22 years of martial arts behind Dragon and Fauzi action

Action director Chethan D’Souza has one of the more delicate jobs in Telugu cinema right now: making two of its biggest male stars fight differently. Fresh from choreographing Rajinikanth’s Jailer 2, he is now handling Prashanth Neel’s Dragon with Jr NTR and Hanu Raghavapudi’s Fauzi with Prabhas—and he has spelled out why the two films will not share a single action template.

Dragon: realistic combat for an assassin

D’Souza told Variety India that Dragon marks a move away from the larger-than-life style associated with Neel’s KGF films. Because Jr NTR has slimmed down and is playing an assassin, the fight language has been reshaped to be “believable and relatable,” he said. The team has redefined the action so it stays crowd-pleasing without leaning on slow-motion walks or bodies flying through the air.

“Mass action doesn’t necessarily mean people flying through the air, slow-motion walks or jumps. It comes from a powerful moment created through storytelling and conveyed through action.”

— Chethan D’Souza, speaking to Variety India

That is a telling framework for Dragon, because it positions Jr NTR’s star power around character logic rather than scale.

Fauzi: stylish but grounded for Prabhas

For Prabhas, D’Souza is taking a different route: grounded yet highly stylised action, with strong emotions, suspense and surprise threaded through the sequences. The Baahubali star has often been seen in larger-than-life set pieces, but here the fighting shifts toward physical combat with a stylised presentation. D’Souza says an isolated action sequence might play well on YouTube, but inside a film it has to tell a story.

Two approaches, one principle

The practical difference comes down to physicality and story.

• Jr NTR in Dragon: realistic, relatable assassin combat built for a leaner frame.
• Prabhas in Fauzi: grounded, stylised physical combat driven by emotion and surprise.
• Shared rule: mass appeal is created through storytelling, not spectacle.

D’Souza brings around 22 years of martial arts practice to both projects. He also has Suriya’s upcoming film Scene with director Jithu Madhavan on his slate, suggesting this character-first approach could become a signature.

For audiences, the contrast is useful to track: two of the biggest Telugu stars are heading into action films that promise different physical grammar. The real test will be whether Dragon’s realism and Fauzi’s stylised emotion land as strongly as the scale they are leaving behind.

Source: The Times of India