters. What Ranbir played to and what I play as Varun, are just characters, period."
He also welcomed the debates around Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s directorial and said, “But it's good, people should keep talking more about all this toxic masculinity and create more controversy. It'll be good for us because apparently any kind of publicity is good publicity. I would say, I do not believe in what people are saying about toxicity or masculinity or alpha-ness. Just go watch the film yourself and figure it out for yourselves. I think society is smart enough, the people who we are writing for, entertaining for, are smart enough to make their own conclusions."
Helmed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga, Animal is a revenge drama described as a “father-son bond carved in blood.” The film stars Ranbir Kapoor as Vijay whose only goal is to make his father (played by Anil Kapoor) happy and while doing that, he kills dozens of people including his sister’s husband (played by Siddhant Karnick), and cheats on his wife (Rashmika Mandanna) with Triptii Dimri. The film also stars Bobby Deol as the main antagonist and his and Ranbir’s fight was the highlight of the film.
The film released on December 1 opened to a thunderous response from the audience and the film’s end also has a hint about the sequel of the movie, Animal Park. The film has collected Rs 600 crore worldwide in just 9 days.
