‘Kalki 2898 AD’ Delivers the Telugu Epic of My Dreams

Check out my quick review/recommendation for Kalki 2898 AD on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube and follow me on Letterboxd to see what I’m watching.

Every now and then, a movie comes along that feels like something you could only wish for. It’s too big, too risky, too specifically tailored to your taste to ever actually be made, yet somehow, here it is on the screen. As I sat in the theater watching Nag Ashwin’s Kalki 2898 AD, I simply could not believe I was witnessing so many of my wildest cinematic dreams play out in one movie.

It’s no secret that I am a Telugu film fan. S. S. Rajamouli’s RRR was my gateway drug to a world of cinema that quickly became a favorite. The action, the music, the absolutely stunning superstars—Telugu movies deliver so many of my favorite aspects of cinema. Beyond all other Indian film industries, Telugu movies are just my jam.

In my quest to check out as many Telugu movies as I could, I watched Sukumar classics like Rangasthalam with Ram Charan as well as Allu Arjun starrers Arya 2 and Pushpa, with the latter becoming an instant favorite thanks in part to the incredible music of Devi Sri Prasad. 

I searched for anything I could find starring Rana Daggubati and quickly fell in love with his range Viraata Parvam and his intensity in Nene Raju Nene Mantri. I checked out hits (Arjun Reddy) and flops (Liger) starring Vijay Deverakonda, expanded my horizons to other South Indian industries with Kantara and Vikram, and even branched into Bollywood with a detour into the gorgeous visual style of Sanjay Leela Bhansali and a deep dive into Ranveer Singh’s filmography.

My favorite film from my 90+ movie Telugu deep dive, which quickly became one of my top 10 all-time favorites, was Baahubali, Rajamouli’s record-shattering epic starring Prabhas. Every frame is stunning, the story is moving, the music is phenomenal, and I’ve now watched both The Beginning and The Conclusion so many times that I’m starting to memorize the lines in Telugu and Tamil respectively. (Netflix only offers the films in Tamil and Hindi, but The Beginning is available in Telugu from Apple and Amazon.)

Baahubali led me down a rabbit hole of Prabhas movies on streaming and I was finally able to see the superstar on the big screen for the first time with Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefire at the end of 2023. Experiencing his screen presence on my TV was one thing, but witnessing it in a theater only further illustrated why he is one of India’s biggest stars.

So now that you know the backstory and we’ve returned from the interval break, let’s talk about Kalki 2898 AD.

This sci-fi epic combines stories and themes from the Mahabharata with elements from cinematic marvels like Dune, Blade Runner, Children of Men, and even the MCU to make something truly special. 

In a dystopian future world, fertile women are rounded up by Commander Manas (Saswata Chatterjee) and the forces of Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Hassan) to create a mystery serum. Ancient warrior Ashwatthama (Amitabh Bachchan) searches for a savior and discovers Sum 80 (Deepika Padukone) the only woman who has been able to carry a pregnancy past 150 days. But she’s also being pursued by Bhairava (Prabhas), a bounty hunter who wants to capture her to earn enough credits to live in the paradise world of The Complex.

As someone who loves sci-fi and lore, this movie satiated my hunger for great world-building and visual style. The poverty-stricken city of Kashi is giving us Coruscant underbelly by way of Arrakis. The beautiful world of Shambala has hints of Wakanda and even Pandora from James Cameron’s Avatar. The Complex offers beautiful vistas reminiscent of The Creator and Rogue One as well as far less successful but visually interesting films like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and Jupiter Ascending. But Ashwin hasn’t simply copied from these inspirations, he’s combined them with his own culture to create something new.

For Western audiences, Ashwatthama may have shades Gandalf, Bhairava is serving Han Solo with a tiny pinch of Jack Sparrow, and Bujji, Bhairava’s car and companion voiced by Keerthy Suresh in the Telugu version, may feel a bit like the Millennium Falcon meets K-2SO, but all of these characters are very much their own thing, and often rooted in Hindu mythology. 

In addition, it’s loaded with Indian cinema cameos from the likes of Dulquer Salmaan, Mrunal Thakur, Ram Gopal Varma, Brahmanandam, Vijay Deverakonda, and even a hilarious appearance from Rajamouli poking fun at his notoriously long shooting schedule for Baahubali. 

With all these appearances and references as well as a cast filled with big names from across languages, Kalki 2898 AD feels like the Avengers of Indian cinema.

But it works surprisingly well without that prior knowledge too. 

The action is fun, the characters are appealing, and the way that it builds to an absolutely epic cliffhanger conclusion in the second half makes it a stellar theater experience regardless of your knowledge of Telugu actors or Hindu texts.

I felt lucky to see Kalki 2898 AD in a movie theater with cheering fans, lucky that something of this scale can be made outside of Hollywood—and for a budget that probably doesn’t even cover the cost of the digital de-aging on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. 

While Hollywood wages an IP war that results in the watering down of an auteur’s vision or the disappointing box office results for movies that do try to give us something unique, it’s nice to see something like Kalki 2898 AD making waves.