Brahmāstra Part One: Shiva – The Boy Who Lived

Heavy SPOILERS for Brahmastra, Harry Potter, Matrix and some other films lie ahead, please tread with caution.

Shiva is the Boy who Lived? Yes. At least that’s what this Part One establishes by the end of its over long 160+ minute run time.

But wait a minute. The trailer of the film literally says the same thing too, that this normal person named Shiva is bestowed with some supernatural powers and he’s the home for Agni-astra. Right? The film also tells us exactly what the trailer already says: “Shiva is the chosen one, he’s got some cool powers”, and nothing more. Yeah, some plot points here and there, but no real meat. And this is not even my real problem with the film.

Let me get the good parts out of the way before I get into the ones where the film miserably falls short.

The VFX:

The visual style of Ayan Mukherji is colourful. He’s got great style in the way he (and his team) designs the Astras. The opening 2-minute sketch-animation part is some of the best Indian character animations I have seen on the big screen.

The output that I have seen on screen reassured me that the VFX team were given enough time to work on the shots. With the VFX artist’s discourse around MCU, this is a good sign for the Indian brigade, I feel.

Huge shout-out to Manikandan, Pankaj Kumar (Tumbbad fame), Sudeep Chatterjee (long-term Bhansali associate) and the rest of the Cinematography department. The visuals look gorgeous. Except for some forgivable jarring scenes, the rest of it is great.

The BTS videos which I have seen show us the effort Ayan and his team put into learning and executing the technology to pull off such visuals. They are reminiscent of Harry Potter and Shang Chi in many ways, but also very good to see on the screen. As we call in Video Games, the Final Boss Avatar shots are lacking. The money shot, if you will. Only SRK & Nagarjuna get one bad-ass shot each. I was so excited to see those, but everything else that was bad about the film, drowned this high in nanoseconds.

The Cameos:

Is that how you treat SRK? The SRK is in your film and you treat him like… that? Arguably one of the best scenes in the film is the whole SRK fight stretch. The Vanarastra and Nandiastra (Nagarjuna) get the best fight scenes in the film. Their visuals are treated with class and they kick ass. But they only last for a few minutes. SRK’s cameo is also very crucial for the story, but the cameo has no lead scene. Seconds after Guru Raghu’s narration ends, SRK appears and boom, he’s fighting. Matlab Kuch Bhi!?!?!

The Astras:

Despite being very colourful – at times, the choice of colour was confusing too. The red seems to be associated with bad people while the rest of the colours are with good people. But Shiva’s Agniastra seems to tread in-between Red-Orangish tones. Why? I don’t know. Was this the aftermath of having 5 Cinematographers? Or was this a flaw in the drafting stage itself? Or was some clinical information cut out on the Edit table?

The powers associated with each Astra wielder are not entirely defined either. Here I am being very detailed, but when you aspire to create something like an Avengers for your own country, you gotta establish some ground rules first. Allow me to explain. There are 5 kids in the Ashram in the Himalayas who are getting trained under Guru Raghu. They are introduced to us in under 15 seconds (by Isha) and then we cut to Shiva and Isha romancing (which they do a lot. A lot!). We are not given the context of why these kids ended up in that Ashram. Ayan does not even give us enough time to register the names or even the Astras these kids wield. Their powers are explained in a later scene, but again, they are one-dimensional. One guy can shoot arrows, one kid can levitate objects at will (I guess?), one girl has a shield (and nothing else to attack?) and two other kids… I don’t know what they do, really. I don’t think their powers were revealed or maybe cut out? Who knows. Basically, Ayan didn’t care for any of them, so he just put them in the film to raise the stakes when the bad people are around. Lazy writing.

Opposing all this, Shiva can do anything. He’s like Doctor Strange, but also Human Torch? There is no harm in taking inspiration, but you could have your Guru Raghu character spell out the abilities of Agniastra at least?!

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As Baddy (Baradwaj Rangan) rightly mentions in his review that deriving inspiration from multiple established film franchises is not bad, but not making anything your own out of it, is bad.

Even SSR in his interview with Sukumar says how a Director is burdened to get each and everything, 100 out of 100 parameters, right when they are attempting something “new”. Yes, that’s true. Case in point: 1-Nenokkadine back in 2014, Brahmāstra now.

But in my defence, why did you attempt something new when you already know that what’s already perceived as “routine” will suffice? You were ambitious about creating an Indian Universe, right? This was supposed to be your 9+ year dream, right? Then… where is the depth in characters, where is your world-building, where is the meticulous detailing?

The Parallels:

Shiva is Harry Potter. Amrita (Shiva’s mother) dies while Shiva is only a toddler because of his powers, which becomes his trauma (Harry gets a scar, and Shiva buries his Agniastra within himself). He grows up oblivious to the importance of his birth and to the fact that a part of Dev (Voldemort) resides in him (Shiva is Dev’s son/Harry is Voldemort’s one of the Horcruxes). And that is the reason why Dev and Shiva are both Agniastra wielders and that is why Shiva gets his visions (Harry and his visions begin from Goblet of Fire and the visions are caused because of the Horcrux). Dev turns evil in pursuit of more power and in the ambition to wield all the existing Astras (sound familiar?) but get’s killed or solidified in a huge rock statue…? This is unclear and not explained anywhere. Saving it for Part Two?

But somehow Dev (through the rock statue) is able to communicate to his follower Junoon (a mixture of Bellatrix and Peter Pettigrew) to raise an army (Death Eaters) to assemble the Brahmastra so that he can come back to his original form? This is also very unclear. All the important parts are left unanswered because they want us to come back for Part Two (I will, definitely), but at what cost? At the cost of making your Part One insensible and pointless? Sigh!

