Brahmastra review thread [WITH SPOILERS]

As the main review thread has clear instructions to not post spoilers I've created this thread so that those of us who want to post reviews which might include spoilers can do so. 

The title clearly mentions that this thread will have spoilers so enter at your own risk. 

@Mods I don't know if such threads are allowed, if not you can merge this in the main one. 

ETA : My review is on the Page 2.

Question 

Who was shiva’s mom? Deepika? I couldn’t see her face but from body it looked like it was her.🧐🤯😶‍🌫️😶🫢

I have entered don’t throw me out as I’m entering as a spectator and be cool to see others comments.. here !! I will be quiet 🤫 

 M A S T E R P I E C E - 4.8/5 

The "Astraverse" is a unique cinematic universe. Since we in the audience are cheering for the real-life wedded pair, Ranbir and Alia have an abundance of charisma and style that jumps off the screen and captures your heart. In every sense, this is a stunning tale that serves as the ideal prologue to one of the greatest trilogies in Hindi film history. That will make every fan of Indian cinema happy. Additionally, for the money they spent, the VFX quality is unmatched.

Angreji dekh rahe ho Laundey ki uper, phir. Khan Saab ki entry shuro mein hi ho jaati hai, aur janaab kya lag rahe hain. Poori seetiyaan hooting shuro, ye cameo se badh ke tha. Mujhe Dev wala Ladka Srk hi lagta hai, he & deepika would be apt couple for Dev version.

It will give you goosebumps several times. Definitely view this movie on a large screen. The second-best 3D film after Avatar. Despite having a smaller budget than Marvel, a number of things were accomplished that sometimes exceeded Marvel. The hype was true to form. I am really excited about the upcoming sections. The starting point has been established. I hope everyone enjoys it and doesn't boycott it for pointless problems. A mythology well worth viewing. The explanations were excellent.

Alia's entry is biggest plus of this film. She completely owned RK in intro scene & her dance on chikni chameli was Super se bhi Uper. She has very prominent role & I totally loved her performance.

The entire cast performed admirably. I absolutely adored it. And SRK, a charismatic cameo ( playing a scientist called Mohan Bhargava). He is on screen for every minute, which is excellent. There is yelling and applause. It's wonderful to see how much SRK is adored. The Nandi Bail superpower of Nagarjuna also struck viewers as one of the coolest sights they'd ever seen on a big screen. Despite the fact that he doesn't have much to do with the plot, his character nonetheless manages to look cool and receive enthusiastic applause from the audience whenever he appears on screen. After seeing Mouni Roy, I have become her fan for sure, and it was a wise choice to cast her as this sinisterly cool baddie. If you possessed superhuman abilities, you would want to kill her since she captured her so effectively.

It is definitely entertaining and worth watching. Ayan Mukharji is credited with taking Indian cinema to a new level. His plotting and direction are remarkable. This VFX-heavy film surpasses all others from Bollywood.

Ab itni angreji parh ke kya karoge bey, logout karo & lapak ke book karo tickets, Enjoy karo.

Visual effects were decent on screen yes it was marvel-esque, so don’t know how many people will like that, but the cinematic experience was good.

Superb cinematography too!

Edit: adding a few extra points i forgot:

Background score and music top notch and also the choreography and presentation of songs. The final moments of dance ka Bhoot song were epic. 
Performance wise Amitabh Bachchan was much better than the rest.

Junoon was OK in parts. 

Her sidekicks though not menacing at all. Needed more work on the villains.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!! 

The love story is not great, you don’t feel the instant connection with them, and you can see they are really trying to sell the soulmates at first sight trope, but we can see the desperate attempt and it falls flat and feels forced, only saw their chemistry in patches and that doesn’t work for the story.

The character of Isha in the whole film seems pointless, even with her being a trigger to his powers is not felt, it should’ve been connected to  his mother instead. Mouni has a meatier role than Alia. Also her performance is pretty average, so far she has only done it with well written and fleshed out characters, the reason why I always stop from calling her truly great because the actresses in the 90’s were convincing the audience even with shittier written roles.

Some were saying Alia will probably have a better role in the next one but with, people are saying Deepika is the one representing jalastra, and with the story being about Dev will she really have anything great to do?

