Return of the Yodha

 Kalki 2898 (2024) opens in the distant past, during the terrible last days of the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.  (You don't need a working knowledge of the Mahabharata to follow this movie, but it helps.) Ashwatthama, son of the great teacher Drona, unleashes the Brahmashirastra, the most destructive weapon in existence, in an attempt to kill the last unborn heir to the Pandava dynasty, only to be stopped by Lord Krishna (Krishnakumar).  Krishna declares that Ashwatthama is the worst sinner on the battlefield, and sentences him to live, alone and pained by his unhealed wounds, until the final incarnation of Vishnu is born.  

And he does live, for thousands of years, as an animated montage displays humanity's worst crimes, starting with Roman gladiatorial games and building up to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust; this sequence does not pull any punches.  When the movie shifts back to live action, the world is a very different place.

The world is a grim post-apocalyptic wasteland, stripped of resources; one of the early scenes is set in a truck hovering over the dried bed of the Ganges river.  Kasi is the last city on Earth, dominated by a range of scavengers and other lowlifes, but people from tiny villages in the wastelands still keep coming, because there's nowhere else to go with any resources.

Hovering above Kasi is a flying structure known as The Complex, where the fortunate few live lives of luxury.  In theory, anyone can buy their way into The Complex, but in practice gathering the required amount is practically impossible.  It's quickly made clear that these are very bad people who collect any fertile women they can find and force them into Project K, a scientific experiment at the behest of the decrepit Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Hassan), who rules the complex like a despotic god.

The Complex is opposed by a band of rebels who huddle in their hidden city of Shamballa.  many of the rebels believe in the impending incarnation of Vishnu, inspired by stories told to them by Mariam (Shobana).  Others are more cynical, but they are all devoted to overthrowing Yaskin and his minions.

But it's not all worldbuilding - there are characters as well.  It starts with plucky young girl Raia (Keya Nair) sneaks into Kasi disguised as a boy, but narrowly escapes being detected and conscripted into Project K.  She flees the city pursued by a robot, and takes shelter in the cave where Aswatthama is meditating.  he makes short work of the robot, but refuses to listen when Raia tries to convince him to join the rebels; he's here to save one person, not fight in anyone else's war.  But that's about to change.

Within The Complex, SUM-80 (Deepika Padukone) is going about her daily routine as part of Project K.  The subjects who have not been successfully implanted care for their pregnant sisters, at least until the scientists decide to brutally harvest them for the serum that keeps Supreme Yaskin alive.  What no one knows is that SUM-80 is also pregnant; she doesn't know how it happened, but she wants to keep her child from being harvested.  Unfortunately, time is running out.

And then there's designated Han Solo homage Bhairava (Prabhas), a skilled bounty hunter with an array of cool gadgets and a high tech dune buggy with a chatty AI named BU-JZ-1, or "Bujji" (Keerthy Suresh).  Bhairava is obsessed with the idea of getting into The Complex, and he's thrilled to discover that his occasional girlfriend Roxie (Disha Patini) has landed a maintenance job there.  He talks Roxie into getting him a temporary job as well, and once they make it to The Complex he convinces her to sneak away with him and explore, which involves a ride along the beach next to an artificial ocean, a dance number, and crashing a fancy party, but it all comes crashing down when Bhairava accidentally destroys Michelangelo's David.  

This leads to SUM-80 making a literally miraculous escape into the waiting arms of the resistance.  Commander Manas (Saswata Chatterjee), who acts as a sort of middle-management Darth Vader, offers an enormous bounty for SUM-80's return, which could be the one big score that Bhairava was waiting for, but he'll have to fight his way through rival bounty hunters, raiders, and Aswatthama in order to get to her.  The last one turns out to be the problem; Aswatthama isn't just a giant immortal, he's a mythical warrior from an age of legends, and is more than capable of dealing with Bhairava's technological tricks.  SUM-80, named "Sumathi" by a friendly but doomed rebel, makes it to Shambala, where she's greeted as . . . well,as the mother of the next incarnation of God.

She knows it's not safe.  Aswatthama knows it's not safe.  The audience definitely knows it's not safe.  manas and his men are searching for her, Bhairava wants to find his bounty and to outdo the one giant man who beat him in a fight.  It's all leading to a climactic battle in Shambala which will end in widespread destruction, a key character twist (which is well telegraphed if you're familiar with the Mahabharata) and a cliffhanger, because apparently this is the first movie in the Kalki Cinematic Universe.

It's easy to think of this movie as "Bollywood Star Wars," and there's some truth to that, even though the lightsabers only appear in one brief flashback scene.  On the other hand, I can see some influence from other sci-fi films of the Seventies and Eighties, like Zardoz and Warrior of the Lost World; Bhairaya even drives his AI-equipped vehicle through the illusion that masks the secret home of the Resistance.  That's not a bad thing; those movies were not great, but Kalki 2898 inherits some of their better ideas, and the whole production is infused with a gritty, run-down Seventies sci-fi style, only with a much bigger budget.

 

Prabhas is genuinely charming and the cast is engaging, but Amitabh Bachchan towers over everybody else, both literally and figuratively.  Aswatthama has the strongest backstory and the clearest character arc, and he has the added advantage of being played by Amitabh Bachchan, who is famously good at acting.  Saswata Chatterjee is another standout; Manas is a genuinely terrible person, and he alternates between over-the-top villainy and resigned banality of evil.

The movie looks great, and the plot is compelling, but there are a lot of characters and it does take a long time to get going.  Trim the padding, and we could have gotten one complete story instead of another epic that will take real world years in order to resolve, but people like their cinematic universes these days, and the movie we do get is pretty fun.