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Kalki 2898 AD blends Star Wars with Hindu myth, plus a dash of RRR

Posted on June 29, 2024 by faz_business

Actor Amitabh Bachchan is a metaphorical giant of Indian cinema, a superstar of proportions that dwarf even A-list American celebrities. In the Indian sci-fi epic Kalki 2898 AD, his stature becomes literal: In his role as the 7-foot-tall immortal warrior Ashwatthama, the 81-year-old towers over his younger co-stars, all of whom are draws in their own right. (A handy way for the uninitiated to measure the relative fame of an Indian actor is to note the length of their introduction in a movie — the bigger the name, the more elaborate the entrance.) The sheer amount of star power in this film is overwhelming, but that isn’t even the most ambitious thing about it.

Writer-director Nag Ashwin means for Kalki 2898 AD to be nothing less than the ultimate sci-fi epic. Its scope is huge, covering 6,000 years of mythological history. Its run time is long, telling the first part of a two-part story over three jam-packed hours. (To be fair, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies aren’t much shorter.) And its production was expensive — reportedly around $72 million, one of the biggest budgets ever for an Indian movie. The filmmakers hope it will be a crossover event akin to S.S. Rajamouli’s record-breaking hit RRR, not only within India’s disparate film industries (Bachchan is known as a Bollywood actor, while co-stars Prabhas and Kamal Haasan work in Telugu and Tamil films, respectively) but internationally as well.

The film’s look, rendered almost entirely through CGI, will certainly feel familiar to Western audiences, with elements that recall the beloved sci-fi franchises Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Matrix, Dune, and especially Mad Max: Fury Road. The story is more specifically Indian, taking the Hindu myth of Kalki — the 10th and final incarnation of the god Vishnu, who will come to lead humanity into a new era of peace and justice — and transporting it to a dystopian sci-fi setting. But while references to magical weapons and folkloric heroes may go over the heads of all but the best-informed foreign viewers, the story’s arc follows the familiar beats of a Chosen One narrative.

A promo image for the Indian sci-fi blockbuster Kalki 2989 AD composites a young man and woman facing away from each other, with an older, white-bearded man in robes and holding a staff superimposed over both of them. In the background behind the man is a desert wasteland full of shattered, rusty wreckage. In the background behind the woman is a verdant mountain and lake, dotted with buildings.

This first chapter of the Kalki 2898 AD saga spends much of its run time setting up its characters and world, beginning with a caravan of refugees arriving in the futuristic city of Kasi, the last outpost of civilization after droughts and pollution have rendered most of the planet uninhabitable. Life is cheap in Kasi, where a single chicken egg fetches the same price as a human being on the black market. The one exception is fertile women, who have become extremely valuable in this dystopian future world: Whenever one is discovered, she’s sold and shipped off to the Complex, a floating pyramid above the city, where a wealthy minority hoard the few natural resources that are left.

SUM-80 (Deepika Padukone) is one of these women, and one of hundreds who live as lab rats at the pleasure of Supreme Yaskin (Haasan), a 200-year-old tyrant who extends his life by extracting a serum from the wombs of impregnated female captives. The women die in the process, but no matter; their corpses are thrown into an incinerator, and new girls take their place. SUM-80, understandably, wants to live, so she’s hiding her pregnancy from everyone around her. But it’s been five months, and the sadistic doctors who run this so-called Project K will notice soon.

Things are grim in a different way outside of the Complex, though affable bounty hunter Bhairava (Prabhas) does his best to keep the mood light. Indian films typically blend genres, and although Kalki 2898 AD is more serious-minded than most Bollywood fare — there are no true musical numbers, sadly, though characters do lip-sync to Santhosh Narayanan’s original songs — Bhairava and his wisecracking AI companion Bujji (Keerthy Suresh) bring much-needed, Star Wars-esque comedic banter to the film. Bhairava is a Han Solo type, motivated by self-interest and the pursuit of cash, or “units.” Like Han, he’s also a ladykiller, as we learn when the similarly roguish Roxie (Disha Patani) enters the narrative.

In a promo image for the Indian sci-fi blockbuster Kalki 2989 AD, a man in black clothing and a long black cape stands in a dark, V-shaped object that looks like a single-person spaceship with a crimson-lined interior and closing crimson highlights. Behind him in the darkness, a group of similar-looking ships glow against dark mountains.

At first, it isn’t clear how SUM-80, Bhairava, and 6,000-year-old badass Ashwatthama, who spends much of the movie hiding out in a cave, are connected. It’s never in doubt that they’ll meet up eventually, though, or that each of them will play their role in fulfilling the prophecy preached by a rebel group living in a hidden utopia known as Shambhala. Eventually, the action moves to the rebels’ sacred retreat. But first, SUM-80 must race across the wastelands, pursued by both Supreme Yaskin’s flunkies and Bhairava, who plans to exchange this precious hostage for admission to the Complex.