If you get irritated at me for drawing these parallels, then please go back and read again. There is nothing wrong with taking inspiration. Hell, even the greatest filmmakers right from George Lucas (creator of Star Wars, which is derived from Dune) to today’s SSR everybody do it. But, they take ideas/structures and make them their own. They give it their own spin. That is what is dearly missing in Ayan’s Magnum Opus.

At the end of the film, it is said in Guru Raghu’s voice that the Brahmastra is now wielded by Shiva, who also has the Agniastra. He essentially becomes The One (from Matrix). Great. He’s the prophecised one who will end all Darkness and shower Light. Beautiful. But that’s only the idea. Ayan just took the idea and forgot to make it his own. In the pursuit of creating a visual extravaganza, he left out the crucial ingredient: a compelling story. He’s bestowed with all these powers because he’s the son of Dev and Amrita? That is all? He has no great story of his own?

Harry does not become the prophecised one in a whiff. Neo does not become The One just like that. None of the heroes in any Supernatural/Superhero films become who they are without any struggle. The protagonist who’s given the powers he’s never asked for, say Spider-Man, is beaten left right and centre before he gets some sense (Spider-Man into the Spiderverse/Spider-Man 2 being the best example) as to who he has become. Spider-Man learns why he’s worthy.

That is where Ayan fails. He thought he could club the regular commercial Bollywood template (Intro songs, Protagonist is a DJ, Protagonist is a self-loathing high morals guy, A love at first sight senseless episode with the heroine, the heroine is an eye candy and nothing else) to the larger than life Rajamouli world building template (or any other MCU/DC world for that matter). It did not work out. I am not saying that clubbing such templates will never work out. No. RRR is the biggest example. Need I say more?

The Dialogues:

Yes. The Social Media memes about Isha’s dialogues in the film are actually true. But credit where due: Hussain Dalal. He’s actually worked for a lot of Hindi films (of which I really love Karwaan), but this… this is atrocious!

When Isha meets Shiva for the first time and they have a conversation, she literally says what Alec Baldwin says in this famous episode from Friends:

Who the hell says that to a person you’ve literally met a few seconds ago? Anyway.

That scene does not end there. They eventually go to Shiva’s place after they wrap up a birthday party in an orphanage where Shiva grew up (a straight lift from Nagarjuna’s Mass starring Jyothika – the dialogues are also the same! Sigh!). Now we start to get to the backstory of who Shiva is. Everything is good. Then Shiva draws an analogy of finding Light, no matter the situation. He says that’s his motto. And then… he utters words that could be uncanny Hindi Google Translations of this dialogue:

I mean… where is the originality dude! Having your motto as some person’s quote is not bad. And as I have mentioned ad nauseum in this write-up, copying/lifting/inspiring is not bad. MAKE IT YOUR OWN YOU DUMBASS!

The film feels so much like a first draft. It’s as if Ayan and Hussain wrote the first draft and then they went into production. Nothing seems to be ironed out. The screenplay is predictable (not a bad thing, but just saying), the tonality is all over the place, and the exposition scenes are… bad.

Every time Guru Raghu starts to explain something, two other characters in the scene re-iterate the same thing in active and passive voices. It’s like the audience is taking a training session on “How to learn Hindi in 30 minutes”. This applies to almost each and every scene Shiva and Isha are in too. If you think that I was the only one feeling like this, then you should have seen the crowd’s reaction in my theatre. Everyone was very audibly gasping and sighing at the pathetic dialogues. If you are not able to communicate properly with dialogues, you’ll be taken out of the film experience in a snap. No matter how many crores you pour in for the visuals, the sound has to be stimulating enough (Bare minimum tho dedo BC!).

I think Ayan was targetting Gen Z kids. Kids born post-2000. That could also be the reason why there are young kids in the Ashram. Also why Shiva lives in a flat with lots of kids. Maybe he was making this film only for kids: light-hearted, silly, dumb and just visually pleasing. I don’t really know.

There is this brief moment in the film in the woods, where Shiva is seen practising his Agniastra. Guru Raghu meets him and Shiva asks him whether he’s ready to listen to the story of his parents. Then a few question mark-shaped objects (made out of Agniastra) pop around. Yes. That is an actual scene in the film. That was approved. I don’t even know what to say…

When the climax battle begins, Shiva gets Isha and his lighter into the battle zone and moments later says she has to get back into the Ashram to be safe. Why’d he brought her onto the ground in the first place then? Is she his “Lighter Holder”!?

Isha literally has no role in the film. Ayan tries to say that in the fear of losing his loved ones Shiva buried his powers. But that did not translate well. Not at all.

“If you don’t respect the attention of the audience, they will get offended.”

S S Rajamouli

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The film is a below-average affair for me. I feel there is a lot of wasted potential. Big B does not get treated well. SRK cameo is a dud. Nag’s cameo is somewhat okay. Mouni Roy and her assailants are Dumb and Dumber 3. This is easily Alia’s worst act (probably worse than RRR!). Ranbir is kinda struggling too, but Ayan should give him space to breathe. He knows this.

But the film’s definitely going to make money. That’s a good thing because Ayan and his team deserve a second chance. Part Two will obviously be made, but I really really hope Ayan and his team are listening to all the constructive criticism. I hope they redeem themselves from all the silly blunders they have done in Part One, but make it up in the remaining two parts.

I heard that Ranveer Singh would be cast as Dev and Amrita is obviously played by Deepika. So, part two’s gonna be fire (pun intended).

Rating: 4/10