Last weekend, I watched Kalki 2898AD. I loved the way they have linked the Kurukshetra war, the past and the future, making it a pretty good blend of mythology and sci-fi. I also loved Amitabh Bachchan’s character and his portrayal of it. However, I couldn’t ignore the huge number of similarities that this movie has with multiple Hollywood movies and movie franchises as a whole—Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther. Hell! They even tweaked the Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant music that is used for Thor’s ‘mass entry’ in Ragnarok and used it for Prabhas’ character. But they still did a decent job of making the movie watchable and entertaining, EXCEPT FOR Prabhas’ ‘Bhairava.’

I am trying to understand why Arshad Warsi is made to look like the villain for saying, ‘They made Prabhas a joker,’ when the truth is there is nothing wrong in what he said. He didn’t call Prabhas a joker or degrade him personally. The dig was made at the makers for coming out with a character that can only be termed cringe-worthy. While I loved the ending reveal of Prabhas’ alter-ego, I cannot fathom how on earth they made literally a joker out of Bhairava, the undefeated hero. The dialogues were super-cringe and his execution of that, even more cringe, and for that the lion’s share of responsibility should go to the writers, who must have been stoned teenagers. There is no other way they could come out with such desperately wannabe humorous lines and made a superstar perform like this.

Trust me, the second-hand embarrassment that I got by sitting through the never-ending intro scene of Bhairava was so bad that I was worried Hari would judge me for watching it. So yeah, when someone calls it out, the least the makers can do is to accept the criticism with humility and working on improving things in the second part, not bashing the person who says the truth by twisting his words and ‘sending his kids Bujji toys.’

Also published on Medium.