Some of the digital backgrounds VFX supervisor Praveen Kilaru and his team created for Kalki 2898 AD are absolutely stunning, and sci-fi fans who like nerding out on cool ships and badass vehicles will find a lot to get into here. (The design for Bujji, who can transform from a cool car to a cooler battle robot, is especially compelling.)

But the fact that this is just the first part of a two-part story creates some serious structural issues. The first two hours of the film pass at a lively but unhurried clip, but the final hour tries to cram too much into an already overstimulating epic battle scene. It feels panicky and confused as it rushes through crucial plot developments and exposition.

in a promo still for the Indian sci-fi blockbuster Kalki 2898 AD, a humanoid figure in metal armor and mask sits in a dark space, surrounded by metal spars

Comparisons between Kalki and RRR are inevitable, if only because the former is nakedly trying to replicate the success of the latter. But Nag Ashwin’s film is missing a few of the elements that made RRR so charming: There’s no central bromance, no exhilarating dance sequences, and no sense of surprise. There is comedy, but it’s isolated in certain sections of the film, and there’s much less romance and music than audiences might expect. It’s still an entertaining ride, with some cool imagery and exciting chase scenes. But by channeling the gravitas of Western sci-fi movies, Kalki 2898 AD loses some of the range that makes Indian movies special. Its ambition is to be applauded. Its self-seriousness, not so much.

Kalki 2898 AD is in theaters worldwide now.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’s smartest move is sidelining Immortan Joe

Posted on June 3, 2024 by faz_business

George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga complements and enhances the impact of his 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road in a lot of ways, but there’s only one I can’t stop thinking about: How little the new movie has to say about Immortan Joe, the original movie’s iconic arch-villain.

Sure, Joe’s lack of interaction with Anya Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa could be simply because Hugh Keays-Byrne, the actor who first put Immortan Joe on the screen, died in 2020. Lachy Hulme assumes the role for Furiosa, but perhaps George Miller reduced it out of respect for Keays-Byrne, who he worked with for many years.

But I’m skeptical. Joe’s consistent secondary status in Furiosa’s origin story fits the overall themes of Furiosa too well to be a coincidence: Immortan Joe, the demon of Imperator Furiosa’s last stand, wasn’t her nemesis at all. In fact, he wasn’t her anything.

Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy), forehead smeared with greasepaint, drives the war rig in George Miller’s Furiosa

This is in great contrast to Fury Road, where their beef seems deeply personal. Max Rockatansky wanders into somebody else’s narrative in Fury Road, as his stories usually go. This time, those somebodies are Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and Immortan Joe.

While Fury Road only subtly hints that Furiosa was once one of Joe’s captive harem of wives and incubators — the white wrappings of Furiosa’s top evoke the Wives’ impractical shifts — Theron confirmed that piece of her backstory in interviews. So Furiosa seems to have really personal reasons to hate Joe. And his response to her betrayal is presented as a towering rage, cresting mushroom cloud-like out of all proportion to her ability to withstand him.

Not to diminish the agency of the Five Wives in their own escape, but Joe considers them property that’s been stolen from him, not allies who betrayed him. Furiosa, however, he considers a traitor, worthy of his personal anger. And in the end, she’s the one who gets the honor of finally taking him down, underscoring her place on the same narrative level he occupies as Fury Road’s primary villain.

Which is why it’s so wild that Furiosa says, quietly and implacably throughout its entire run time, that Joe actually isn’t even a main character in her story. Sure, he buys her, but then he forgets she even existed. He didn’t take anything from her that hadn’t already been taken, didn’t teach her anything she hadn’t already learned from someone else, didn’t give her anything she hadn’t already taken for herself. When they do share scenes, and even trade dialogue, there’s no interpersonal ire or affection in either direction. In spite of their characters’ intensity, Hulme and Taylor-Joy keep a neutral distance of emotion.

It turns out, in Furiosa, that Furiosa’s life was actually framed by the completely different, utterly pathetic figure of Dementus, the Wasteland warlord who tortured her mother to death, sold Furiosa into slavery, killed her closest friend, and cost her her right arm. And just as emphatically, Furiosa says, Furiosa moved beyond revenge years before she ever stood against Joe.

What you saw in Fury Road, Furiosa says, was the furthest thing from personal to Furiosa. Immortan Joe was never The Guy. He was just the guy in the way. And the “guy” part might be the most important one.

l-r: Nathan Jones as Rictus Erectus and Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe stand surrounded by War Boys and huge vehicles in Mad Max: Fury Road.

