Kalki 2898 AD — A Caricaturish Attempt of Blending Hindu Mythology With Sci-Fi
A Rs. 600 crore disappointment, yet on its way to becoming a superhit
We couldn’t resist the hype
My wife had been curious about the movie ever since the teaser was launched. The two trailers that were released weeks before the movie release looked fine to me but she felt that the movie would do good business due to its stunning visuals and connection with Hindu mythology. The grand event of the movie at Ramoji Film City and then other events managed to create enough hype on YouTube and BookMyShow. On the first day itself, our favorite YouTubers raved about the movie. In the first week of its release, my wife’s colleagues watched it more than once. With so much positive buzz about this movie, we also got excited about watching the movie and booked our tickets for 2nd weekend to ensure we got a good seat at a reasonable price.
The first half was torture — fan service gone wrong
Except for the scene of Sum-80’s (Deepika’s character) escape from the Complex, and a few scenes with Ashwatthama (Amitabh’s character), there’s nothing worth watching in 1st half of the movie, i.e., in 90 minutes, only maybe 10 minutes worth watching. The initial Mahabharat sequence and the introduction of characters didn’t impress me. The worst introduction was of the superstar Prabhas! Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Hassan’s character) had an intriguing introduction but in a couple of minutes, we were thrown back to the barren lands of Kashi where the lackluster banal movie continued.
The director wanted to appease Prabhas’s fans so he made him do comedy, dance, and cringy action sequences during which he worded lame dialogues. Not only did all this waste precious minutes in the movie (contributed nothing to the plot or world-building), taking the run-time past 3 hours, it also ruined my mood as it was irritating. Surprisingly, Prabhas wasn’t bad in his role but what they made him do was idiotic.
The second half shouldn’t have been the movie
The movie should have started with Deepika’s escape, followed by the Mahabharat’s sequence, then Ashwatthama’s introduction in the present world, followed by Prabhas’s fight scene (limited to maybe 2 minutes only). All this would have taken maybe 20 minutes. Then the movie should have continued from the second half. And intermission should have happened when Deepika reached Shambala, followed by fights in 2nd half of this new shorter crispier version. This would have given the director more time to explore connections with the epic Mahabharat or give more screen time to Kamal Hassan.
The ending salvages this caricature of sci-fi
The last 15 minutes or so of this movie is fantastic but by the time I reached there, I had lost interest in the movie. So I couldn’t enjoy the multiple revelations that happened and left the audience more hopeful for a better movie in the sequel.
Conclusion
The idea is brilliant, and the plot is also good but the fan-service of Prabhas fans ruined the first half. A shorter run-time with more meaningful scenes could have made this movie a better experience. After watching Dune 2 on the big screen, I wasn’t impressed with the visuals in this movie. Moreover, the copy-paste from various movies like Dune, Mad Max, and the Star Wars franchise left me disappointed. Makes me wonder why we can’t think of dystopia beyond deserts and barren lands.
