A little over a decade ago, a horror movie called The Devil Inside caused a bit of a stir. The film has been long-forgotten, and for all the right reasons. It was, after all, a cheaply produced attempt to capitalise on the found-footage trend, released in the ‘dumping ground’ month of January. But The Devil Inside remains etched in popular consciousness for exactly one reason; its ending. After roughly 90 minutes of nonsense, director William Brent Bell chose to conclude the movie with… a link to a website. “For more information, visit…” read the on-screen text. Audiences were outraged. There was pandemonium in the press. The Devil Inside earned an unthinkably low F CinemaScore — only five movies have achieved this since — and in its second weekend, registered one of the biggest drops in recorded history.
But where were the pitchforks when Kalki 2898 AD essentially did the same thing? How could a three-hour slog that barely even qualifies as a movie manage to earn over Rs 1,000 crore without anybody looking heavenwards and demanding justice? Directed by Nag Ashwin, Kalki 2898 AD has drama, comedy, action — often in conflict with each other — but the overwhelming sensation that it leaves you with is that of being royally scammed. Kalki 2898 AD isn’t a film; it’s a proposal for one. It ends not on a cliffhanger, but a call-to-action. It is — and there’s no better way to describe it — the cinematic equivalent of clickbait.
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Prabhas in a still from Kalki 2898 AD.
Kalki 2898 AD is the rare movie of its size that ploughs on for hours with neither a hero nor a villain. A mundane middle-manager named Manas fills in for the actual antagonist — Supreme Yaskin, who looks like a half-rendered Supreme Leader Snoke from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But while many movies have gotten by without an actual adversary to add conflict to the proceedings, you’d be hard-pressed to find a film that doesn’t bother providing its audience with a protagonist. For virtually 175 minutes of Kalki 2898 AD’s 180-minute run-time, the bounty hunter Bhairava, played by Prabhas, comes across more as a comedic side-character — think Tyrese from the Fast & Furious movies — than the godlike being that Ashwin intends for him to be.
The problem isn’t that Bhairava’s supposed turn from selfish to saviour happens literally five minutes before the end credits start rolling, the problem is that this turn is entirely accidental. Which means that Bhairava’s sole objective throughout the movie is to find his way into the Complex — a hovering inverted pyramid that looms over Ashwin’s dystopian wasteland. The Complex is where the elite have retreated to, while the rest of the world lives off their scraps in the cyberpunk streets of Kashi. Having grown up on tales of this hallowed haven for the rich, Bhairava has made it his life’s mission to collect the one million “units” that can apparently buy a person a ticket to paradise. Hardly a valorous cause, you’d agree.
The obvious question arises: if the Complex is such an exclusive place, why would those in charge of protecting its exclusivity make it so easily accessible? But Kalki 2898 AD ignores all such observations with the determined disinterest of a kindergartener being told that he needs to memorise his tables. Not only does Bhairava gain access to the Complex without breaking a sweat, he is also able to crash a party and entertain the guests with a cringe dance routine. Ashwin doesn’t take the opportunity to say anything interesting about income inequality or the class divide in this sequence. Bhairava is indistinguishable from a tourist in a foreign land, and not someone who has a bone to pick with the people who’ve sentenced him to a lifetime of oppression in their literal shadow.
But this is the clumsiness with which the character has been written. Ashwin appears to be living under the misconception that Bhairava is a cross between Han Solo and Peter Quill — a loveable rogue who is self-aware about his self-interest. He even gets a flashback scene where he’s shown to have been rescued by a Yondu-type father-figure played by Dulquer Salmaan. But his last-minute change of heart, designed as it has been to echo Han’s heroic awakening in Star Wars, can hardly be described as character development; it’s a contrivance. Han chose to return to save his friends after spending the entire movie claiming that he’s in it only for himself. Bhairava saves Sumathi — that’s the pregnant damsel in distress played by Deepika Padukone — because he’s possessed. Two seconds later, he snaps back to the same reality in which he wants nothing more than to feed her to the wolves.
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Amitabh Bachchan in a still from Kalki 2898 AD.
Not only is Bhairava entirely tangential to the film’s primary plot, he actually comes across as the villain for most of its run-time. But whether or not this is deliberate is debatable. It’s safe to assume that every human being with a beating heart will immediately attach themselves to the Sumathi and the cursed Ashwatthama — both are dedicated to protecting her unborn child, which is about as noble as intentions go. Anybody who stands with them gets an automatic thumbs up — this includes Anna Ben’s rebel character — and anybody who stands in their way becomes the de-facto antagonist; those are the rules. This adversarial position is alternatively filled by Yaskin, Manas, and, bafflingly, Bhairava. We get not one but two fight sequences between him and Ashwatthama, played by Amitabh Bachchan. This is the sour note that Kalki 2898 AD ends on.
It shouldn’t matter where the filmmaker wants to take this story in future instalments, just as it shouldn’t matter how noble his intentions were behind making this one. The only thing that matters — the only thing that should matter — is what’s on the screen. And what’s on the screen simply isn’t good enough. Bhairava isn’t a reluctant hero, because in order to be one, he’d first have to contemplate doing something heroic. This doesn’t happen. In fact, when he discovers that he stands to earn a greater bounty for someone as valuable as Sumathi, he doubles down on his efforts to catch her, as opposed to protecting her from Manas and his mercenaries. Bhairava had a choice, but he made the wrong one. He isn’t a saviour, he’s an opportunist. In that way, he’s a lot like Kalki 2898 AD itself.
Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
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