"For tomorrow."
Hello everyone!
I'm sure you could all pretty much see this coming, as I tend to be sucked into Bollywood every once in a while over periods of time.
What can I say? I thoroughly enjoy the drama haha!
That, and there are a few faces across their silver screens that I really enjoy watching, and tonight's would-be heroine is definitely one of them.
But considering that this is some sort of weird, dystopian reimagining of the future? Yeah, one could say you need to sit there and pay attention when you actually watch. I had to go back to the beginning to double check because I had a long pause between my sittings.
ANYWAY.
Without further ado, let's check what the Indians have to say about a not-so-bright future, shall we? In Kalki 2898 AD.
You can find all my previous posts dealing with Bollywood movies if you browse the blog a little, so let's just dive right in.
As the title says, this movie happens WAY in the future, but it's beginnings are in the past, about 6000 years before things start cooking. Ashwatthama, played by AB Sr, is a warrior during the Kurukshetra War, basically a war between two dynasties, and he attempts to do away with an unborn child of his opponent.
Only, said opponent's greatest friend and mentor happens to be Krishna, who probably everyone and their mother knows to be a BIG deal in Hinduism, and he also just so happens to be the tenth avatar of Vishnu.
He curses Ashwa with immortality, takes away his divine gem, and tells him that a long time from now, he'll be forced to protect Krishna's mom, or well, the mother of his tenth and final avatar, prophesised to be Kalki. Then we get treated to a quick montage of every single big conflict that's already happened in the world, some that the film maker imagines might still happen (one word: nuclear), and how Ashwa hides away from the world, saddened at the deterioration of humanity.
Kali Yuga, indeed.
But then, the time of our movie arrives, at which point Ganges no longer flows, there's only one known city left in the world, and any fertile female is taken up to the "Complex", to be entered into a Project K which artificially inseminates them, then attempts to keep their pregnancies going for 150 days so they can extract a serum for Supreme Yaskin.
This guy is some 200-year-old totalitarian god-king that gives Baron Harkonnen a run for his money in creepy, and unfortunately for the women none of them have managed to carry their babies to 150 days, or survive the extractions of the serum.
When we meet a girl masquerading as a boy who's almost taken up to the Complex, we're also introduced to our heroes, the rebels who're hiding in their city of Shambala, which no one has been able to find yet - much to the annoyance of Commander Manas, the movie's big bad that we constantly get to see on screen (and, thankfully, not the Supreme connected to all his pipes!).
The rebels help the girl escape, and she later finds Ashwa, who's kind of been slowly mummifying in the temple he slunk into, but the girl has his divine gem and he finally figures out things are about to change - in fact, when he places the gem back onto his forehead, he senses that Kalki's mother actually exists! Hooray!
Now to find her.
The mom in question, played by Deepika Padukone, is one of the lab projects up in the Complex, SUM-80, and she's been hiding her pregnancy, a minor miracle, though for some inexplicable reason her tests always come back as negative.
Of course, you can't keep hiding forever, and you actually think she's been betrayed when one of the other girls tells on her, but then that same girl uses the extraction process to rescue her, explaining she's part of the Shambalan rebels, and that they've been waiting for her.
The rebels waiting to pick her up - after part-divine intervention when she walks through fire basically unscathed (we see you, Daenerys) - need some convincing that she is who their contact said she was, but I guess they can't just NOT believe it when a huge bounty is placed on her head and they have to escape every single bounty hunter heading after them.
They might have fared badly - one rebel actually dies - if not for Ashwa, who pops up to basically pound every bounty hunter into the sand, including Bhairava, a dude who's drank so much Complex Kool-Aid that he wants to get there INCREDIBLY BADLY, and will do anything and everything for it (he actually sneaks in with another girl, but they get kicked out). He's supposed to be the movie's comedic foil, but to be honest I'm more of a Bujji fan, Bujji being his android who's exasperated with everything he does.
Anyway, he and Ashwa get into it, and only Bhairava can actually fight the eight-foot giant of a man, something that he brings up to the Complex soldiers later after they pick him out of the rubble the fight left behind, and the rebels have fled with Sumathi, the new name for our mother of god.
Which is how Bhairava makes a deal with Commander Manas to bring him the woman, and masquerades as pretending to want to help the rebels to gain access to their compound.
Meanwhile, at said compound, the tree of life blooms as soon as Sumathi pops up, and rain comes after who knows how long, convincing practically everyone she's the prophesised Mother. She, on the other hand, is given a vision of everyone at Shambala dead, so she's already terrified, but can't go anywhere. Ashwa currently thinks this is the safest place for them, and he explains to the girl that's tagged along that he's holding in his keeping a dormant weapon, Vijaya Dhanussu. This is a divine weapon used during that ancient war when he got cursed, by his friend and great warrior, Karna.
Ironically, Karna just so happens to be a previous incarnation of Bhairava's, which is revealed when he arrives, and the Complex soldiers get to Shambala's door right behind him (it's either he led them there, or they were led there by another bounty hunter who I maintain SHOULD HAVE BEEN KILLED ALONG WITH THE REBEL GIRL WHO SACRIFICED HERSELF).
A fight ensues when they break through the illusion that had been placed around the city to protect it, and chaos reigns as people drop like flies left, right and centre, the leader of Shambala included. Ashwa manages to once again defeat Bhairava, and then Bhairava helps rescue Sumathi from a fall that would have killed her - it's afterwards, when he's knocked out, and Ashwa chained down, when Manas is taking Sumathi away that Bhairava's hand receives the divine weapon.
As these weapons can only be used by the people they were designed to serve, it wakes up, and also wakes up Bhairava, or should we say Karna in that moment, as he easily dispatches Manas, and Ashwa gleefully remembers him.
Then Bujji rolls up and severs the connection, and Bhairava cuffs Sumathi to take her to the Complex, while Shambala falls to ruins around them, and Ashwa now has hope that his brother-in-arms is still in there somewhere, and this can all be turned around somehow, so things don't end TOO badly in the end.
Because, remember that creepy god dude? Well, he injects himself with the single drop of serum they managed to get from Sumathi before her rescue, becomes some sort of superhuman, young and powerful, and picks up Gandiva, the divine weapon of Arjuna, who Krishna was helping back during the war 6000 years ago ... and this dude wants to reshape the world.
You know, as all totalitarian dick-heads do.
So!
With that cliff-hanger of an ending, which definitely makes you want for more, this first installment in the universe ends.
Kalki 2898 AD is an okay movie, honestly, but not the greatest, although so much money was thrown at this thing that it THANKFULLY had revenue otherwise it would have gotten dicey.
But it's kind of ... eh. Not because of the mythology - those bits are cool and actually really interesting to learn about. It's the script as a whole that leaves something to be desired, with Manas being almost a caricature of what a villain should be, a lot of slow-motion facial shots that add to movie length but not depth, and Bhairava's character is a pain in the ass, literally. He is NOT as funny as they were trying to make him, and only about 20% of comedy hits home.
This is a sprawling and expensive epic that lags on several occasions, and I do hope that we get an actual sequel someday so that I can see whether it picks up and gets any better, because otherwise I'd have said eh, and never looked at another thing from this universe again.
I don't really have anything better to say than 'it just ain't it' no matter how hard it tries, although that's a severely personal choice, I know. But it doesn't engage the audience as well as they might have hoped it would, considering its whooping length of three hours and change, and that is a definite problem.
But we'll see how it goes! Also, apparently it's Tollywood, not Bollywood for this one, I apologize.
xx
*images and video not mine
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