A TALE OF ADVENTURE, DESTINY, AND LOW-RES PIXELS

Karthik Gattamneni's film has grand passion, hit-and-miss visual design, but its few sparks of childlike wonder somewhat hold it

- ADITYA DEVULAPALLY

The dream of Mirai is bigger than its reality. Karthik Gattamneni's film wants to be a mythological epic, a global action-adventure, and a Telugu star vehicle all at once. It is visibly based on Talbot Mundy's tantalising idea from The Nine Unknown: Ashoka entrusting secret knowledge to nine warriors, to be preserved for centuries. From here, the film spins a tale of prophecies, an evil destroyer, a sacred weapon, and a destined child. On paper, this is the stuff of midnight legends, the kind we were fed as children and believed without irony. On screen, it's an erratic swing between moments of genuine wonder and long stretches of dead weight.

Let's start with the obvious, the visual world of Mirai. Mythological adventure rests heavily on the plausibility of its universe, and here the film falters. The vision is visible, there's effort, ambition, a genuine desire to compete with the visual spectacle of global fantasy cinema but the output feels oddly pixelated. It's like watching 4K footage in 720p, especially in the contours and the detailing. The wide shots, those drone establishing frames, carry the uncanny valley of AI-generated art.

Although makers denied using AI, eyes that are used to AI footage can easily spot the lack of details and odd upscaling in many shots. Sometimes the sets pass and other times, they look like carefully painted thermocol blocks. You see the strain of artisanship but not the immersion of imagination. The result is a nagging sense that you're watching a faint shadow of an epic, not the epic itself.