The conversation that immediately surrounded Fury Road was about Immortan Joe as a Wasteland illustration of the death cult of capitalism and toxic masculinity. His very recognizable philosophy reduces all non-elites to things — women to Wives (sex slaves, forcibly impregnated) or Mothers (enslaved to produce breast milk for food), and men to War Boys (emphasis on boys), interchangeable cannon fodder addicted to the lie that they can only find purpose in violence for the True Leader.

This was all emphasized by the emasculating nature of Furiosa’s rebellion. After all, by the language of a country-and-Western song, she’s wounded him in the most devastating way a man can be wounded, by stealing his wife (Wives), his money (water), his car (the War Rig), and maybe even his dog (Nicholas Hoult’s hapless character Nux, if we want to stretch the metaphor a little bit).

Immortan Joe is an electrifying villain, and Furiosa doesn’t exactly skimp on him! A scene contrasting Dementus’ shaky appeal to the self-interest of the masses with the unshakable belief created by Joe’s death-cult propaganda is among the film’s most chilling. But there is an eternal risk in presenting such an operatic villain who also represents such a wide-ranging theme. If you’re not careful, making them powerful and capable enough to claim villain status also risks making them look aspirational. You can swing right around to making them seem cool.

Which is why it’s so damn smart of Furiosa to put this final nail in the coffin of Joe’s emasculation, by establishing that Fury Road’s sense of personal beef was all on Joe — on his fear, and his vulnerability, not on Furiosa’s. He isn’t even important to the woman who’s unmanning him.

In a cliche reversal for the cinematic ages, Immortan Joe was, for Furiosa, just Tuesday.

Karyn Kusama reveals how she knew Michelle Rodriguez would be a star

Posted on May 26, 2024 by faz_business

Not every filmmaker gets their debut feature enshrined in the Criterion Collection. But not every filmmaker’s debut feature packs the punch Girlfight does.

Decades after release, Karyn Kusama’s debut movie, Girlfight, still holds up — it’s no surprise that it launched her career as a director of subversive horror drama (Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation) and memorable television (Yellowjackets, Halt and Catch Fire, The Man in the High Castle), along with launching Michelle Rodriguez as a star. Girlfight is coming to the Criterion Collection on May 28, with a brand-new 4K digital restoration supervised by Kusama, new interviews and commentary from the director, and a slick new cover by Jillian Adel.

Girlfight, the story of a troubled high schooler who takes up boxing in secret as an outlet for her frustrations, aches with high school emotions in and out of the boxing ring. At the same time, it subverts boxing-movie tropes. Rodriguez plays Diana Guzman, a teenager who’s frequently in trouble for fighting at school and alienated from her father (Paul Calderón) at home. When she tries boxing in secret to get some of that tension off her chest, she shows a real talent for the sweet science. At the gym, she meets a boy (named Adrian, making Diana the Rocky in this equation) and a new father figure in her trainer (Jaime Tirelli).

Jaime Tirelli coaches Michelle Rodriguez in the boxing ring in Girlfight

Making Girlfight was a long process for Kusama, who wrote the movie after taking up boxing herself in 1992. Production companies begged her to cast a white woman in the lead role, but she stood her ground, insisting on a Latina lead and finding Rodriguez in an extensive audition process focusing largely on non-professional actors. After financiers backed out two days before pre-production in 1999, legendary filmmaker (and Kusama’s former mentor) John Sayles and his creative partner and producer Maggie Renzi stepped in and helped fund the film.

Polygon spoke to Kusama on a video call ahead of the movie’s Criterion release. We spoke about revisiting her first movie for the restoration, when she knew she had a star in Rodriguez, and whether Girlfight could be made the same way now.

Polygon: Congratulations on Girlfight being added to the Criterion Collection. When did you find out, and what was your reaction?

Karyn Kusama: This must have been last year, Criterion reached out to me and said, “We’d really like to remaster Girlfight and release an edition of the film.” I was floored and so excited. I am such a Criterion nerd, as you might imagine, so it was literally a dream come true. For me, this just felt like the ultimate stamp of approval.

Does it mean more to you because it was this one?

I think what I appreciate is that it’s my first movie. And as someone now who’s got more than 20 years of time and experience to look back at the film, there’s so many things I might do differently — I might improve, I might cut, or change or refine. And so the idea that it can still work for anyone, despite the fact that I would love to get back in there and completely retool it, that’s gratifying.

A black-and-white image of Karyn Kusama directing Michelle Rodriguez on the set of Girlfight

Watching it now, I was struck by the balance between the boxing elements, the family drama, the character study, Michelle Rodriguez’s amazing performance, and the high school romance. How do you think back on the balance of all those elements?

I never felt like I would want to make a purely boxing-oriented movie. In some ways, the true story is about this character entering a new world, and finding a place for herself within it. And in doing so, opening herself up to a kind of vulnerability that she doesn’t feel capable of exposing at home. It is so much about this tension between the closed emotional world of her family life and the more expansive emotional world of, paradoxically, a boxing ring. So that was something I knew I wanted to do. But I don’t know at the time if I was really weighing the balance of it all.

