Siddharth Anand, who delivered the blockbuster movie ‘Pathaan’ last year, is gearing up for another ambitious directorial project: ‘Fighter’. The aerial action film features Bollywood heartthrob Hrithik Roshan in the lead role and is set for a theatrical release this week, on 25th January.
As per the latest report (via Sacnilk), ‘Fighter’ is doing pretty well on the advance booking front. The big-ticket film has already earned around Rs.3.66 crores from advance ticket sales for its opening day across India. But we have seen multiple films in the recent past which have registered a good opening but failed to perform consistently thereafter.
Can Hrithik Roshan’s ‘Fighter’ suffer a similar fate at the box office? Hopefully it won’t, if it overcomes one big potential hurdle. The sub-genre ‘Aerial Action’ is one of the film’s strongest selling points, but it can also turn out to be its potentially biggest downside. Here’s why we are saying so.
‘Fighter’ is touted to be Indian cinema’s first out-and-out big-budget aerial action film featuring a star-studded cast. So, until now, there hasn’t been a commercially successful Indian film which can be called as a proper aerial action movie. Kangana Ranaut’s ‘Tejas’ was a box-office debacle.
Of course, there have been some well-made Indian films in the past which were based on or set against the backdrop of the Indian Air Force or Airplane pilots or set in an airplane. For E.g., Janhvi Kapoor’s ‘Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl’, Sonam Kapoor’s ‘Neerja’, and Ajay Devgn’s ‘Runway 34’. But none of them are aerial action films per se. Venturing into an uncharted territory with the aerial action sub-genre could be a big hurdle which ‘Fighter’ must overcome.
Majority of the Indian audiences are yet to get a taste of an aerial action movie in a proper way. Now, you might be thinking that the Tom Cruise starrer ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ did so well at the Indian box office, then why can’t ‘Fighter’ do the same for certain?
The difference between ‘Fighter’ and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is that the latter was already a super-popular and successful franchise with a cult following of the parent film ‘Top Gun’. Moreover, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is a widely acclaimed movie which boasts of 96% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.
So, for the box-office success of ‘Fighter’ in the long run, it would all boil down to how well the film’s made. What will make ‘Fighter’ a truly good and successful movie will be a coherent and gripping storyline combined with earnest performances. Not just jaw dropping visual effects and massively mounted action set pieces. But that remains to be seen. From the film’s trailer, the production values look first-rate and Hrithik Roshan has always been a dependable actor. But, like we said, the rest depends on how well the film was executed.
Although the exact plot details of ‘Fighter’ are being kept under wraps, the film’s underlying story ostensibly revolves around a young, spontaneous, and ambitious man who must overcome several hurdles after joining the Indian Air Force. Beside Hrithik Roshan in the lead role, ‘Fighter’ also features Deepika Padukone as an Army helicopter pilot Minal Rathore and Anil Kapoor as Group Captain Rakesh Jai Singh.
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