Watched Kalki in bits and pieces. The opening sequence from the Mahabharata piqued my interest, but it quickly waned due to the shoddy writing and clichéd concepts. Kalki presents itself as unique and original material by Indian creators, but unfortunately, it borrows overused ideas. I watched it in its Malayalam dub, and the poorly written dialogues put me off. Animation for the sake of animation and stunning art for the sake of it, without integrating organically into the storytelling, is as useless as the Mona Lisa in JPEG format. Call it an NFT—I don’t care.

With a runtime of just over three hours, they managed to give Shobana 12 seconds in a scene borrowed from Star Wars. It’s over 45 years since Princess Leia appeared in a hologram, and after all these years, we still couldn’t come up with something original, besides the cityscape inspired from Wakanda and Anakin Skywalker in the desert land of Tatooine on his Zephyr-G swoop. Whatever became of flying vimanas of Indian mythology? In this context my respect to Valmiki- the real OG.

The lack of original thinking is pronounced in the stunt choreography as well. We have a rich tradition of native martial arts and yet the creators had to rely on stock manoeuvres where the protagonist slides across surfaces one too many times in battles of wits against opponents much like juveniles or Tom in a frantic chase after Jerry. As long as they had fun doing those floor-slides, it’s justifiable much like jumping on a trampoline.

With the overwhelming number of celebrity actors in the screenplay, I’m betting they were picked out from a lucky draw from Bollywood’s Yellow Pages and selected for scenes by drawing the shortest straw.
The makers could have cast leading actors from each non-Bollywood state and still had enough room to feature celeb stars of Mumbai. A great opportunity wasted with such a stellar cast.

( For millennials: The Yellow Pages directory was a thick, printed book listing local businesses and services, organized by categories like “businesses” or “restaurants.” Before the internet, people used it to find contact information for companies and professionals in their area. It was like a paper version of Google for local searches.)

What I really wish for is the opening sequence of the war scenes taken from the Mahabharata to be made into a full extended cut—funded by what’s left of Anant Ambani’s wedding budget and stage decor.

Even so, it’s a good effort at creating a risky product. A product which needs to be sold in high numbers to break-even. I’m not certain how it did at the box office, but I hope it did well and found an audience that loves it. We need more creators who are willing to experiment and take risks. After all, creators need to flourish rather than perish.