Amitabh Bachchan stars in Kalki 2898 AD, an Indian sci-fi epic with Telugu star Prabhas, Tamil star Kamal Haasan, and a ton of familiar beats. In theaters now.
Actor Amitabh Bachchan is a metaphorical giant of Indian cinema, a superstar of proportions that dwarf even A-list American celebrities. In the Indian sci-fi epic Kalki 2898 AD, his stature becomes literal: In his role as the 7-foot-tall immortal warrior Ashwatthama, the 81-year-old towers over his younger co-stars, all of whom are draws in their own right. (A handy way for the uninitiated to measure the relative fame of an Indian actor is to note the length of their introduction in a movie — the bigger the name, the more elaborate the entrance.) The sheer amount of star power in this film is overwhelming, but that isn’t even the most ambitious thing about it.
Writer-director Nag Ashwin means for Kalki 2898 AD to be nothing less than the ultimate sci-fi epic. Its scope is huge, covering 6,000 years of mythological history. Its run time is long, telling the first part of a two-part story over three jam-packed hours. (To be fair, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies aren’t much shorter.) And its production was expensive — reportedly around $72 million, one of the biggest budgets ever for an Indian movie. The filmmakers hope it will be a crossover event akin to S.S. Rajamouli’s record-breaking hit RRR, not only within India’s disparate film industries (Bachchan is known as a Bollywood actor, while co-stars Prabhas and Kamal Haasan work in Telugu and Tamil films, respectively) but internationally as well.
The film’s look, rendered almost entirely through CGI, will certainly feel familiar to Western audiences, with elements that recall the beloved sci-fi franchises Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Matrix, Dune, and especially Mad Max: Fury Road. The story is more specifically Indian, taking the Hindu myth of Kalki — the 10th and final incarnation of the god Vishnu, who will come to lead humanity into a new era of peace and justice — and transporting it to a dystopian sci-fi setting. But while references to magical weapons and folkloric heroes may go over the heads of all but the best-informed foreign viewers, the story’s arc follows the familiar beats of a Chosen One narrative.
