What the audience may not see, but any personnel from the Indian Air Force would is how the left shoulder of the uniform is the fun shoulder: “You can wear any badge you like there, with the permission of your Commanding Officer,” Ramon Chibb tells us over a video call from Goa where he is holidaying. “The right shoulder is for patches of the crafts you fly and the India patch.”

Minni [Squadron Leader Minal Rathore played by Deepika Padukone] wears a fun ‘Don’t Bug Me’ one as opposed to Patty’s [Hrithik Roshan as Squadron Leader Shamsher Pathania] and Bash’s [Basheer Khan, Akshay Oberoi] ‘Fighter Forever’. The lay audience may not register these details of authenticity, “but the Air Force did,” says Chibb gleefully, and you can tell that validation is enough. The screening of the movie for the armed forces ended with a standing applause.

Chibb co-produced the movie, wrote the screenplay and served as second unit director for Fighter. He also makes an appearance as Air Commodore Abhinder Bali, Chief Instructor at the Dundigal Air Force Academy in Hyderabad where Patty is transferred. Chibb served in the Infantry for five years, after being unable to follow his father into the IAF due to compromised eyesight. But he was, incidentally, at the commando training facility in Belgaum around the time Nana Patekar was preparing for his role in 1991 film Prahaar: The Final Attack. That movie, and 1982’s Vijeta are the two movies he credits with diving deep into research and firm marriage to authenticity. “It’s what Hollywood gets right,” he says, “When I see Gregory Peck in The Guns Of Navarone, I can see that they got the weapons he used right.”

Chibb, who later became a pilot and has a home next to the flight school in Hadapsar, Pune, wrote the story in 2015 and took it to director Siddharth Anand in 2016. “He said it wasn’t mass-y enough, ‘but let’s work on it together to make it into a film that could be understood by the audience’. Siddharth is a true cinema guy, he has a large vision.”

Pulwama and Balakot were added later, as was Minni, because women were allowed to serve as fighter pilots only in 2015. Chibb drew up a career sheet for each character: The posts they held, the medals they would have won, the crafts they would have flown and the wars they would have fought in to become the best air fighters in the country to be included into the Air Dragon team. It couldn’t be just because they were box office superstars.

So, Minni would be an all-weather pilot, a member of Sarang Aerobatic Display team, and be decorated with the Vayu Sena medal for an act of courage to be included into Group Captain Rakesh Jaisingh’s (Anil Kapoor’s Rocky) dream team. She would have been commissioned in 2010, have 1,500 hours of flying under her belt and served in Bikaner, Leh, Siachen, Ambala, and Hakimpet. Similarly,

“Fighters are split into two categories,” explains Chibb, fuelled evidently by enthusiasm, “into those who fly Russian and non-Russian aircrafts since we have a huge inventory of the former. Patty would have flown the Kiran, Pilatus PC 7, Mig 21 and 29, before coming to the Sukhoi 30—the first with a two-crew cockpit. It’s telling of his personality as a lone ranger and only child,” say Chibb, and it is also integral to the plot to have both protagonists—Roshan and Kapoor—in the climax.

“We had the blessing of the IAF from the beginning and shot at Tezpur, Dundidal and Pune air bases. Kudos to Siddharth that he let me run away with the details. ‘This is your world,’ he said, ‘Keep it real’. So even the walls of the houses are typically fauji—decorated with every photograph of the characters’ journey from being cadets to officers, with medals, emblems, swords of honour” of which we catch a glimpse in Bash and Patty’s homes.

Then there was the internalization of fauji codes: That there is a hierarchy that you obey without questioning; and manner of speech. Patty obeys his father’s orders to get tea for his friends more easily than he does his superiors. He asks for permission to speak from his superiors. “Hrithik bought into these nuances impeccably. He wanted to know all these things; he’ll make a great filmmaker,” says Chibb.

They also drop in easily into a peer’s place, as they do at Patty’s Jammu home, when a training gets cancelled. There are impromptu picnics and gatherings. “This is what I saw when growing up. People would land up at any time and say, ‘Ma’am khana khila do’. There is always the fear that one of them might not come back; so they party harder. We wanted to build all this into the film, and not just go, thak-thak-thak from one action scene to another.”

So, if you pay close attention to when we first hear Group Captain Jaisingh speak to his team, it’s in staccato. “That’s how officers brief. Anil sir would say to me, ‘Tu bol ke dikha’ and then repeat the dialogue, ‘Ab main bolta hoon’. He shadowed the Squadron Leader at Tezpur to get the mannerisms right,” he says. Squadron Leader Rathore’s character was based on all the women at flight school who were better than Chibb and “never let us hear the end of it. I always thought they made good pilots. They were more focussed, learned faster and of course, were not bogged down by us clowns.”

