Jab Tak Hai Jaan Trailer and an Analysis of the 2 Shahrukh’s

The trailer for the most looked forward to movie for the rest of the year is finally out after so much teasing and marketing strategizing. And when you finally watch it, you wonder, why didn’t they just show us the trailer straight away without all the ridiculous “We don’t have a title yet” strategy as the trailer really does stand on it’s own.

Lush visuals of Ladhak, the famous SRK arm stretch in London, a bubbly Anushka Sharma in booty shorts, Katrina Kaif playing the lover lost who you danced with in the rain in a bikini top laced over Shahrukh’s voice over of the poem written by producer Aditya Chopra that was released a couple of weeks ago with the poster, accompanied by the guitar of an AR Rahman soundtrack.

First some quick thoughts before I get into a bigger talking point:

• I think my eyeballs might pop out from all the beautiful images on screen and I don’t just mean the lovely ladies but the locations (London hasn’t shot so beautifully in ages and hey I live here), the Royal Enfield and Harley Davidson bikes, even SRK scruffy beard. (Not such a fan of the cut off gloves)
• Doesn’t that Free coffee sign behind Katrina Kaif ruin a bit of the visual? Even more so as the wafting of her hair feels like someone just opened the door to the local Starbucks.
• The trailer is pretty spoilerific: You can figure out much of the storyline with this trailer alone and especially the yearning way the Katrina shots are taken.
• I don’t want to see SRK wear a fedora. Fedora’s are for douches, period.
• I’m calling it now; this will be my favorite soundtrack of the year. No one does what AR Rahman can do musically, I will fight people if they claim differently
• Still not too sure about the poem itself, but this might be because of the horrible translations SRK was tweeting which made me unfollow him.
• Cool Guys don’t look at explosions indeed

I think I’ve cracked the ShahRukh Khan mystery to a certain degree after watching this trailer.

Like most of us he has 2 distinct sides to his personality. The first is the ambitious orphan underdog/outsider that came to Mumbai to chase the love of his live (Lets’ call him Scrapper ShahRukh) and the other is the guy that became the biggest superstar in the Indian Film Industry after a certain Big B (AKA Superstar SRK).

Scrapper ShahRukh takes chances, give us an abundance of emotions, can romance a tree and make us believe that his mom did actually say that there are 2 paths in life, one good and one bad, the bad one is easy, the good one is hard but the only right one. (Darr, Baazigar, Swades, Chak De India)

Superstar SRK on the other hand has grand ambitions as a producer is cockier, loves his action mixed with his own brand of smarmy charm and wants to create the biggest film and effects studio in India. (He also wears Fedora’s and makes gay security guards think he’s wearing a Prince Albert)

In the past few years Scrapper SRK didn’t want to get bogged down in Raj/Rahul roles and after loosing some of his long-term collaborators, his inherent competitive streak mutated to Hulk like proportions making him implode into Superstar SRK what seemed like a permanent transformations.

Even working with Karan Johar and to a certain degree Aditya Chopra, we end up getting disjointed movies that never find a compromise with that internal tug of war. (Rab Ne Banadi Jodi almost being a play by play of this theory)

When Superstar SRK takes over a project (as the superstars doesn’t star in movies but projects), he will include in the package a blitzkrieg media campaign; an oversaturation of “I am the best and the rest is shit” quotes, and promote the movie in every village, country, city and social media platform until he wears himself out physically and emotionally.

I strongly believe most people don’t like this Shahrukh. (not including fanboys and girls as they are crazy loons)

Only the relationship people that knew him from way back when (Farah Khan, Ashutosh Gowariker, Aziz Mirza, Juhi Chawla and Yash Chopra) can tap into Scrapper Shahrukh again and when he let’s go of the reins, cinematic magic happens.

All that to say, I’m really happy we seem to be getting scrapper Shahrukh as I’ve really missed him.

Movie is in UK theaters 13^th of November.

Color us EXCITED.

@asimburney