Bollywood Repeats Hollywood’s Biggest Post-‘Avengers’ Mistakes

I don’t know if Brahmāstra Part One: Shiva was always intended to be essentially Disney’s attempt (via Star Studios) to break into the Bollywood/Tollywood marketplace. However, that it has been in development since 2014 hints at its fundamental shortcomings. Initially announced for a December 2016 release, the big-budget, star-studded fantasy romance was pitched and conceived as India’s answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A supporting character even refers to themselves and their superpowered group as India’s Avengers. However, despite strong production values and the expected larger-than-life razzle-dazzle, this first entry in India’s first original cinematic universe repeats the same mistake that doomed Universal’s Dark Universe and most other post-Avengers attempts at a cinematic universe. Shiva puts the horse before the cart, spending much of its 160-minute run time explaining and reexplaining the mythology and rules for its cinematic universe while giving far less attention to its characters.

As I (and I’m sure others) have noted countless times over the last several years, the mistake that Hollywood made in attempting to replicate the lightning-in-a-bottle triumph of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers was to presume that its $1.5 billion global gross meant that audiences wanted superhero stories and cinematic universes. It was a classic Hollywood mistake, assuming the success of a specific film or television show meant that audiences wanted more variations that kinda-sorta reminded them of that success. Just because audiences loved Inception doesn’t mean they wanted a Total Recall remake. The old-school success of Yellowstone (a modern-way western soap opera riff on King Lear not that far off from Succession or Empire) didn’t mean that Amazon’s (pretty good) Outer Range was a surefire hit. And just because audiences liked the MCU doesn’t mean they were automatically onboard for the Dark Universe or the Variant cinematic universe.

To be fair, the film starts pretty well, with a goofy-fantastical prologue featuring Shah Rukh Khan as “The Scientist,” who imbues the proceedings with a bit of pulpy gravitas while offering a crash course in how powers will (mostly) work in this universe. From there, we get our heroic/romantic leads. And while the romance isn’t deep, it comes off as a charming riff on Disney’s Aladdin. An orphan who now works as a DJ, Shiva (Ranbir Kapoor), meets and aggressively (but politely) courts a comparatively upper-crust British tourist Isha (Alia Bhatt). Impressing a girl by taking her to a birthday party at the orphanage for which you volunteer, and thus filled with kids who think you’re the very best, is a baller move. They hit it off until Shiva gets distracted by exposition flashbacks/visions that point toward another superhero (Anish Shetty) seemingly marked for murder.

While I enjoyed the comparatively small-scale chase/fight that follows, it’s about where the movie gets lost in its continuity. Ayan Mukerji’s first entry in the Astraverse is focused on lore and how its various characters fit into a broader puzzle and a larger narrative. However, the heroes and villains get little in the way of development beyond generic character types. We meet a small group of superheroes with frankly interchangeable powers, with Amitabh Bachchan showing up to offer gravitas and endless exposition. He’s supposed to be Nicky Fury or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Still, he comes off as this film’s Dr. Jekyll, constantly repeating the same critical bits of lore and mythology until the audience can recite them by memory. The second act features enjoyable action beats, even if they are neutered by seemingly arbitrary supernatural rules and/or whether anyone can be killed.

I’m not going to go into the specific elements of the cinematic universe, including the item that must be found or protected, parental secrets and ‘Chosen One’ revelations, because they are as Mad Libs-generic as you might fear. Brahmāstra: Part One — Shiva gets weaker and weaker the more it gets sucked up by the table-setting, and by the end, there’s little in the way of specific interest or character-driven value to get audiences excited for whatever is next. Like the various failed (or at least compromised) attempts to craft an MCU-style universe, it puts plot over character, mythology over in-the-moment intrigue and future-tense exposition over present-tense entertainment. As you (should) know, the MCU became the MCU because it focused on the core heroic characters (and their supporting allies) and prioritized establishing winning cinematic variations on its marquee characters. It treated the interconnectivity as a seasoning or a garnish.

Meanwhile, Hollywood (including Disney) reacted to The Avengers by trying to turn almost every piece of IP they had (The Mummy, King Arthur and the Legend of the Sword, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Tower, etc.) into the next Batman Begins or Avengers. Even the James Bond series, The Fast Saga and Jurassic got distracted by retroactive continuity and cinematic universe buy-ins. At the same time, China turned its nose (after a $399 million opening weekend) to the continuity-drenched Detective Chinatown 3. Brahmāstra: Part One — Shiva is entirely interested in generic worldbuilding with almost no time and energy given to specificity. It banks on the abstract concept of superheroes and cinematic universes (with generic lore that is randomly cobbled together from Marvel, The Last Airbender, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars), arriving in theaters in 2022 like a mistake from 2018.