‘Born to Fly’ (2023) & ‘Fighter’ (2024): ‘Top Gun’ Copycats

Directed by: Liu Xiaoshi [1], Siddharth Anand [2] || Produced by: Han Han [1], Mamta Anand, Ajit Andhare, Anku Pande, Ramon Chibb, Kevin Vaz [2]

Screenplay by: Gui Gan [1], Ramon Chibb [2] || Starring: Wang Yibo, Hu Jun, Yu Shi, Zhou Dongyu [1], Anil Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone [2]

Music by: Sida Guo, Buyi Mao, Li Wang [1], Sanchit Balhara, Ankit Balhara, Vishal–Shekhar [2] || Cinematography: Yuxia Bai [1], Satchith Paulose [2] || Edited by: Ruiliang Li, Yang Xiao, Wei Yong [1], Aarif Sheikh [2] || Country: China [1], India [2] || Language: Mandarin [1], Hindi [2]

Running Time: 128 minutes [1], 166 minutes [2]

2020s filmmaking has contrasted with the pre-COVID-19 cinematic era of the 2010s the longer the decade lasts, at least in North America. While the 2010s represented arguably the apex of expensive, longwinded movies embellished with bloated computer generated imagery (CGI) based on franchise intellectual properties (IPs), most of the popular cinema of the 2020s have so far appeared as a reaction against that nonstop big-budget, high-concept loudness, a few exceptions notwithstanding (e.g. Top Gun 2, Avatar 2 [both 2022], Godzilla x Kong [2024]), at least within Hollywood. Most big-budget Hollywood franchise IPs that were highly lucrative prior to the pandemic have, at their most generous interpretation, underperformed (e.g. The Fast & the Furious [2001-], Disney’s live-action adaptations of their 1990s “Renaissance Era” animated classics, Disney-Pixar computer animated films, most every superhero franchise, etc.) post-pandemic. Mid-budgeted genre films, led by horror filmmakers most of all, seem to be making a tentative theatrical comeback on the domestic (United States + Canada) front.

Fellow blockbuster industries from China and India, meanwhile, have plowed ahead with producer-led major studio pictures in the style of 2010s cinematic excess for their box office bread and butter. A couple examples of Chinese and Indian blockbusters released during Hollywood’s offseason in the post-COVID era are Born to Fly and Fighter, respectively. Ironically enough, these two movies relate to a recent Hollywood blockbuster from around the same timeframe, Top Gun: Maverick (also known as Top Gun 2 or TG2), one of the few post-COVID FX-driven and/or legacy sequel blockbusters to achieve breakout success (~$1.496 billion) while also updating said FX in memorable ways. TG2’s seamless CGI complimented its practical cinematography dominated by camerawork choreographed around actual f*%$ing military aircraft flying at supersonic speeds. Though the plot of TG2 was nothing unique (it was the original Star Wars [1977], again, complete with its own trench run and superweapon exhaust port) like much of Hollywood blockbuster screenwriting after the American New Wave (late 1960s-1970s), the film was designed, edited, and produced with the artistic precision of a laser-guided bomb.

Aside from a couple sequences with costar Hu Jun mentoring lead Wang Yibo, all attempts by Born to Fly to build meaningful character relationships between its castmembers in the vein of Top Gun fall flat.

To say both Born to Fly and Fighter are not as consistent would be an understatement, yet unsanctioned intercultural copycats rarely carry the same weight as their respective originals (see also Ghajini [2008] and A Fistful of Dollars [1964]). Their coincidental release 12-18 months after TG2 is suspicious enough to question their origins if not their artistic merit, so how do their stories’ on-screen execution fare as movies unto themselves?

Born to Fly (長空之王, or literally “King of the Sky”) is, surprisingly, less outright nationalist with its militaristic narrative themes than Fighter outside its heavyhanded prologue and epilogue, making its otherwise modest, straightforward story about Chinese test pilots experimenting with Shenyang WS-15 engines for the Chengdu J-20 aircraft in northwestern China more relatable; or rather, that would be the case if Born to Fly’s characters and pacing had any style to them whatsoever.

Because the film’s flight sequences suffer from inconsistent to outright bad CGI and wonky, weightless animation FX, the bulk of Fly’s appeal must lie in its human heart and overall plot, both of which are often anemic. The first act is an absolute slog given the aforementioned slapdash, cartoonish prologue as well as the sloppy introduction of Wang Yibo’s vanilla protagonist. Multitalented though Yibo may be as an actor, dancer, and musician, his lead performance here is limited by a bland character, an equally forgettable, flavorless supporting cast outside of veteran costar Hu Jun, and clunky dialogue. The latter often segues into awkward exposition regarding China’s supposed technological inferiority relative to its geopolitical rivals, which reads like censorship notes from the ruling Communist Party, while Hu’s role is eliminated prior to the end of the second act, removing the closest thing this movie has to a personality.

Almost the opposite in style is the 2-hour, 46-minute(!) Hindi banger, Fighter, directed by Siddharth Anand and whose 2019 film, War, also starring Hrithik Roshan, remains one of the few Western-style action-spy thriller riffs from South Asia I like. His next film after War, Shah Rukh Khan’s comeback in Pathaan (2023), I found much weaker, while Fighter arguably sits somewhere in between the two. Despite a first act almost as slow as that of Born to Fly, most of the conflicts set up in the opening 45 minutes pay off in Acts Two and Three, while the star-studded cast beyond Roshan (e.g. Anil Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, memorable antagonist Rishabh Sawhney) chew the scenery well. My only complaints with the movie beside the aforementioned engorged length are the limited musical numbers, which seesaw between colorful filler and halfway decent montage sequences; remember when I used to cite Indian filmmaking’s musical attributes as consistent strengths (e.g. Devdas [2002], Bajirao Mastani [2015], Baahubali [2015, 2017], RRR [2022])?

Hrithik Roshan (top) loves Hindustan. Rishabh Sawhney (bottom) hates Hindustan. They don’t get along too well.

In hindsight, you can tell first-time director Liu Xiaoshi struggled in his feature-film debut while veteran filmmaker Siddharth Anand understood the assignment he was given. Neither movie is elegant in their geopolitical commentary or narrative subtlety, but where Fighter succeeds relative to Born to Fly is in its personality and fun melodrama. Fighter’s set-pieces are as cartoony as those in Born to Fly, but the former (1) bothers to have a sense of humor about them and (2) writes memorable, fun characters on both heroic and villainous sides. In other words, if you’re going to plagiarize a blockbuster from another industry as effective as Top Gun 2, you may as well add your own cultural spin — or spice — to the mix, even if it is almost 50 minutes too long.

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