There was a time I used to watch movies in theaters almost every weekend, sometime even two movies in a single weekend. (No. I was never a professional movie critic and did not watch movies for the living. I just love movies and the experience of watching them in cinema hall as a community experience) But, in last 5 years I have been to cinemas only once. Yesterday happened to be an unplanned visit to a mall that resulted into me watching the recent movie Kalki 2898 AD in theater. Here is me telling you how I felt while watching the movie.

Many people had tagged me on X since the movie got released asking about the sequences from Mahabharata referred in the movie, so I had a fair bit of idea about the parts that were certainly going to disappoint me. That aside, let’s dive into yesterday’s experience.

Spoiler Warning: Some parts of this post may fall into the spoiler category so if you haven’t seen the movie and want to watch it and would not want it spoiled, please skip this post. Rest of you, let’s dive in.

The movie starts with the last day of the Kurukshetra war of Mahabharata. A battered Ashwatthama is alone in the middle of the battlefield surrounded by all the dead bodies. He picks up a thread of grass and invokes Brahmastra to destroy the Pandava lineage resulting into the Brahmastra killing the unborn child of Uttara. Shrikrishna enters the scene. Ashwatthama confronts him and tries to kill him. Shrikrishna defeats him and takes away him gem, cursing him to live till eternity. Ashwatthama suddenly mellowed down asks for the way to atone and Shrikrishna tells him that he wanted to kill him and now he can atone only by saving him when he returns as Kalki many centuries later. Then Ashwatthama is shown entering a temple.

Now let’s talk about how this scene plays out in Mahabharata. After Draupadi received the news of Ashwatthama attacking the Panchal camp at night and kill her sons and brothers, she demanded justice for this unjust killing. Bhima went looking for Ashwatthama. Shrikrishna, Arjuna and Satyaki went after him. When Bhima found Ashwatthama hiding into Ved Vyasa’s ashram, Ashwatthama fired Brahmashira at him. Bhima did not know the counter to this supreme weapon of Brahmadeva, luckily Arjuna was not far behind who countered it with his own Brahmashira. This conflict could have destroyed the universe, that’s why Ved Vyasa asked both of them to call back their weapons. Arjuna did as asked but Ashwatthama was incapable of recalling the weapon, so he instead directed it towards Uttara’s womb. Pandava did not want to execute their Guru’s son so they took his Mani instead and Shrikrishna cursed him to roam around in misery for the next 3000 years. (Mahabharata does not mention what would happen at the end of 3000 years.)

So the scene of Shrikrishna and Ashwatthama encounter did not play out in the middle of battlefield but at Ved Vyasa’s ashram instead. Shrikrishna was not alone but was with Arjuna, Satyaki and Bhima. Ashwatthama did not try to attack and kill Shrikrishna. There was no mention of Kalki Avatar or Shrikrishna telling Ashwatthama to protect him. Now, this last part is fine by me as far as creative liberty is concerned. If I had written this script I would have also made Ashwatthama the guardian of the Kalki. (I may have played it out bit differently though, but that’s ok.)

Back to the movie. 6000 years after the Kurukshetra war, we are shown a dystopian world inspired by various Hollywood movies specially Star Wars with Indian names thrown around. Kashi is the last surviving city. Ganga has dried up. People have forgotten the guardian of Kashi Bhairava (but then the character of Bhairava is introduced few minutes later), fertility has gone down and the floating “complex” is hunting for fertile women. Everyone wants to live into the complex but need one million “units” to gain entry.

We are introduced to the reluctant bounty hunter who is not Han Solo but Bhairava. Next one hour is really boring where Prabhas tries to do some comedy, Disha Patani tries to introduce some glamour and not-Darth Vader tries to look menacing. We are introduced with Supreme Yaskin (I hope I got the name correct), who is not emperor Palpatine. Now this not-Palpatine seems to be the 200+ year old and is the reason for the misery of the world (how he did it is anybody’s guess) but he seems to be really weak physically but has some dark side like powers.

There is a mention of Project K, where women are made pregnant through a process called seeding and then some serum is extracted from their womb. They are repeating this process to get a woman to carry her pregnancy for 150 days but so far they have succeeded in only 90 days. But then miraculously Deepika’s character who was supposedly unfertile becomes pregnant, she hides it from everyone and manages to carry her pregnancy to 150 days. She manages to escape the complex with the help of a conveniently placed spy of the rebels side who are led by not-princess Leia.

If you are compelled to walk out of the theatre by this time I would urge you to stay, because this leads to the action packed second half of the movie. When Ashwatthama finally awakens. He regains his Mani and his strength and then he embarks on the mission to protect the mother of Kalki. The empire has put a huge bounty on her so many bounty hunters and raiders of the “Complex” are at her tail.

There is a wonderful fight sequence between Amitabh and Prabhas, which is then followed by an epic climactic battle sequence and the big reveal about the Prabhas’s character’s Mahabharata connection. Let me now talk about the next couple of Mahabharata references.

Some researcher working for the dark side stumbles upon Arjuna’s bow Gandiva. Now if you would recollect Mahabharata, Arjuna surrendered his bow to Varuna dev before embarking on the journey to Himalayas. (If I had to reintroduce Gandiva in this story, I would have somehow retrieved it from a waterbody.)

Ashwatthama recalled the backstory when during battle he was defeated by Arjuna but was protected by his dear friend Karna, who was even better than Arjuna. The flashback then shows the fictional story of Arjuna and Karna pushing each other’s chariots.

The biggest problem with this depiction is that it is not only inaccurate as per Mahabharata it also shows Arjuna as a pompous and arrogant character. First of all Ashwatthama did not consider Karna a friend or a greater warrior than Arjuna. Ashwatthama on multiple occasion had scolded Karna for his boastful and arrogant behavior while calling out Arjuna as better warrior than Karna. Secondly there were multiple occasions during the Kurukshetra war when Ashwatthama rescued Karna while I do not recollect any when Ashwatthama was rescued by Karna. Thirdly Arjuna was an incarnation of Nara and was the best of the lot in his times, not only as a warrior but also as a human being.

Creative liberty is fine but there has to be some boundaries, if they are crossed it becomes damaging. when you show Karna as a great hero who was wronged by Arjuna and Shrikrishna, how long before people start questioning Shrikrishna also. What happens when we start seeing Shrikrishna as a wrongdoer? Where does this stop?

Overall verdict – It’s a decently made movie with a first half that could have been tighter and better managed and an action packed well choreographed second half. I would have enjoyed the movie even more had it not constantly reminded me of Star Wars. I would have even loved the movie had it not distorted the Mahabharata. It could have kept the same story without distorting the great epic and then I would have recommended it to everyone.

Distortions done by badly made products are not harmful, they usually meet the fate of Adipurush. The problem is when an well made product carries such distortions. They have a tendency to leave a lasting impact. While I am not suggesting you do not watch this movie, I am certainly asking you to not trust cinema to tell you the authentic story of Mahabharata. There is no substitute to reading the unabridged editions. Dedicate some time and pick up the book. You will have plenty of time to thank me later.

Please do let me know your thought about the movie.

Disclaimer: This is the first instalment of a cinematic universe and we hope this pans out better and the portions referencing our Itihas are handled with more care in future instalments.

(The article was published on Gauravt.in on July 15, 2024 and has been reproduced here)