Mirai

The narrative struggles with character development and payoff. The heroine, introduced with promise, becomes increasingly sidelined and ultimately adds little to the story after the halfway mark. More critically, the villain-portrayed as nearly invincible throughout the film-receives a disappointingly abrupt resolution. After successfully obtaining all nine books, a single arrow ends his saga, undermining both his buildup and the audience's investment in his power.

A more satisfying approach would have been to extend his presence into a sequel. By allowing him to fully wield the destructive force of the nine books, the story could have explored darker consequences and raised the stakes considerably. The heroes' journey to uncover a meaningful strategy for defeating such a formidable enemy would have created a more compelling and emotionally rewarding climax.

First of all, credit to the makers to dream of pulling off such a product within the limited budget. But the overall experience falls short of expectations.

Teja Sajja fits the bill, with no heavy duty acting required, Manchu Manoj brings in his unique mannerism and did well, although the character arc was predictable, Shriya looked tired on screen, lacking the divinity, rest of the cast just okayish, but the dubbing felt out of sync.

Technically, movie is solid, cinematography by Karthik is superb, once again proves his mettle as one of the DOPs from TFI, score by Gowra Hari is thumping and riveting, keeping the proceedings alive, editing by Sreekar Prasad could have been better, production values by PMF are very good and last but not least, the VFX department deserves good round of applause.

Coming to director Karthik Gattamaneni, though the script has got all the beats of a superhero movie, the staging and setup doesn't look organic and engaging, though the action blocks are well choreographed, the lead up doesn't induce any emotion. Also, the unnecessary comedic gags should have been avoided. First feels better compared to second half, in the latter the pace dips, only to pick up at the climax, which is, even though predictable, leaves a good impression. Overall, it's a decent one time watch.

BOTTOMLINE: What the hell was that post-credit scene? Totally unnecessary.

The story isn't exactly groundbreaking - it's basically Avengers: Infinity War with a discount twist. Instead of Thanos collecting stones, our villain here is collecting books to gain superpowers. Don't ask why or how, because even the movie doesn't seem to know. No one ever reads those books, by the way.

Apparently, these magical books were written by King Ashoka himself - yes, the Buddhist emperor - and somehow, he's now part of a full-blown fantasy story with magic, dark magic, and enough superstition to fill ten temples. How or why a rationalist like Ashoka is involved? Don't bother figuring it out; the writers didn't either.

The hero's mission is to stop the villain, and guess what his weapon is? A magic stick - sorry, correction - Lord Rama's bow, conveniently chilling in an ice cave. The logic melts faster than the ice, honestly.

Most scenes are silly or unintentionally funny. The VFX is actually decent, and the cinematography looks good. Background music and production values are fine. Acting? Everyone's over the top, and Shriya Saran's serious expressions will make you laugh for all the wrong reasons.

Watch it only if the promos tricked you into thinking it's something epic.

The story is about a negative entity getting hold of nine magical granth's (books) and succeed in his demonic endeavors. To oppose him we have our hero's and his various relations.

The story involves not one or two or three but nine magical books. The thing I did not like is the story being wrapped up with limiting number of access to these books by the demon. I mean it's hardly shown how the demon gets access to all this granth's except for the final one.

Now what I liked, the visuals are awesome the huge mythical eagle, fire, the mythical rod in itself and being turning into Lord Rams gaandiv, etc are all carved well.

Final Verdict: The story is not strong, but it's nice if you want something light minded. The movie is doing well at box office. You can give it a try.

As a kid, when I used to see a lot of Hollywood adventure movies that infused some mythical element in the modern world, I would love watching that and would also start thinking about how awesome it would be to see stuff like that with Indian mythology. Mirai is exactly that, but maybe a bit too much of that formula, because even a lot of the stuff I used to like as a kid wasn't as great as I used to think. Now, I haven't seen Hanuman with the same actor, which seems to have followed this same formula, so this doesn't seem like it was repeating the same thing to me, but it might be the case.

When watching Kalki, I was put off by a lot of scenes of Prabhas and the kind of comedy they tried, but that movie had a lot more to offer besides that. The same issue is kind of present here, but there are a few comedy that lands, and overall it wasn't that bad, but then again this isn't as ambitious as it was either, so the toning down was at both ends.

The editing of the movie felt very clunky; sometimes there were continuity errors, sometimes it seemed like there were unnecessary cuts, and at least one dialogue definitely looked like it was muted. But after seeing a lot of issues, I started to wonder if that's an issue specifically with the Tamil dub, I'm not sure.

The way the villain is is pretty much the Killmonger Paradox; he talks about the issues with the system, his reason for retaliation is based on the right things, but then he goes way too evil for the cause to have any importance. But the way this movie presented those issues and what it represents with so little care, it almost comes off like they want to keep the unfair practices, at least they are pretty clear from the start that the whole thing is really about keeping the status quo.

Even though there were a lot of problems with it, both technically and thematically, I can't help but like it because this was something I really wanted to see as a child.