How Shah Rukh Khan transformed from the ‘King of Romance’ to the ‘Badshah of Action’

The entertainment news circles will be abuzz this week with the festivities surrounding Shah Rukh Khan's birthday (November 2). In the history of Hindi cinema, 2023 will be remembered not just as ‘the year of SRK’, but as the defining year when the ‘King of Romance’ transformed into the 'King of Action’ delivering two back-to-back big action blockbusters: Pathaan and Jawan. This transformation represents a momentous shift in his illustrious career, a journey that took even a superstar of his calibre a remarkable 32 years to complete. His transformation is all the more astonishing because very few stars have been able to successfully transition from romantic to action roles or vice versa. However, if you look closely, it becomes evident that Shah Rukh Khan had always harboured a desire to become an action hero.

Though he made his debut with a rebellious romantic role in Deewana (1992), Shah Rukh Khan achieved his first resounding success as a solo hero with Baazigar (1993), a revenge drama where his anti-hero character unabashedly commits multiple murders and even pushes his girlfriend off a terrace without hesitation. In the same year Darr (1993), a thriller about an obsessed lover became a big success. Then, in 1995, he attained his most significant success yet with Karan Arjun, again a revenge drama with excessive action sequences. It was also the year when the colossal success of Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ) completely altered Shah Rukh Khan’s image and career trajectory. As the romantic Raj, Khan's portrayal was so brilliant and expansive that it blurred the glow of his previous hit movies. Before he knew it, he was being written about as a ‘romantic superstar’. Still eager to diversify, he ventured into the action genre once again with Ram Jaane (1995), followed by the full-fledged action film Koyla (1996). Both bombed.

Superstardom in India comes with its own trappings and the golden rule is ‘don’t tamper with your screen image’. This was reinforced by his subsequent big successes in films like Yes Boss (1997), Pardes (1997), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), which ultimately cemented his image as the unequivocal 'King of Romance.’ During the promotions of Pathaan, SRK himself professed, “I have only wanted to be an action hero, so for me, it is my dream come true. I came to the film industry 32 years ago to be an action hero, but I missed the boat because they made me a romantic hero instead!” If you look at his trajectory, this statement indeed holds true.

If we go back in time, Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan have been Bollywood’s two legendary superstars. Regarded as India’s first superstar, Rajesh Khanna delivered 15 hit films one after the other from 1969 to 1971. All romantic roles. His fangirls were almost hypnotised, pouring their hearts into letters written in blood and putting the dust from his car on their foreheads as sindoor. Rajesh Khanna's reign was eventually eclipsed by the ascent of Amitabh Bachchan, who soared to superstardom with his iconic 'angry young man' persona. In contrast to Khanna’s romantic roles, Bachchan’s characters were marked by their intensity and often driven by themes of revenge. It is worth noting that neither Rajesh Khanna nor Amitabh Bachchan found significant success when they attempted to deviate from their established onscreen images. Rajesh Khanna struggled with action films, and Amitabh's romantic endeavours like Silsila (1981) failed to make a significant impact on the box office, thus reinforcing the notion that it is difficult to completely change the onscreen image once it has been cemented in the minds of the audience.

Even at the peak of his romantic stardom, Shah Rukh Khan's affinity for action remained evident in films like Josh (2000), One 2 Ka 4 (2001) and Main Hoon Na (2004), but it was overshadowed by his signature 'spread arms' romantic pose. Shah Rukh Khan ruled for two decades with many romantic hits but even that image took a beating with the underwhelming performance of films like Dilwale (2015), Fan (2016) and Zero (2018). In fact, his last full-fledged romantic film Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) was a huge disaster even as his contemporaries, including Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, and Ajay Devgn surged ahead with successful mainstream movies of various genres.

The title of 'King Khan' was slipping away. Faced with this prospect, he took a hiatus for four years, delving into introspection and preparation. Eventually, he decided to revisit his long-lost aspiration of becoming a mass action star: a risky, audacious choice considering his previous flop films and the long list of stars who had failed to change their established image.