Kalki 2898 AD

In the year 2898 AD, on a world that is slowly dying a desperate band of heroes are drawn together on a mission to save a mother and her unborn child, whose coming will save everything.

Kalki 2898 AD is an expensive-looking Telugu-language Indian science-fiction fantasy, green-screen adventure movie extravaganza. It's a film that, to me, was mostly just reminiscent of a certain kind of American sci-fi movie, films like the Masters of the Universe movie, Ultraviolet, Highlander 2, Freejack, Lawnmower Man 2, the Super Mario Brothers Movie, Fortress, Aeon Flux, Stallone's version of Judge Dredd, Lambert's version of Beowulf, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alita: Battle Angel, or Ghost in the Shell, those convuluted cacophonies of CGI backgrounds and ridiculously-dressed characters that come screaming out of left field, bringing with them a maelstrom of self-contained plot-nonsense that needs a ton of world-building, all while whirling about in vaguely industrial settings, both too dark and yet also too slick and overly lit, a look I call "Darkly-Chromed." They are these weird, random blips of pop culture ephemera that bubble up occasionally from the fetid stew perpetually simmering on Hollywood's backburner, films that, back in the day before streaming, would get theatrical runs, where basically no one whould go see them, and then they'd eventually disappear into the dusty cinematic Valhalla that was the sci-fi/fantasy aisle of independent video stores.

That's what Kalki 2898 AD is, the Indian version of that shit.

And that’s not to say that some of those films weren't sometimes awesome in their own way, because they were, and so is Kalki 2898 AD. I'm just bringing these films up to provide a cultural touchstone, something that will hopefully illustrate to you that, more than anything else, Kalki 2898 AD is basically just...

Cheap-looking sci-fi.

That having been said, in India, as far as successful blockbusters goes, Kalki 2898 AD was basically on the same level as Infinity War and Endgame.

So, first... the Prologue.

In the year 3102 BCE, at the end of the Kurukshetra War, on a battlefield piled high with the dead, the warrior Ashwatthama tries to kill princess Uttara's unborn child. For this, the supreme god, Krishna, 8th avatar of Vishnu, curses him to roam the earth forever, to never die, and to bear witness to humanity's misery as a result of societal and moral deterioration that comes with the present Age, the Kali Yuga. Krishna takes Ashwatthama’s divine gem from his forehead, and declares that he will only find redemption by protecting the mother of Kalki, Vishnu's tenth and final avatar, who is prophesied to appear at the end of the Kali Yuga, whose coming will herald the beginning of the Satya Yuga, the most virtuous age in the Cycle of the Yugas, the age that comes before the dissolution of the universe.

Cut to 6000 years later.

The city of Kashi is said to have been the first city to exist on Earth, and is the world’s oldest, continually inhabited city, so it’s fitting that in the year 2898 CE, it is now the last city on this slowly dying post-apocalyptic desert world. Earth is now dominated by the Supreme Yaskin, a 200-year-old totalitarian god king who looks like a mix of Snoke from the Star Wars sequels and Mumm-Ra from Thundercats, with a little bit of Mr. Terrific from DC Comics thrown in for some spice.

Supreme Yaskin rules Kashi from a massive floating structure called the Complex, an inverted-pyramid megastructure hovering above the crowded city. His wields authority with an iron fist, and this is enforced by the evil Commander Manas–a man who dresses like Darth Vader without a helmet, which is a mistake, as his baby face really undermines his intimidation factor. The evil Commander Manas, and an army of soldiers and clockwork robots, guard the Complex against any unauthorized entry by the great unwashed masses, as well as any and all threats to Yaskin's absolute control, particularly from the band of rebels who strike regularly from the hidden mountain city of Shambhala.

There are no gods allowed in Kashi save for Yaskin, but everyone believes in the prophesied arrival of Kalki, Vishnu's tenth and final avatar, whose coming will save the world, which is considered to be good news to basically everyone but Yaskin and the people living in luxury in the Complex.

As a result, both sides are constantly on the hunt for any fertile women among the throngs of refugees who pour into Kashi every day. Should this woman turn out to be the mother of Kalki, the Shambhalan rebels plan to keep her and her child safe, while Supreme Yaskin wants to use them in an experiment to produce a serum of ultimate power which will make him like a god himself, but to do so, the pregnant mother must live 150 days while they experiment on her or something, I think. Doesn't matter, the point is, so far, no dice, each attempt to bring about Kalki has resulted in the deaths of both mother and child.

Meanwhile, Raia, a young girl who snuck into the city disguised as a boy, narrowly escapes Yaskin’s clutches, finding refuge in a long forgotten cave. There, amongst the cobwebs and rubble and dust, she finds Ashwatthama, and then unknowingly reunites him with his divine gem, reawakening the giant bad ass. Ashwatthama immediately becomes aware that there is a woman nearby who is the one, and that she is already pregnant with Kalki.

