share this article
Warning - this review contains spoilers!
Imagine for a moment, the premise of Kalki 2898AD sans its itihāsa-purāṇa borrowings. A desolate, post-apocalyptic earth, surrendered to a vanilla villain. A protagonist cut from the cliche roguish-but-lovable cloth. A love-interest given as much shelf space as a pack of coffee at your local grocery store. A mother-in-distress carrying the ordained savior in her womb, and some sort of immortal man committed to protecting her. Given such motifs, there is every reason to compare the movie with the best science-fiction fare in world cinema today. And given such a comparison, Kalki 2898AD falls expectedly short.
Its first problem is the usual star-trappings Indian movies are given to. Bhairava the character is rarely in the frame, Prabhas the rebel star always is. Compare this to Jake Sully of Avatar, the Sam Worthington who played him scarcely known before the movie brought him fame. Or turn to Mad Max Fury Road, where superstars such as Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy were honorably surrendered to the plot and their characters. Or think even of Bahubali, where the high shadow of Amarendra Bahubali loomed larger than any rebel stardom. If the world-building, science-fictional, epic mythos promise of a movie such as Kalki 2898AD hinges in every scene at slow-motion pans of rebel star Prabhas bolstered by tailor-tuned background music, then you’ve already done the movie’s promise a great disservice.
This in turn creates the second problem, giving the script less space to actually indulge in world-building and plot. Is the movie’s villain lair - Complex - the only of its kind on the planet? While Kashi chokes and sputters as the world’s ‘last city,’ what has happened to the New Yorks, Singapores, Moscows and Shanghais? Is Supreme Yaskin’s search for the perfect serum limited to the wastelands around Kashi, or does he have agents at work across the continents? How did he get to be in such a tyrannical position? And what of the rebels? Are they a global group, or a ragtag bunch counting the last of their days in Shambhala?
Such lacunae force the use of other gimmicks to keep the cheers and hoots on. If you can get the audience to leave remembering the funny RGV cameo, or the sight of Rajamouli chasing Prabhas, or even chuckling at a tired Brahmanandam’s tiring repartee with Bhairava - you probably have done enough.
There is promise in the movie, let us concede. It’s a proof of concept that Indian special effects are coming of age. That we can build screen-worlds as dystopian as the best in the world, and conceive of vehicles and weapons as futuristic as a Blade Runner or Edge of Tomorrow. No longer do we need to have Indian audiences’ suspension of disbelief mockingly challenged by jarring VFX. De-aging technology is still nascent, and young Amitabh Bachchan looked no better or worse than young Michael Douglas in Avengers: Endgame. But surely for a nation so given to stories and storytelling as us, this is scarcely a winning consolation. Enter some respite-
Where Kalki 2898AD elevates itself is where it pulls from the eternal lore. Where it tugs on archetypes and plot-lines seared deep in the Indian psyche. In its brief brush with itihāsa-purāṇa is where it briefly promises to ascend.
Consider the premise again then, this time adorned with cultural lore- the end of an era approaches, the wheel of yugas turns and Kali nears its end. The great bull of Dharma, which once stood proudly on four legs, now struggles to stay upright on the one, surviving limb. And so Viṣṇu descends again, this time as Kalki in the womb of SUM8T, or Sumati. The great ciranjīvīs still walk the earth, as does one in dire need of kārmika redemption- Aśvatthāmā. Even in this elevated premise there is no place for rebel star, except if he is another ancient character born anew - Karṇa. Now we are given reason to care about Bhairava. He isn’t just another cliche rogue, but a grand warrior the movie elevates to a stature above Arjuna’s. And the villain is no vanilla tyrant, he is none other than Kali himself - the gandharva who once foiled the likes of Nala and Parīkṣit, and in this age will be the nemesis of Kalki.
It isn’t hard to see why Indian cinema even in 2024 would draw from such a deep pool of lore, mythos and plot. When Supreme Yaskin is Kali and SUM8T is the mother of Kalki, the Indian audience sits up interested. When the aged immortal is none other than the son of Droṇācārya, we cheer him in every battle. One wonders then why a film-maker would not make the full surrender, or why he would negotiate for a supposed global audience. For in the movie, Kalki is not only the awaited tenth avatāra, he is also Ahura Mazda and the Second Coming.
Almost as if it is too much to expect global audiences to understand Indian mythos, so we must extend ours to accommodate theirs. It makes for an apologetic half-assertion, and weakens the movie’s world all round.
This is noticeable even in the movie’s opening animation, a montage of global wars and violence meant to impress humanity’s eternally warring nature. The scenes are clearly intended to appeal to a global audience, featuring everything from Roman conquests to slavery. What is missing are all the sufferings of humanity within our own subcontinent, in the past 1,000 years.
Movie aspects such as dialogue become far more stark in a fictional world like Kalki 2898AD. One certainly does not expect chaste Telugu, Hindi or Sanskrit from imaginary characters in a post-apocalyptic India, but dialogues such as “iss baar main prepare ho ke aaye hu” elicit a cringe and a groan. In turn, these give the audience time to notice other gaps, and the world-not-built becomes painfully conspicuous. Consider, for example, how inadequate Bhairava’s characterization is- given his later revelation as (some form of) Karṇa. The matter feels more a deus-ex-machina than anything else. Or consider how under-utilized the great potential of Aśvatthāmā is. The movie relies entirely on the audience’s knowledge of the Mahābhārata to evoke any empathy, pathos or relatability to him - it does nothing on its own.
Finally, such issues leave the enterprise vulnerable to all kinds of technical critique. For example, how dare the plot suggest Karṇa to be a greater warrior than Arjuna? Or, what justifies the duration of 6,000 years for Kali Yuga? Even by the most modest calculations, the durations of the 4 yugas are 4,800, 3,600, 2,400 and 1,200 years totalling to a cycle of 12,000 years. To be clear, these are minor, creative licenses we should permit any storyteller to take, if we are to encourage storytelling to pull from the itihāsa-purāṇa corpus. But when drawn out pans of rebel star tire us, when unnecessary side-plots strain us, and when lazy dialogues irritate us, we are forgiven for turning attention to the minor details.
No doubt, many in the audience may feel that the initial and climactic scenes give us our money’s worth. The montages of Mahābhārata do indeed raise goosebumps, and if the choice to not reveal Kṛṣṇa’s face was deliberate and respectful, it must be lauded. The set pieces are grand, the action and special effects are at par with global standards, and there is much promise in the world-building that could be explored in the sequel. We may witness the appearance of other ciranjīvīs, more Mahābhārata vistas, and more evocations of the deep Indian cultural memory.
But at the end of it all, what Kalki 2898 AD achieves is to stir in the audience a longing to see our grand epics brought to worthy life on screen. The cheers, the hoots, the goosebumps are all for a story thousands of years in our past. It leaves us not at all curious about the fate of Bujji, Bhairava and Supreme Yaskin. Or, the cheers and hoots are for rebel star Prabhas. But then he’d get them in any caper, and Kalki 2898AD is by no order unique.