New genres means new opportunities. I’ve watched some of the bigger Tollywood/Bollywood releases over the last few years, and none of them have been set in the future. Kalki 2898 AD takes Indian cinema past present day into new horizons. Fear not though, Indian cinema lovers…an old dog in a new setting still knows the same old tricks. Just with a few robots now.
Before we get to the future, we start in the 3102 BC past, where Ashwatthama (Amitabh Bachchan) isn’t having the best day. Losing a war, he attempts to kill princess Uttara’s (Malvika Nair) unborn child, angering Lord Krishna (Krishnakumar), who dooms him to walk the Earth undying until he can right his wrongs. Well, that chance doesn’t happen until 6000 years later, 2898 AD. In this time, all of Earth’s resources have been taken by Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Haasan) and brought into his Complex, hovering over the last city on Earth, Kasi. Yaskin, with the help of Commander Manas (Saswata Chatterjee) is looking for fertile women to help with some sinister plot, among them SUM-80 (Deepika Padukone). And in Kasi, Manas enlists humans to earn credits for entry into the complex, including Bhairava (Prabhas), a bounty hunter with an AI robot car, who’s currently wrangling in the rebels from Shambhala fighting against Yaskin.
It’s fun to see what Nag Ashwin’s concept of the future was going to be. I would describe it as a little Mad Max meets Total Recall (the 90s one). Kasi’s sets are these tight, on top of each other buildings surrounded by steampunk dressed people living on mazelike streets you can run around and evade capture in. Weapons are a fun mixture of old and new: lots of lasers and cool shields show up, with a really fun hovercar chase in the middle. And yet, Ashwatthama uses a giant staff and Yaskin uses a bow and arrow: badass versions of those two things, but also present. There’s also a 2nd location where a big battle takes place (the movie’s highlight), also fusing old Indian settings with the weapons of the future to make almost a mini-Star Wars Vignette. The Complex is clearly a standin for rich power run amok: a giant place filled with endless beautiful resources at the expense of the poor, especially women. As one of the early movie concepts of the future, it’s a decent one, and fits the story Kalki 2898 is trying to tell.
And that story is something that makes you feel familiar in the unfamiliar futuristic setting. We’re back in the Mahabharata (eg famous ancient Indian text) for inspiration, usually a safe bet for an Indian movie. Action sequences, although futuristic, are still really fun gun/fistfights, car chases, and big climactic battle sequences to close the film that mostly deliver. We have musical interludes, giving each cast member a moment to shine (though that’s shockingly marginalized more than I’ve seen in a mainstream Indian movie in a while). The minute Prabhas saunters onscreen, I recognized the beats of what was about to happen in his story immediately…wait, the super hunky, secretly awesome bounty hunter with no past has some ancient tie to powerful ancestors?!?! Didn’t see THAT coming. Same with Deepika Padukone. The characters I’m more drawn to in big sprawling Indian films like this one are either the lesser known (at least to Western audiences) leads or the supporting players who bring something interesting to the table. I hadn’t seen any Amitabh Bachchan movies before this, but his character gets the most interesting arc of the big players, on a missing as Ashwatthama to right his past wrongs, which Bachchan nails, leaving the biggest impression on the movie. I liked the rebel soldiers Veeran (Pasupathy) and Kyra (Anna Ben) a lot: giving a lot of personality in small roles that hopefully give them bigger stuff to do in the future.
My biggest beef with Kalki 2898 AD is that it doesn’t end, it just stops. I do NOT like this trend, leaving people unfulfilled, hoping they’ll need to see the next one to scratch their itch. Here’s an idea, just…come up with an idea for the first movie like Fellowship of the Ring did, then a new concept for the 2nd one. We could have spent all this movie in poor Kasi with Bhairava and Ashwatthama and others trying to enter the Complex, then next film we see them trying to take down the Complex from within? Was that so hard?