In somewhat ham-fisted terms, I was trying to tell a story about a young woman for whom traditional expressions of femininity didn’t quite feel true to her. And so it was so much about trying to find a path toward self-acceptance, toward some kind of openness, to whatever kind of weirdo she ultimately was going to be.

When you look at the movie now, what would you want to tweak?

I think I would probably lift some scenes and tighten some scenes. I think I would know a little bit more how to evoke the same emotional impact with fewer cuts or fewer shots. I would just get to the heart of the matter faster. But that being said, I think some of what I wrestle with in the movie is also inherent to it, you know, which is a lot of non-actors, a lot of young, raw performances. And in some respects, that’s part of the charm, I hope, of the movie.

And it helps that the central three of her family are so strong.

Oh, good. Yeah, I think so. Obviously, Paul Calderón [who played Marie’s father] was a wonderful and well-known actor at the time, and still, and so he could kind of anchor the rest of the cast. But you know, it’s funny, I always find with movies, for me, it’s a process of making the thing, hoping that I made the truest thing I could make, and then moving on and not looking back. And so what’s really weird about doing the Criterion edition is — the process of looking back is both wonderful and painful. I was looking at the movie a lot. So it gave me a lot of time to think about, Oh, I could have done that. I should have done that. A lot of woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Michelle Rodriguez delivers a punch to another boxer in Girlfight

Do you think things have changed in the industry over the past two decades? Would making Girlfight now be the same, easier, or more difficult?

That’s something I have to chew on. Because in some ways, obviously we all want the answer to be “Things are better now.” I think the hard reality is that we are still almost even more entrenched in a star-driven system. So it would be even harder now, I think, to make a movie with a completely fresh face as the center of the film.

And luckily for me, when I made Girlfight, Michelle ended up having a true electric, charismatic star power that allowed her to continue to make movies. But now I find it’s still really, really hard. In terms of the questions around representation? I think the conversations are more deliberately coded around what is permissible. But I think ultimately, there is still a lot of resistance to a complicated or complex depiction of the world as we actually live in it.

Working with Michelle Rodriguez on the movie, what did you learn about what makes a movie star and how to showcase that?

Oh, that’s such a good question. I mean, first of all, she has a funny un-self-consciousness as an actor. In the initial auditioning process, and initially working with her, I had to kind of remind her of staying in character and staying on book and all of the basics around being an actor. What she didn’t have was shame. There was a quality to her of just like, I’m here. The world can start now. And that quality of guileless confidence is really important. She demanded attention.

And that simple kind of intensity is something that I’ve really learned is actually not common across the board. It’s not like every actor I work with has that same intensity, though I’ve certainly worked with actors who had more training and more experience and more discipline. Michelle has a kind of ineffable charisma.

Was there a specific moment with her where you were like, Oh, she’s different, or is that just something that you learned over the course of filming?

It’s really funny, because I have such a vivid memory of doing all those initial auditions and having hundreds of people in front of us for interviews and short auditions. And we taped them all. And because I’m kind of obsessed with thoroughness, I decided to just go through the process of looking at all the tapes.

And it was in that moment of looking at her tape, even though she was untrained, completely inexperienced, completely unprepared, kind of every negative you could imagine, she held the screen with such totality that I felt like, Huh, that’s interesting. I have to keep looking at her, I have to keep engaging with this presence. And so it just meant we kept bringing her back. But that initial feeling about her was definitely something that now I look at and I realize, Oh, that was her. That was her star power.

Michelle Rodriguez and Santiago Douglas embrace in a scene in Girlfight

Would you have predicted her going on to star in major franchises like the Fast and the Furious?

At the time, I couldn’t, but she called it for herself way earlier than I could have. Because she always knew what she liked. Immediately when she read The Fast and the Furious, she was like, I know I have to do this, and I know it will be a global franchise. She understood that part of entertainment a lot better than I did.

Have there been opportunities for you to work with her on projects of that scale? Is that something you’re interested in?

You mean like the giant franchises?

Yeah. Doesn’t strike me as totally your vibe, but you never know.

No, it’s not really my vibe. And a lot of that just has to do with the idea that you need to be making something that is of a piece of a very large entity with a lot of history, and a lot of relationships that people are already bringing to the characters, into the worlds. For that reason, I’m not sure I’d be the best candidate for that kind of work, but never say never, I guess.

You’re in this really interesting space with both TV and movie opportunities. Where’s your focus next, and what do you see yourself moving toward?

I need to be making personal movies again. That’s where I really learn and flex and experiment and fail and try and all of it, you know. So that’s what’s next for me, is just figuring out what the next feature is going to be.