Pathaan and Shah Rukh Khan’s success mirror that of Top Gun: Maverick and Tom Cruise

It wouldn’t be surprising if future Hindi dubs of Top Gun: Maverick replace the “Good morning aviators. This is your captain speaking” with Pathaan’s “Kursi ki peti bandh lijiye, mausam bigadne wala hai!”. These two movies (and their leading men) are that similar. 

“SRK is not just an actor. He’s an emotion.” That’s the motto behind most of the critics’ reviews and audience reactions showering praises on Pathaan. Our own review joined the bandwagon, sidelining Pathaan’s lack of logic and terrible writing in favour of its leading man’s charm. But with the blockbuster nearing the end of its first week, it is worth noting how its response is so similar to Hollywood going gaga over Top Gun: Maverick last summer.

Yes, of course, a major differentiator between the two movies is that Maverick was not caught up in any boycott-related controversies. So, Pathaan’s victory over the bocyott gang makes its success all the more remarkable. But without the controversy angle, the critical and commercial responses stand as blueprints for future Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters. 

Saving the industry: It’s not like Hollywood wasn’t churning out big-budget big-screen spectacles in the post-pandemic era. Despite much delays and polarising reviews, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet did good business. And despite the onset of the so-called “Marvel fatigue”, the post-2020 Marvel films also performed well with Spider-Man: No Way Home currently being the third-highest grossing Marvel film. Other theatre-worthy flicks like Kong vs Godzilla, and The Batman followed suit. 

But there was something about Tom Cruise returning in the green overalls of naval pilot Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell that made the highly-awaited sequel worthy of a celebration. Ignoring the box office numbers of the other post-pandemic hits, people from the States and all over cherished the return of Maverick on the big screen, boldly claiming that Tom Cruise has single-handedly saved Hollywood. 

The same parallel can be drawn with Pathaan. The only difference being: Shah Rukh actually did save Bollywood. Unlike the situation in the West, the Hindi film industry was actually yearning for a record-breaking blockbuster. The Telugu market got their RRR and Tamil watchers got their Vikram and Ponniyin Selavan. While Bollywood had a few hits like Gangubai Kathiawadi, it mostly had to settle for a Laal Singh Chaddha! 

In this scenario, a Rs 500 crore club entrant like Pathaan can offer a significant boost to the industry, both in terms of business and PR. “King” Khan was himself dethroned with critical and commercial blunders like Jab Harry Met Sejal and the aptly-titled Zero. His comeback after four years is, hence, worth celebrating. 

Hero-centric films: Pathaan’s posters feature Deepika Padukone and John Abraham alongside its leading man. Even Salman Khan drops in for a meaty 10-minute-long cameo. But ultimately, the movie rests on the shoulders of its 57-year-old star who is shown to be young and dynamic enough to deliver cheesy pick-up lines (the man is literally made to say “somebody call the police cause’ you look like a bomb), and effortlessly fight the bad guys. 

Pathaan is arguably Khan’s most action-driven film to date but it provides him enough space to deliver trademark SRK elements like his arms-spreading pose and his tendency to kiss (or sniff or whatever it is that he does) the neck of his leading ladies. While director Siddharth Anand definitely deserves praise for putting this spectacle together, Pathaan feels like a movie directed by its hero and that’s why it’s being lauded so generously by its hero’s diehard fans.

While Maverick initially tries to show that its 60-year-old protagonist is ageing and he must retire, it is still Tom Cruise who saves everyone at the end of the day. Yes, he is tasked with training a batch of fresh new pilots (with the casting department even trying to play their diversity cards right with more persons of colour) but when the stakes get higher, it is our hero Maverick who sits on the pilot seat. 

With Cruise collaborating again with his Oblivion director and writer Joseph Kosinski, he seems to have enough creative control to put the spotlight on him (after all, Cruise is also the producer). Even if Cruise didn’t intervene much, Kosinski clearly seems to know that making Maverick a Tom Cruise showcase would guarantee its box office success. Most of the people who enjoyed Maverick might have even forgotten the faces or names of the supporting characters. And that seems to be like the point of it altogether. 

Critics ignoring the over-the-top elements: Pathaan’s action scenes are still a massive improvement over Bollywood’s past over-the-top theatrics such as the ones that we have seen in recent Salman Khan-starrers. But still, for the sake of entertainment and turning SRK into an all-round superhero, a lot of logic had to be obviously kicked out of the window. John Abraham can steer two helicopters with a rope and SRK can fly in a glider without any aerial eyewear. But who even cares? You aren’t supposed to use logic while watching Pathaan. 

And even the most “logic-craving” critics seemed to agree with this viewpoint, celebrating the emotion that is Shah Rukh Khan. 

A similar argument can be made with Top Gun: Maverick. While the 2022 summer blockbuster tried to incorporate some realism in its first half, the final scenes found Cruise not only defying death but also science. My own father, a former pilot and a self-professed Top Gun fan, couldn’t help but cringe a little as he saw Maverick piloting a beatdown F-14 against two advanced Su-57 fighter jets. Sorry pilots and aeronautical engineers, but Tom Cruise can do that because he’s Tom Cruise!

Here too, the critics have been so overwhelmingly generous with their love for Maverick that now it is a Best Picture contender at the Oscars (even picking up unimaginable nominations like Best Adapted Screenplay). 

So, yes, be it SRK in Pathaan or Tom Cruise in Maverick, both stars have proven their worth and capitalised successfully on their star image, which seems well-earned in their decades in the film industry. Both Cruise and SRK have tried to tone down their stardom for some experimental breaks. Cruise has had Magnolia, Vanilla Sky, and A Few Good Men just like Khan has had his Dil Se, Hey Ram, and Swades. Both have also dabbled as romantic heroes (SRK more so than Jerry Maguire’s Cruise). But in the end, it is when they go all-out with blockbuster action that the audiences truly “celebrate” them.