Ok so my final verdict on the movie Kalli , not
VFX is very petty. Doesn't feel real at places
Story first half is very slow and actually unorganised you don't even understand what is happening and why. Deepika for example I wasn't even able to understand what is happening to her and what is she doing.
Second half story gets clear and you might understand
They only tried to garner public sentiment by bringing Puranas and Mahabharata reference. Uske bina bhi story ban sakti thi. They are repeatedly bringing that this time is Godless and believing in God is banned (then how some of them have God's chain)
Mahabharata references seem funny . Not just about the Karna glorification (which I have already explained), even otherwise they took what's app forward of Karna pushing back Arjun's rath by 3 steps while Arjun displacing Karna's by 10 and then Krishna actually explains who this enemy is, like Arjun never knew who Karna was. And they made an animated Amitabh (won't call it VFX Amitabh) for Ashwatthama war scenes. Like why?? Usse achha un scenes k liye Abhishek Bachchan ko le lete. Ashwatthama called Karna as Mitra(ab ye kab ho gaya). Also the face of Karna was same as that of Bhairava, so why did Ashwatthama need him to actually fight for Deepika to recognise? Shouldn't he actually feel resemble is face even when he saw his "Mitra's" doppelganger for first time. Also he says Vijaya Dhanush is more powerful than Gandeev. What the hell. Now Gandeev is with the villian and Vijaya will probably be used by the positive side, as I said indirectly villian being helped by Arjun.
Out of nowhere a girl gets Ashwatthama's mani and she lands onto Ashwatthama's place(heights of co incidence)
And why was the need to say there is only one God? All religions are waiting for it(resurrection, second coming, Kalki etc) I mean yes you want to have global appeal but that seemed out of place especially when this Avtar is of Vishnu and Shiva himself is a different deity. We might say they are one but obviously when it comes to avtaarvaad they have different presence.
They nicely created the mythical city of Shambhala. The only Hindus element I liked in the movie. However the chief of Shambhala was named Mariyam. Was it a reference to mother of Jesus?? Can't be sure, and Shambhala had people of all ethnicities. Many Buddhist monks, many Roman pagans, and all form their army as per their traditional warfare in modern setup.
The guest appearances were nice especially that of Rajamouli was surprising. Prabhas says that ye pakad lenge to 5 saal nhi chhodenge (reference to Bahubali series which took 5 years of Prabhas). But at the same time with so many actors they had to spend time for giving each some importance which dragged the movie...
Overall an okayish movie if you remove Mahabharata angle. Their distortion of Mahabharata made it very annoying and non linked to the epic.
Let's see how second part will be since right now Kalki isn't even born. Will they have a third movie too, or will the second movie have him grown up, but if that then how will they take it? Prabhas won't be the main lead or Kalki would be a secondary character to Bhairav/Karna?
Kamal Hasan had only two scenes as the ruler of this dystopian future, maybe second part will explore him more.
P.S. now that they have brought this Mahabharata angle, they should make Kamal Hasan's character the reincarnation of Duryodhan (quite possible since Duryodhan was the incarnation of Kali demon, who is the governor of Kaliyuga) so they can easily make the dystopian future chief as a Kali demon's another incarnation. That will have Ashwatthama and Karna fighting against a Duryodhan with Gandeev
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