Dialogues are cringy as f***, Amitabh’s performance and delivery saved it in his scenes actually he was the best part of the movie, unfortunately SRK’s dialogues were cringe and he couldn’t save those, although his presence was enjoyable for those few minutes. Dimple Kapadia literally had a two minute role I think she only had one dialogue… I’m thinking these actors like Dimple and Nagarjuna are going to have bigger parts in the next one or I don’t know why the hell they spent all that money on their fees for few minute appearances, when it could’ve been done with any actor.

I saw Ranbir’s effort, felt like he was convincing as Shiva.

The Astras history or introduction is only talked about at the beginning, i wish there was a way to flesh that out. In later parts we just saw very quick glimpses of them.

The movie was alright, my expectations were a bit too high, but I am so happy it has got a good opening whether it sustains is to be seen but I am happy BoycottBollywood gang didn’t succeed in their nonsense. 

also… my poor tenzing

Saw the movie and it was above average maybe a 3/5.

Good -

The vfx (pretty awesome for a Bollywood movie)

The background score (For shiva’s character) and the songs in general 

The world building (to some extent)*

Amitabh Bachchan.

Mouni (she got a good role and delivered) I don’t like her much but I guess she worked hard for this one.

Bad -

The dialogues. OmG who writes such cringey dialogues. It’s very silly. None of the characters - the leads, the supporting cast or special appearance actors - can make it work. 

The love story felt forced. There is no connect and it takes up so much time-  Time that they could have used to show the world building more *

Exposition - too much voiceover. “Show don’t tell” is what they should do instead of Amitabh’s character shoving exposition after exposition at us.

Some disconnect in character motivation and action.

*spoilers*
Characters who could have lended a hand at the final battle just go away for no reason. All those guardians just vanish when they should have stayed and fought against the dark forces. They left the kids party behind.

the intro to the love story is also cringe. All the sidey characters also disappear all of a sudden. Shiva and Isha falling that deeply in love in 1 meet doesn’t make any sense - on paper or on screen.

Ps - since they wanted to build on mythology I think they could have used more Sanskrit shlokas and poems etc in the background music ( which already exists. No need to even think of lyrics). Eg the shiva strotam used in “kaun hai woh” song or the Sanskrit part of “dheevara” song where the hero’s ascent is likened to that of Hanuman’s in bb1- it’s so powerful it stays with you. Something like that was missing - would have enhanced the viewing experience even more. 

My Brahmastra Review

Before I start the review, I would like to confess that I went in as a huge supporter of this film mainly due to its genre. Indian mythology punched with VFX is dope for me as I am huge fan of Marvel movies.

Brahmastra is an avant-garde theatrical experience  , first of its kind , a promising never seen before visual spectacle derailed by clunky writing, uninspired screenplay and horrific dialogues. Yet, there's so much to appreciate, the effort and dedication shines through and lets be honest, far lesser films have minted money at the BO. Brahmastra should work because its not dull or boring despite its glaring flaws.Overall, its neither terrible not superior, but deserves a chance.

The film begins with the cameo of my favourite superstar(by now even the ants on your sofa know this, so definitely not a spoiler). He sets the fantastical tone of the film perfectly,he's so charming and witty, that you demand him more. By now, we are also introduced to the Astraverse by Amitji's masterful voice-over.

Next, we see the film's hero, a gareeb horcruxy Mumbai ka DJ with Mr Indiaish past who gets flashes of live events happening somewhere else much like our favourite Harry Puttar. He instantly falls in love with the myserious looking rich london returned Isha( Alas! She is not mysterious at all). The problem begins right here ! The love story is so unncessary and juvenile that it just doesnt fit in Ayan's universe which he creates with so much care. Isha is a glorified flowerpot who has repetitive dialogues like "Kaun ho tum Shiva" , "Mujhse sach kyun chupaya" , "Main tumhari pyaar mein kab ki jal gayi". I have to confess here that I waited for Alia's big character reveal till the last 4 seconds of the film but NO! She remained the annoying girlfriend till the end who had to be saved all the godamn time! All she did was scream "Shiva". This is majorly a writing flaw. So much could have been better if Alia had her own superpower apart from activating Shiva's Agniastra. Anyway, a jobless Isha immediately( we never know what she does for a living, maybe nothing?) join's Shiva in his newly found quest for saving the guardians of Brahmastra which take them to Varanasi(btw, the girl had just met him for like what? twice and she was okay to risk her life). At this point, the supporter in me was unsettled but I was still like "theek hai chalo, afterall its a bollywood movie, we should not forget that" . Anyway, they reach varanasi and sing Kesariya(a surprise is there!) and then enters Nagarjuna! The subsequent sequences of the trio evading the Dark force led by a sexy Junoon and her bandarmen (extremely useless with no impact whatsoever, again bad writing!) and their escape to Guru's ashram with a fantastic car chase sequence is my favourite part of this film. Especially, the Nandi-Astra reveal and the entire fight sequence. Magnificently done! The supporter in me squealed in excitement!  Then comes the pre-interval sequence which was extraordinary and the supporter in me started dancing!I was like YAY! Ayan has done it!

