Vinod Sharma retweetledi
Any science fiction movie that chooses to suffix itself with a year in the future, like Kalki 2898 AD does, runs the risk of reminding one of Love Story 2050, with its Bhojpuri robots, lyrics like “Hey lover boy will you be my toy?”, a pink teddy droid that says “Boo Tea” and Harman Baweja playing two roles: the one in the movie and Hrithik Roshan. Couple that with the inspired casting choice of Saswata Chatterjee (last seen playing Pavitra Chatterjee in a web series called Mahabharat Murders) as a Bangali Darth Vader with a double chin, and again one could not but help thinking of obstinate warriors called “Jedi” and lines like “Bokhate chele, ami tomar baba” and “Boka Yoda.”
In other words, when I bought the tickets I had low expectations, like going to a theater to see a movie by Kalki Koechlin.
In some ways, Kalki 2898 AD met all my expectations of visual originality. A pastiche of sequences copied from Shang Chi, Infinity Wars, Harry Potter, Transformers, Elysium (I will give them credit for that), Mad Max, (if there was something that seemed original I must not have seen the movie it was inspired from) Kalki 2898 AD is the realization of what Anurag Kashyap said about how studio execs “see” pitches: by reference to previous works of cinema, collectively too myopic to parse original scripts and stories.
Where it belied my expectation was how good it still was, despite its infinite derivativeness. And the reason for that is it gets Mahabharata (and I know a bit about that book) right, a rare achievement in Indian cinema. From the creative decision of making Ashwathama a giant (being from a different age where men walked with Gods) to that of making him a superhero to the way Mahabharata canon is extended without modifying its essence, there is sufficient originality in the story (while reusing visual elements from every place possible) to make the whole product work.
Unlike many who may have found the first half slow, I think it was needed to create the world, and to anchor the motivations of Prabhas’s character. For me, Kalki 2898 AD works because the narrative amps up, and that’s needed, just like the epic music needs to build to a crescendo, in order for the impact. A one-pace movie works in very limited situations, like Raid Redemption, and not when you are trying to create a multi-movie world franchise.
Amitabh Bachchan is the star for me, literally and figuratively immortal, even though it’s firmly a Prabhas vehicle. Saswata in Darth Vader attire simply didn’t have the physical menace to be a convincing antagonist to epic characters, and given the scale of the production, one would have prefered a Randeep Hooda or even a fresh face, but these are minor quibbles.
Kalki 2898 AD is a a big screen spectacle, an OTT-killer, and an infinitely superior franchise product to anything I have seen in the Indian space where the reference is the YRF spy universe.
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