2023 was the year of Shah Rukh Khan. Here's how it happened

(Also Read: Exclusive: Dunki teaser to drop at this time on Shah Rukh Khan's birthday tomorrow)

Shah Rukh has already delivered two blockbusters this year – Sidharth Anand's spy thriller Pathaan and Atlee's Jawan. His third release of 2023, Rajkumar Hirani's Dunki, is already predicted to be the biggest hit of all three. What has led to the return of this sudden winning streak of Shah Rukh Khan? We try to trace the factors behind the same:

Dry spell

Shah Rukh Khan's absence from movies coincided with the absence of movies itself. One year after he took a sabbatical from acting, a global pandemic struck the world and the theatres shut down for two years, peppered with momentary reopenings. Shah Rukh's return to the movies coincided yet again – or rather, led to – the revival of the moviegoing experience, after the economy resurrected, social curbs were removed, and the habit of visiting theatres was reinstated.

No media interaction

At a time when fans were starving for Vitamin SRK, the actor didn't offer them easy doses. Throwbacks were the only route to SRK-dom as the actor didn't give any interviews whatsoever to publications, news channels or digital forums. He didn't even appear on Koffee with Karan, as was the tradition, because as host Karan Johar explained recently, “We owe him the silence.”

Shah Rukh once said that the new era isn't the age of stardom, but the age of relatability. However, he proved yet again why he doesn't have to lean on overexposure to remain a star or consciously stay at bay to command attention. He merely said he doesn't have anything to talk about. And his insanely funny and random #AskSRK sessions are proof: where he takes shots at both himself and his fans.

Sustained hysteria

Would you believe me if I tell you when was the last time Shah Rukh Khan had three releases in a year? It was last year. He had significant cameos in R Madhavan's Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, Ayan Mukerji's Brahmastra: Part One - Shiva, and Advait Chandan's Laal Singh Chadha. He may have done those as friendly favours, but these small doses helped build tremendous hype for the actor's long-awaited return the following year.

Even his releases this year were at least three months apart. Jawan may have gotten pushed from June to September, but the sustained box office runs and the unhurried streaming debuts of Pathaan and Jawan helped maintain the momentum he needed leading up to the release of Dunki this December. Ranbir Kapoor once said he is struggling with people getting bored of him when he had three releases in a year. Guess that's no SRK problem.

Action avatar

Shah Rukh Khan revealed in the Netflix India docuseries The Romantics this year that he wanted to do an action film when Aditya Chopra cast him in his directorial debut, the 1995 blockbuster Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. While we saw him perform and design action in films like Main Hoon Na (2004) and Om Shanti Om (2007), his persona of a romantic hero always eclipsed the filmmakers' vision to see him as a solid action star.

This year, he turned all that pent-up angst into a language of action that only Shah Rukh Khan could conjure up. He redefined action, like he redefined romance once. He got Sidharth Anand to write a customised comeback role in Pathaan and sought Atlee to make a signature mass film for him, instead of letting his reputation bear its weight on these action directors. He surrendered to the love of his fans who would love to see him in any avatar, instead of imposing the love of his fans on his choices and process.

The Aryan Khan case

There was a tinge of vengeance in Shah Rukh Khan fans when they came out in huge numbers to watch Pathaan this year. The film, in which he played a nationalist spy, released after months of injustice his son Aryan Khan had to endure in 2021 and 2022. Arrested in a drugs case, Aryan spent weeks in jail an battled a relentless media trial till he was released.

It's exactly why Shah Rukh's dialogues like "Ye mat poochho desh ne tumhare liye kya kiya, ye poochho tumne desh ke liye kya kiya" (Pathaan) and “Bete ko hath lagane se pehle baap se baat kar” (Jawan) assumed an additional layer of relevance. But isn't that what Shah Rukh Khan stands for: the sweet spot between the reel and the real, between action and violence, between romance and love, between dreams and reality, and most crucially, between what movies do to us and what we do to the movies.

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