Cinematic universes are hard. Movies are hard to begin with, but it can be tricky to figure out just how interconnected you want to be. There's a scale between "basically unrelated movies apart from the odd reference or cameo" and "really really just a series of sequels with pretensions." So genuinely, credit where credit is due: Alpha (2026) add new characters and concepts to Yash Raj Film's Spy Universe, which does keep it from ending up as "The adventures of those three guys, and one of them is married to Katrina Kaif," like Rohit Shetty's Cop Universe.
The movie opens with a look at the past of Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor), who became the new chief of R&AW at the end of War 2. It is 1999, and in the aftermath of the Kargill War, Kaul is working with Colonel Fateh Singh Lakhawat (Bobby Deol) to create a super soldier to create a super soldier program called Alpha. Three years later, the first batch of super soldiers is ready, and after a staged demonstration Alpha is approved.
During the presentation, Fateh mentions that in addition to enhanced strength, speed, and senses, the super soldiers also have heightened healing abilities, and Kaul is paying close attention. His wife Janaki (Dia Mirza) is pregnant, but that pregnancy is very dangerous due to a congenital heart condition. Kaul steals a dose of Alpha and secretly doses Janaki, and suddenly the pregnancy is going well and the heart condition seems to have gone away. And that's when they discover that all of the test subjects have suffered from cerebral hemorrhages. Including Janaki.
Janaki dies, but the baby has survived. The Alpha program is shut down. And that's when Fateh executes one of the classic Bollywood action movie plots; he takes the baby, replacing her with a stillborn child, leaving Kaul devastated and Fateh free to treat the girl, who he names "Sita", as his personal science project. Sita grows up conflicted but loyal to her adoptive father, who trains her in combat skills while scientist Dr. Varghese (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) draws her blood every week and gives her a guinea pig on her twelfth birthday, which is a bit on the nose.
Years pass. Sita grows into a skilled assassin. And after eliminating all of the officials who signed off on Alpha, in a variety of creative ways, she returns to Fateh's base, kills a wave of soldiers, and blows the place up, taking the guinea pig with her. Fateh isn't home during the attack, but Sita is saving him for last, as she explains to Soldier, the guinea pig. (I'm going to pretend that Soldier was named after the Bobby Deol movie.)
R&AW is assigned to find the killer, and Kaul realizes the connection between the victims. He tracks down Fateh, who brags about the child kidnapping and reveals that he has shaped Kaul's long lost daughter into a weapon, and Kaul somehow manages to resist punching him in the face. (At this point; obviously there will be facepunching later.)
But Kaul has a secret of his own. Fateh kidnapped Sita before discovering that Janaki actually delivered fraternal twins. Sita's sister Durga (Sharvari) is living in Spain, using her supersoldier abilities as an extreme athlete. Durga has always idolized her lost sister, and when she learns that Sita is alive she's enthusiastic about helping to bring her home. She flies to India, intending to meet her father at his safehouse in Kashmir, but Sita got there first.
Naturally there's a fight scene. Also naturally, Sita has already learned that Fateh is a villain, and she's really there to talk to Kaul. Fateh's men arrive, and Kaul insists on staying behind to cover his daughters' escape. It's a few days journey to the next safehouse, and that means the sisters have time to bond a bit. The next safehouse is also attacked, and the sisters have to battle special forces ninjas with the help of Kabir (Hrithik Roshan). Kabir is more than capable of keeping up with their super soldier skills, and manages to perform stunts that he couldn't do even in his own movie, but once again he stays to cover their escape because this is only a cameo.
The rest of the plot is pretty straightforward. Fateh wants to harvest Sita's brain in order to create a stable form of Alpha, but once he realizes who Durga is he realizes that he has a backup. There are fights, there is family bonding, and the true extent of Fateh's villainy is revealed, leading to Kaul punching him in the face.
The Spy Universe has played with sci fi elements, including the super virus and jetpack fight in Pathaan, but this is straight up superhero stuff; the movie even bills itself as an origin story. The action is ramped up as well, and that's actually a problem for the film, since there are so many big ridiculous fights that they start to blend together. I will say that Alia Bhatt and Sharvani make convincing action heroes.
Alpha definitely falls closer to the War corner of the Spy Universe, with a hero whose loyalties are initially unclear. It also continues the search for human connection that is the underlying theme of the Spy Universe as a whole, contrasting Kaul's fatherly love with Fateh's cynical manipulation. That's not the only theme explored, though; the super soldier syndrome is named after toxic masculinity, and Fateh makes it clear that that is not a coincidence. His ideal soldier is really a hyper macho warrior, able to win wars by being tough and macho and free form any emotional weakness. And he is proven pretty conclusively wrong about that.
There's a lot that I like in Alpha, but as a whole it's incredibly dour and po-faced. The concept is great, like a blend of Frankenstein and Seeta Aur Geeta, but it's never quite as fun as that sounds.
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