Chibb may not have realized his childhood dream, but it’s evident when we speak to him that he has been happy to do the next best thing: “I flew in those planes, shot them, and even rigged the camera on to them for some shots.”

The film Rustom (2016) got the Navy uniform wrong in many ways. Though it was set in the 1950s, Akshay Kumar’s character, naval officer Cdr K M Nanavati, wore the Kargil Star (1999) as well as other medals from recent decades. The name tag was also introduced in the 1970s

Soon after the release of the first poster of Akshay Kumar’s film Gorkha – where the actor is seen holding a khukri – former Army officer Major Manik M Jolly tweeted to Kumar, pointing out that a traditional khukri is different. He wrote, “Dear Akshay Kumar ji, as an ex Gorkha officer, my thanks to you for making this movie. However, details matter. Kindly get the Khukri right.(sic)” Kumar responded, “We’ll take utmost care while filming. I’m very proud and honoured to be making Gorkha. Any suggestions to get it closest to reality would be most appreciated.”

This isn’t the first time an officer has pointed out a mistake in Bollywood films. We spoke to a few officers from the armed forces and experts to understand why they often don’t get it right.

Experts say that most films can’t survive the test of accuracy because filmmakers don’t understand the nuances of the uniform, dialogues or weapons. A serving Army officer on condition of anonymity says, “The reason they don’t get it right is that they take shortcuts and do not want to get into details. While a war movie still has some nuances, if it’s a general movie where a character happens to be a military officer, it seems like they just randomly pick whatever uniform is available. Be it unit, core or colours – they get nothing right. Peace uniforms and combat gear is entirely different, but filmmakers do not differentiate.”

“Ribbons signify a lot in the military uniform, but they are used as an embellishment in Bollywood films, and so are caps. What usually happens is that filmmakers do not discuss this with military historians, and that’s why they don’t get those details right. I remember in the film Tirangaa (1993), there is a clip that introduces Raaj Kumar and it says that the Major was promoted to Brigadier. It is preposterous. But the focus for them was on Raaj Kumar’s character and not the wrong ranks they were using in dialogues. Similarly, in Jab Tak Hai Jaan, SRK’s character is so filmy, but then it is also the USP of the film,” says Gautam Chintamani, a film historian.

Film historian Gautam Chintamani points out that there are films like Govind Nihlani’s Vijeta (1982) or Prahaar: The Final Attack (1991), starring Nana Patekar, that have gotten it right. He says, “Even the war scenes in Chetan Anand’s Hindustan Ki Kasam (1973) were so good because they consulted the retired officers. In recent years, Uri (2019) and Shershaah (2021) were both bang-on in their depictions of the military. Right now there is a keen interest of the audience to see these characters, and even military officers are watching and responding, which is great.”

Uri, too, had former Army officers on board as advisors. Major General (Retired) A K Siwach, who was the Defence advisor for Uri, told us earlier, “I had asked for changes in the first draft of Uri and for them to revise the script again. I also told them to give the background of the operations and characters. Getting the nuances right is the most important thing for such films. For example, for the surgical strike scene, they wanted there to be a tunnel. I told them there are no tunnels there, make it caves. I have asked for changes several times.”

In Main Hoon Na (2004), Shah Rukh Khan’s character is of a Para Commando but the cap he wears is ceremonial

It's a globally-wanted terrorist wanting Phantom to be banned today, it was a government agency which didn't like Agent Vinod yesterday, it, it could be an outraged TV host wanting to stop Indian movies altogether, or a pressure group demanding a ban on another Bollywood release tomorrow. Whichever the aggrieved party be, there is bound to be 'something' in every other Bollywood film that has a Pakistan context which will irk someone in that country. And perhaps that can't be helped. Think of the most high visibility points which a filmmaker will have for reference if he wants a real life peg in Indo-Pak relations, and you think of Partition, the Kashmir conflict, the 1965 war, the 1971 war, the 1999 Kargil conflict, and then the 26/11 terror attacks. While the past few years have seen a far higher proportion of cinema which does away with the anti-Pakistan pitch, portrays the people (if not the government) in a friendly light, and doesn't pander to hysteria or jingoism, there's an interesting footnote: Almost all the films with a nicer, sweeter storyline to them are based on fictitious stories, while almost all the ones that have an edgier, likely-to-be-banned storyline are based in one way or another on the half-a-dozen flashpoints in the not-so-friendly history that India and Pakistan share. Since Phantom is, post-ban, part of the latter group, here's a quick recap of how that script has played out in Bollywood over the years:

