Kalki 2898-AD

The year is 2898. The earth has dried out, the water is gone, and what is left of humanity lives in the city of Kasi beneath an enormous structure called the Complex. The lord of the Complex uses women as experimental subjects, looking for one particular pregnancy. A woman named Sumathi escapes, and the child she carries is awaited as Kalki, the last avatar of Vishnu. The bounty hunter Bhairava is after her to collect; Ashwatthama, immortal since the age of the Mahabharata, is after her to protect. The idea is to lay two genres on top of each other: science-fiction dystopia and Hindu epic. Ashwatthama's immortality is a curse, and the best stretch of the film is a man still paying for a mistake he made three thousand years ago. Nag Ashwin wrote and directed. Prabhas plays Bhairava, Amitabh Bachchan plays Ashwatthama, Kamal Haasan the lord of the Complex, Deepika Padukone Sumathi. The budget ran to around six billion rupees, about seventy-five million dollars, making it one of the most expensive Indian productions ever. Its sixty-six million dollar opening weekend set an Indian record, passing RRR and Jawan, and the total finished above ten billion rupees. Who it is for: anyone who likes large-scale Indian commercial cinema and science fiction mixed with mythology. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a self-contained story. This is openly the first part of a series, the ending is unresolved, and the desert chase in the middle runs longer than it needs to.