Kalki 2898 AD

NOW IN THEATERS! Slap on some protective fluoride visors for all the futuristic eye candy on display in the Indian sci-fi epic Kalki 2898 AD, written and directed by world maker Nag Ashwin. It begins thousands of years ago when gods walked the Earth and battled with each other. We then jump to 874 years from now, where civilization has grown back crooked after a huge war. All the resources like clean air and water are hoarded in The Complex, where the wealthy few dwell, with Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Haasan) ruling over it all. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is in extreme poverty and suffers from mass sterility. Only a few women can conceive, and those women are hunted down by the sinister Commander Manas (Saswata Chatterjee) and his forces.

“…the world is in extreme poverty and suffers from mass sterility. Only a few women can conceive, and those women are hunted down…”

Captured females are taken back to The Complex, where they are pampered like expensive cattle for an unknown fate while everyone else eats s**t. Despite the lure of the good life, Sum 80 (Deepika Padukone) goes to great lengths to hide her blossoming pregnancy. There is a prophecy clung to among the Shambhala rebels that one day, a woman was going to give birth to a god that would liberate them all. There is Bhairava (Prabhas), an avatar of the god Vishnu in the form of a sassy bounty hunter who is wreaking havoc in the streets. There is also the old god Ashwatthama (Amitabh Bachchan), who cannot die and is waiting in the shadows to fulfill his 3000-year-long destiny.

Look, I enjoyed the two new Dune movies a lot, but they missed a hundred opportunities to launch the kind of giant epic fresco imagery that the subject demanded. Kalki 2898 AD misses no opportunities to amaze with endless vistas of speculative marvels. Ashwin knows how to put the visual icing all over the movie screen. Over and over again, we are treated to these deep perception landscapes of the future that fill the entire eyeline. Pictures like this make watching projected movies on huge screens so much fun.