THE JINGOISTIC POST-WAR YEARS, AND THE FULL-TIME BAN
Anti-Pakistan sentiment ran high after the wars of 1947-48, 1965 and 1971, and the prevailing distrust between the two countries in those years was mirrored by cinema. Hindustan Ki Kasam (1973), which was based on Operation Cactus Lily in the 1971 war, opens with the Pakistan Air Force raiding an IAF airbase and Raj Kumar swearing on the body of a dead crewman, “Jawaab dene aaunga, is jawan ki kasam, Hindustan ki kasam“.

The 'we will show them' sentiment continued through films like Aakraman (1975) and later in films like Vijeta (1982) and Border (1997). The multi-starrer Border which did pretty well at the box office, zoomed in on the Battle of Longewala, from the romantic back-stories of its leading officers to their detailed, gory deaths, to the final moments leading to India's victory. The Indian Army itself questioned some of the specifics, but for the public, the emotion was enough. And given that Pakistan had banned the screening of 'all' Indian movies after the 1965 war, no filmmaker had an incentive to paint a wider canvas that could appeal to audiences on both sides of the border. Even if you had a Pakistan-friendly tone to your movie, the neighbouring country wasn't going to let you screen it there anyway.


POST KARGIL: SUNNY PAAJI'S HANDPUMP AND THE L.O.C
India's first modern war, fought in the 24-hour news cycle, “rejuvenated nationalism“ in the words of one news anchor, and spawned several films on the war itself and on the Indo-Pak relationship - or, rather, the lack of one. Pictures and tales of bravery of young, martyred war heroes fired collective passions (who can forget Captain Vikram Batra and his war cry of 'yeh dil maange more'?), and also gave Bollywood a fail-safe formula. Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001) came when war wounds were fresh and though it was based not on Kargil but on the painful subject of the Partition, Sunny Deol single-handedly pummeling those Pakistanis who tried to keep away his wife from him and her from their son was irresistible, and a massive hit. LOC Kargil (2003) had a multi-star cast playing the real men who led the Kargil effort, bringing the dashing and the daredevilry of the likes of Captain Batra, Captain Vijayant Thapar, Captain Manoj Kumar Pandey, and Captain Anuj Nayyar alive to tug at thousands of heartstrings. It played wholeheartedly to the post-war gallery with its detailed scenes of major battles and main characters' deaths, copious exchanges of insults between the two sides during gunbattles, and showing Pakistani troops as complete villains - remember the apparently-true tale of one enemy soldier asking for Madhuri Dixit to end the war, and Abhishek Bachchan dousing the lot of them in bullets before responding with, 'from Madhuri, with love'?

It didn't end there. There was much Pak-bashing that followed the theme of Pakistan as a terrorist factory. Gadar director Anil Sharma's Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo (2004) was a mishmash of everything wrong that Pakistan could do, from war to capturing and torturing Indian soldiers to sponsoring a terror plot to bomb Amarnath, but perhaps as a sign of the gradually changing times, the film did an abrupt U-turn in the end as India and Pakistan shake hands and agree to fight terrorism together. Deewaar: Lets Bring Our Heroes Home (2004) was about a bunch of Indian POWs forgotten in a Pak jail for 33 years and their bid to escape, as was 1971, the movie for which Manoj Bajpayee got a National Award as best actor, but apparently, no one other than the jury actually watched the film. Zameen (2003) was based on the attack on the Indian Parliament and the IC 814 hijack. Neither Deewaar nor Zameen was exactly praised for being true-to-life, but both rode the jingoistic horse high. Sunny Deol's roaring act continued with Maa Tujhe Salaam (2002), and the film ended up being banned even in Britain as it offended the Pakistani diaspora.