Then comes the second half! Enters Mr Bachchan as Brahmansh ka Guruji with his baritone voice and a paternal presence! I have to admit that even though we have seen Mr Bachchan play these roles to the T many times, I had no complaints. Guruji became Shiva's guide and our encyclopedia to the world of Astraverse! I don't know about others but I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the movie where new characters with different astras like pavan-astra, Nag-Dhanush, Gajastra were revealed. Even though these characters are not fleshed out, I enjoyed the light-hearted moments of Shiva's training at the ashram(while Isha was away) until he fully realized his potential. It was breezy and aided with the fantastic Deva - Deva song.

Now comes the Achilles heel, the third Act which ruined the movie for me to a large extent. While Shiva was training, Junoon gained more powers from her deity Brahm-Dev(Not speaking much about him as its a spoiler) and gathered an army near the Ashram. They have only one motive and that's the "Brahmastra". 

That's it! Within the next 10 minutes, there's too much of information about Shiva's parents, characters are comically placed next to each other in screenplay and there's forced fireworks! I mean Junoon and Guruji come face to face like a theatre show is happening in a closed auditorium! Hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time. Then quickly, there's an attack from Junoon's men clad in Black robes and voila! We see an overlong, boring battle which is supposedly the climax of the film! I have never seen a longer climax than this film! It goes on and on and on with VFX overdose and jarring sound effects and just when I thought its over, the climax continues with renewed VFX assualt with one thing remaining constant : Alia playing the damsel in distress.By the time the movie ended , I was exhausted and gasping for breathThe supporter in me had sank without a trace! I was like why? The execution could have been so much better! Why no one from the team pointed out these glaring flaws in writing/screenplay to Ayan or karan in these past 10 years? The dialogues throughout the film are abysmal and again I have the same question .. Why?

The VFX is the only department which is great! There's infact an overdose! If the action sequences had more finesse and less CGI then they would have been more impactful I guess! There's no emotional gravitas to the characters, I couldn't care less about Shiva-Isha love story. I did not understand why they fell in love apart from the fact that they are RaLia? I did not understand why Dimple kapadia whizzeled in and out of the frames?

Coming to the performances, Ranbir has the greatest character arc and he does well! He did look haggard in some scenes but most probably its because he had already become 37-38 by the time the film completed its shooting. He's earnest and does well with the green screen sequences! Alia is luminous, looks great but is given an annoying/thankless role which had the scope of hamming and she gave in bits and parts! Both have been saddled with cheesy dialogues which made the supporter in me feel like running away and hide my face somewhere in the dark! Nagarjuna does great with his character, terrific screen presence! Amit Ji was first rate :) just perfect. Mouni Roy was terrific in the film. Infact , she looked her part the most and was menacing throughout. I have problem with the people who are judging her because of her TV background. Just look at her as an actor in the film and not judge her because of her past and then rate her performance! There's nothing to comment on the Ashram kids, they had no presence. 

The music is expectedly good, the BGM is also good but jarring in parts. Overall, I liked 3/4th of the movie overlooking the writing/screenplay/dialogue flaws. But this movie is not terrible as the samosa critics without payment are saying. Far lesser films have worked at the BO before. I would be highly disappointed if this doesnt work because it will mean, we will be deluged with more pushpa's and KGF's. Why no one judges the misogyny and crassness of those movies? If those movies can make 1000 crores then Brahmastra with its flaws should atleast make 500!