Together, the duo set out to find her.

Meanwhile, high above Kashi in the Complex, a woman known only as Sum-80—not to be confused with Sum 41, despite the fact that she is also In Too Deep—has been hiding the fact that her pregnancy has reached the 150-day point, but she is discovered and forced to undergo the extraction procedure. The evil Commander Manas extracts a single drop of serum from her before Shambhalan rebels burst in and rescue her, which caused quite a stir apparently, as Deepika Padukone, the actress who plays Sum-80, has a scene where fire burns off her shirt and you can almost tell that she's topless!

You can literally almost tell!

Anyway, during their escape across the desert, the rebels rename Sum-80 as Sumathi. Soon after, en route to the mountain hideout of Shambhala, they are caught by bounty hunters from one of the Mad Max films, as well as by a man named Bhairava, who is driving his AI supercar, Bujji.

Bhairava is a bit of a roguish cad who's popular with the ladies, or at least, thinks he is, but also... he is. He's also a bad ass manly man of a fighter and a dancer, but he's also a down-on-his-luck no-goodnik of a bounty hunter who owes money all over town. But... in his defense, he also has great hair.

Regardless, he and his sassy AI supercar are a real pair of charmers.

Inevitably, Yaskin’s soldiers, the bounty hunters, and Bhairava and Bujji manage to corner Sumathi and the Shambhalan rebels, and for a moment, it doesn’t look good for our heroes, but luckily Ashwatthama and Raia arrive and open up a Hulk-sized can of whoop-ass. Bhairava and Ashwatthama fight over Sumathi, not only revealing for certain that she truly is the mother of Kalki, but that Bhairava might be more than he appears to be too.

Sumathi, Ashwatthama, and the rebels reach Shambhala, and the Tree of life blooms once again. Ashwatthama reveals to Raia that his staff is actually the dormant weapon known as the Vijaya Dhanusha, a mighty bow that once belonged to his friend Karna, a hero and warrior from the Kurukshetra War, and that it only shows its true power in Karna’s hand (FORESHADOWING!)

Meanwhile, outside the gates of Shambhala, Bhairava makes a deal with the evil Commander Manas to capture Sumathi in exchange for a sweet-ass apartment up in the Complex.

Bhairava and Ashwatthama fight, and Bhairava‘s super car Bujji transforms an into an mech suit. Then the evil commander Manas and his soldiers show up and everybody starts fighting. Ashwatthama knocks Bhairava unconscious but the evil Commander Manas manages to restrains the massive warrior.

And that’s when the “unexpected” happens...

Ashwatthama's staff, as well as an errant leaf from the Tree of Life, fall into Bhairava's unconscious hand, reawaking both the Vijaya Dhanusha and Bhairava, revealing him to be a reincarnation of Karna!

Gasp! Shocking! Not telegraphed at all!

In a trance-like state Bhairava defeats Manas and his soldiers. But when he snaps out of his Karna-trance, Bhairava does a heel turn, grabs Sumathi and flies away in Bujji, focused on getting the sweet-ass apartment in the Complex.

Roll credits. What a cliff-hanger!

Then, in a very Marvel-esque mid-credits scene, Supreme Yaskin is shown using the drop of serum they managed to extract from Sumathi, and ends up looking less like a floating corpse, and more like a mostly-dead floating old man. He then picks up Arjuna's bow–known as Gandiva, that once belonged to Ashwatthama’s ancient enemy, which Yaskin found earlier in the film–and decides that the only way to get this shit done is to do a little TCB-ing himself.

Written by director Ashwin, Kalki 2898 AD takes inspiration from Hindu mythology, all while cribbing visuals and ideas from pretty much every movie of the MCU, especially Guardians of the Galaxy, with some Iron Man in there too, not to mention the Dark Knight Batman movies, but also with some bits yoinked from Fifth Element, Star Wars, Dune, The Matrix, and Fury Road, amongst others, but not any way that's impressive, or even all that obscured while doing it, so it all ends up feeling more like a rip-off than it does a homage.

This film is not particularly well shot, it's palette is generally muddy, and it's lit a little too much like a TV sound stage. The whole world feels fake and weightless, a fact that is only highlighted by a one brief scene on the beach, as the characters frolic in the surf while singing, that was for sure shot outside.

In general, all of the enchanced "warrior" special effects look good, but that doesn't really matter, because the fight choreography is boring, repetitive, and pretty much all-around terrible. It's often more concerned with dancing (which is fun), or with flinging weightless CGI combatants about wildly (which is boring), then it is with having a good engaging battle, too concerned with reveling in its love of big leaps and its characters' ability to lift heavy things over their heads. Even worse are the times when the fight choreography is used to show us just how tough and amazing our hero is, how easily he swaggers through this world, how unchallenged he is by the idea of having to fight large groups of men, because those parts just feel like we're watching Steven Seagal do karate.