BEYOND THE WAR ZONE, THE BAN REVERSAL, AND THE AGENTS
In more recent years, two things happened. One, the blanket ban on the screening of Indian movies in theatres was lifted by Pervez Musharraf in 2006, and so Indian filmmakers began to find a new market to tap, one that would perhaps subtly influence how films were structured. It may be a coincidence, but no further movies around an Indo-Pak military conflict have been made since then. Two, as the battle itself shifted from the borders to the more rarified world of intelligence and covert operations, we had a shift of scene: Instead of posters of soldiers with guns at the border, we now had a surplus of movies about intelligence agents. Now, while the RAW vs ISI game was ­ as 'real' as Kargil, we don't really have live TV coverage of intelligence operations, and so the line between fact and fiction is difficult to place, giving filmmakers far greater creative licence than earlier movies on the more visible conflicts had. Given the popularity that the RAW enjoys in Pakistan, though, it is little surprise that movies like Agent Vinod and Ek Tha Tiger did not find a loving welcome and the Pakistani regime ­ predictably ­ opted to not have tales of flamboyant Indian agents getting the better of Pak intelligence played out on cinema screens. And so, given that tradition, Phantom now joins the illustrious list of movies that Pakistani authorities feel are better off not crossing the border, even though it's made by the same director who recently made Bajrangi Bhaijaan, a movie that some felt was the most Pakistan-friendly mainstream production to come out of India in decades.

Not that it means these 'banned' films have not been 'watched' in Pakistan, or that Phantom won't be. As the judge hearing the case filed by Hafiz Saeed in the Lahore High Court asked the counsel for the government, even if the movie is banned in cinemas, what can the government do to stop its CDs from being available in the market? What, indeed? Now that's one form of cross-border infiltration nobody's been able to check in all these years.

FOR DOSTI, THERE'S ALWAYS FICTION
"How could I make Bajrangi Bhaijaan if I was anti-Pakistan?“ was Kabir Khan's aggrieved response after Phantom got banned there. Perhaps he thought Bajrangi's saccharine-loaded tale was enough to buy him the trust of handling everything Pak-related with 'sensitivity' (this is the same guy who made Bajrangi, so this too must be coming from the same place. Never mind that it brands Pakistan as the brains behind a real-life terror plot and sends Indian agents on an assassin's quest). Umm, no. Sensitivity got nothing to do with it.

Bajrangi's goodwill isn't enough to make Phantom accepted in Pakistan, simply because its basic plot is the single most acrimonious point (okay, maybe not single) of difference between the two nations. So, it can be completely based on facts and not cooked-up lies about Pakistan, and may not demonise its entire population, but if the subject is enough to derail high-level talks between the neighbours several times, what chance does a mere film stand? Khan places too much faith in the power of reason.

If most Bollywood films based on the flashpoints of the Indo-Pak relationship aren't too loved by 'sarhad paar' headquarters no matter how nuanced, it's because those flashpoints are all of conflict. So what's a film got to do when it wants to be all about 'mulk, mohabbat and and dosti', aka Bajrangi? It needs to not draw inspiration from fact and reality (well, lots of Munnis emerged after BB so we don't know about that now). But an Indian smuggling a 'human' into Pakistan with no documents and at the mercy of strangers, and emerging not just in one piece but also much-loved - just how many planets would have to align to make even a fraction of this true? Fiction, when it comes to us and Pakistan, is what makes us realise how much we can love each other, because the newspapers can't. And makes us cry buckets at the cinema.

Whether it was Refugee's stateless baby born at (on?) the border that gave the message of peace, or Welcome 2 Karachi's bumbling idiots inadvertently exposing the futility of terrorism and war, Bollywood has had to be pretty creative to push its 'two-nations-ek-jaan' theory , because reality is no help at all. We exchange plenty of fire, insults and allegations but get equally misty-eyed when a Hindu Qaidi No 786 in Veer-Zaara asks, “Woh kehta hai yeh tera des nahi, phir kyun mere des jaisa lagta hai. Woh kehta hai main uss jaisa nahin, phir kyun mujh jaisa woh lagta hai?“ or when a Pakistani lawyer fights tooth and nail to reunite him with his long-lost Pakistani lover who has made India her home in his memory. We might watch most of Ek Tha Tiger's 'sleeping with the enemy' saga with bemusement, but still root for the agents-turned-lovers as their secret services try to gun them down. Tere Bin Laden satirises the mess that became America's war on terror in Pakistan and then gifts a happy ending to the protagonist who faked Osama's interview and precipitated an international crisis.

Fake or real, slowly, taali and seeti moments in cinema about Pakistan-bashing have been replaced by equivalent taali and seeti moments of loving thy neighbour. For the paisa-vasool brand of films, uprooting hand pumps and shouting death to Pakistan stopped being a formula for cheers years ago, only, whenever a film has to shout 'we love you Pakistan', it needs to create a story from scratch. But in this genre at least, masala Bollywood has shown it is capable of nuance ­ Pakistan isn't the devil, people both sides of the border are, and aren't. And finally , who can hate such pretty faces as Katrina's and Munni's?