Why Did 'Fighter' Not Strike a Chord With Audiences? Trade Analysts Speak

Director Siddharth Anand's 'Fighter' hit the big screens on 25 January.

Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan and Anil Kapoor in a poster from Fighter.

(Photo Courtesy: Pinterest)

Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone's Fighter was one of the highly anticipated films of 2024. Although the film had a great opening at the box office, it could not manage to recreate the reverberating success of the director's previous ventures, War and Pathaan.

War opened with Rs 53.35 crore and Pathaan raked in Rs 57 crore, as per reports. Fighter managed to mint Rs 24 crore on its opening day. Trade analysts weighed in on some of the reasons for the lacklustre performance of the aerial action thriller at the box office.

Trade analyst Komal Nahata spoke on the overall reception of Fighter, calling the film 'lacklustre' with a dull screenplay deeming it to be one the primary reasons why it failed to resonate with audiences. He said,

"The film is not as good as 'War' or 'Pathaan' because it is a bad film. There is no other reason. It is not because some extraneous factors have come in the way of its business. The film was very lacklustre, the screenplay looked very forced. And frankly, this ‘Pakistan bashing’, after 'Gadar 2', which did it extremely well and with a lot of emotions, will not work unless done well or there is a new angle to it. So now people are going to think ten times before making a ‘Pakistan bashing’ film because 'Gadar 2' has done the best it could. The best anybody could."

He also went on to say that there is little to no hope regarding a rise during the coming weeks. Nahata added, "There is no chance of a rise in collections now because it does not work that way that collections dip and then they rise. If they were to rise there would not have been such a drastic fall. So now it’s only going to deteriorate from hereon. Last Monday, in itself, was clear when the collections were Rs 6.5-7 Crore that the film was going downhill. Of course, the weekend again was good. But not as good as it should have been. "

On the other hand, Taran Adarsh weighed in on the same but reasoned that the film was more urban-centric and would not be able to grab as many eye-balls as say a Pathaan or War. He said the reason for it not doing well was due to the lack of its mass appeal.

"Unlike 'War' and 'Pathaan', which were aimed directly at the masses, this one is more urban-centric. And that's the reason why the film has not gone beyond the metaphor and struck a chord with the audience. There's a huge disconnect between the urban centres and the mass pockets as far as the business is concerned. The first four days of the film were better because of the Republic Day holidays and the weekend factor. But post Monday the collection just crashed completely. It's a very well-made film I'm not denying that. But eventually, we go by the bulk of his number and the box office numbers in this case are extremely dull."

He went on to emphasise that the film might have alienated a large chunk of the Indian audience, "In any case, Fighter is not a raw film like the others or there is no raw action or emotion like Gadar 2 - where the hero lifts a pump and screams at the villain. Here it’s all about air combat and air combat is still alien for a lot of people."

Fighter also stars Karan Singh Grover and Anil Kapoor in pivotal roles. The film hit the big screens on 25 January.