2023: The year of Shah Rukh Khan!

2023 was the year when Shah Rukh Khan returned to the big screen after a break of four years. He emerged as an action hero and we loved watching him reinvent himself!

2023 pulled audiences to the theatre in immense numbers and Shah Rukh Khan was a huge reason for this! After two years of no movies on the big screens, Shah Rukh fanatics were craving his magnetic aura to come back into their lives. So he came back with not just one but three big films this year and each of them was an experience of its own! 

Starting with Pathaan, honestly when I watched the trailer I did not have a lot of expectations from it in terms of its story. I knew it was going to be heavy on action which is usually not my kind of film. But once the movie was released, since the first day first show itself, there was only one person everyone could talk about and that was Shah Rukh Khan. So my love for him and my fomo to miss out on something big, pulled me to the theatres. While watching the film, two things came to my mind. One was that, as expected, this story doesn’t make much sense and two, I had fully forgotten the magic of this superstar! There’s a dialogue in Om Shanti Om where Deepika says "Pachaas malay ki building se jab tum jump karke apne pairon pe khade ho jaate ho, mein believe karti hoon", that’s pretty much my reaction too. He can jump from helicopters, cars, hang from ropes and fight the bad guys and I will believe it ALL. Because that’s who he is; he makes you believe in what he is doing with all his shiddat. It’s the effort and his eyes that I fully melt for. It’s the feeling of triumph you feel when he wins in a fight and that is exactly why Pathaan became the comeback of his dreams.

Also Read: #BingeRewind: 14 phenomenal performances in movies that left a major impact on our minds in 2023

8 months later, it was time for Jawan to hit the screens. There was again a lot of hype around the film even before its release. The trailer of the film was released like a week before the film hit theatres, and there was barely any promotion for it. Rightfully so, Shah Rukh is a bankable star after all and he is enough to be the sole reason to go watch a film. Jawan was the love child of South Indian films and Bollywood. We get Shah Rukh playing this larger than life character whilst having a story and action scenes like they do in the South. It was the best of both worlds and what more could I have asked for as an avid movie-goer? Once in a while there comes a movie that makes me regret the fact that I don’t know how to whistle. Right from the first scene in Jawan to the last one, there were so many whistle worthy and goosebump inducing moments. It was an absolute roller coaster of emotions for those 2 and a half hours. And on top of that we get a double role. While Azad’s morals tugged at our hearts, it was Vikram Rathore who fully stole the show. We didn’t know we needed Shah Rukh in an older version of himself, smoking cigarettes in slow motion swag. Even though Pathaan was an action film as well, I would still say that Jawan is when he really broke his romantic hero stereotype that he always wanted to and emerged as an action hero and he did that also so effortlessly. It looked like he was a natural and has been doing action all his life. 

He ended the year with Dunki. The film did not fare as well as the other two and for many reasons. In the process of experimenting with a new subject, both Shah Rukh and Rajkumar Hirani lost the point of the film. There was a lot of potential but it all fell flat in the end. Yes, it was disappointing to have not felt the same excitement I did in Jawan but nevertheless I cried whenever he cried in the film because you simply cannot help but connect to him on-screen, even if you don't connect to the story. He's what made the film watchable in the first place!

Overall, even after having two huge successes at the box office and an experiment gone wrong, one thing remains common in it all is him constantly striving to try something new. Even after such a long career, he wants to do films that are promising entertainers and offer us something unique each time we step inside the theatre to watch him. Vicky Kaushal said in Koffee with Karan season 8 that Shah Rukh treats each of his films like it's his first and the determination is clearly seen on-screen. This year, as a Shah Rukh fan, I once again got to experience something that I have been feeling since the very first movie I watched of his - as long as it’s a Shah Rukh Khan movie, everything will be fine in the end, he will take care of you!

You know when he is on-screen, he’s got your back be it as a protagonist or as an actor, he’s always at your service. And even though he fulfilled his action hero goals this year, love is something that will never escape him. At the core of all three films is love and the passion with which he dedicates himself to his female protagonists. Be it going weak in the knees for Deepika in Pathaan, fighting the whole world for her in Jawan, or bending heaven and hell to help Tapsee cross borders in Dunki. His leading ladies will always be his biggest motivation on-screen and that's why he is able to win so many hearts all over again. 

This is exactly why 2023 is his year and one for the books! He truly is, the last of the stars - King Khan!

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