All of this is pretty typical really, when it comes to Indian films that feature superpowers, so it's not like Kalki 2898 AD is alone in this. Honestly, it's pretty emblematic of the whole film really, as there just isn't much here that's all that original or surprising. But like I said, it's not like it's all bad. It's got some good stuff too. Mostly, Kalki 2898 AD is just a silly, sincere, and overly melodramatic film, one that is either blissfully unaware of its melodrama, or it doesn’t give a fuck, which is a big part of its charm. It’s the thinnest of pop culture popcorn movies and nothing more, charming, but mostly just nonsensical. Sometimes it's charming in good ways, like during an extended dance sequence, or some sexy posing on windy days, but otherwise… yeah, it’s just nonsensical. This film is the definition of all style and no substance, not to mention, too slow to start, with too many places where the story slows to a crawl in the story.

It's also obviously aiming for “Hollywood” levels with its visuals and style, but completely fails to reach them, despite being the most expensive Indian film ever made. The whole thing just looks and feels like second tier Hollywood at best.

Additionally, and this isn't the film’s fault, the subtitles were terrible.

At one point, a character announces dramatically that once she’s been paid, she doesn’t care what happens to the hero (even though she does… she loooooves him because he's just that sexy), but either way, she tells all who will listen, that once she gets her money, as far as she’s concerned, the bad guys can take the hero and “whack or kill him even.”

All that having been said, the film did set some box office records, including the highest-grossing Indian film of 2024, the highest-grossing Telugu film of 2024, the third highest-grossing Telugu film ever, the fourth highest-grossing film in India ever, and the seventh highest-grossing Indian film of all time, so regardless of how it might feel to an American audience watching it here, Kalki 2898 AD was a unmitigated box-office success, proving that the filmmakers knew what they had when they proclaim in the credits...

“The Kalki Cinematic Universe Continues!”

One good thing in this film’s favor, in the tradition of some of the greatest tv shows of all time, our hero’s partner is a sassy Dymaxian car named Mr. Bujji.

The Dymaxion car had a rear-mounted engine, it was front-wheeled, and it steered via its third wheel at the rear. It was designed by American inventor Buckminster Fuller during the Great Depression and debuted at Chicago's 1934 World's Fair. Fuller absolutely loved the word Dymaxion, a portmanteau of the words dynamic, maximum, and tension, which I'm sure he would explain, at great length and every opportunity, had been choosen by him to illustrate his goal to "do more with less." But when Prototype One crashed at the entrance to the 1933 World’s Fair, rolling several times, killing its driver, and severely injuring its passengers, leading to a slew of headlines that I'm sure sounded like this...

(news guy voice): "Flash! Freak car rolls over – killing famous driver – injuring international passengers!"

...it all pretty much put the kibosh on this design forever, especially after Fuller himself would later crash Prototype Two, giving auto makers all the excuse they needed to put him out to pasture in the same way they did Tucker.

Still, filmmakers love this design, often using it as cinematic shorthand for “futuristic” cars–although never in an awesome “retro 50s ray gun and rocket ship” kind of way, which just makes every other choice seem boring by default. So now, here we are, Kalki 2898 AD is doing it too. This is a move I can only assume, judging by how all the other ideas this film were yoinked from American movies, was done specifically because Spielberg did it in A.I....

So anyway, Mr. Bujji, Bhairava's sassy super car, is a real-life concept vehicle.

It’s huge, and it was built by Jayem Automotives, a firm based in the city of Coimbatore, which is known for making automotive parts. There’s at least one drivable version of the car, and it was parked outside a Hyderabad multiplex for weeks to wow audiences. It basically looks like a custom Cybertruck and the Bat-Tumbler from the Nolan bat-films had a weird-looking kid who likes to wear see-through button-up shirts unbuttoned way too low.

Not that there’s really much in the way of options when it comes to making one of these tricycle type cars look good. After all, the original dymaxian car basically just looks like a giant suppository.

Still, it's obvious that the filmmakers fucking love this car, so it will be interesting to see just how many other films it shows up in too.

In the end, this is a film that couldn’t decide what popular franchise it wanted to steal from, so it basically steals from all of them. Perhaps the strangest thing about watching this film, and being aware of its huge success, is how not great it really is. I’m not trying to say that America doesn’t make its own bad and boring big budget blockbuster films, we honestly might have the market on that cornered, but it's an odd watching a mega-successful foreign film like this, and being able to clearly see how they're trying to meet Hollywood's level of quality when it comes to "good" blockbusters, and just not making it, because yeah... this is not a good film.

It’s charming. It’s cute.

But it’s not good.