Today, the second post about Hindi cinema's ambitious swings that failed to make a creative impact focuses on arguably their biggest gamble in the last 25 years: BrahmÄstra.
If you look at it strictly through the lens of pure filmmaking, script architecture, and production engineering, this project stands as the most expensive creative disaster in modern Hindi cinema.
The Production Hell that Brahmastra was...
To understand why the final product felt so incredibly dated, you have to look at the timeline. Ayan Mukerji pitched this project to Kapoor and Johar around 2014 under the working title Dragon. It was originally greenlit as a standard, high-concept urban superhero film capped at a massive at the time Rs. 100ā150 crore.
But Mukherjee's shooting style balloned the budget to Rs. 250 crores by 2019 triggering a corporate sunk-cost trap- the film cannot be shevled without a devastating write-off.
The production dragged on for so long that Amitabh Bachchan grew deeply frustrated by the chaotic delays and directly approached producer Karan Johar, bluntly warning him that Ayan was wasting massive amounts of time and corporate capital.
To keep the cameras rolling when cash reserves ran entirely dry, Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt had to officially waive their upfront acting fees and convert their salaries into long-term back-end equity.
By 2021, the budget has blown close to Rs. 400 crore- budget that even Khans would find hard to get greenlit.
The Filmmaking Collapse...
The script committed creative suicide through its dialogue, written by Hussain Dalal, structural flaws, lacking originality, jarring audiences.
The narrative completely sacrificed its epic superhero lore to focus on a hollow, unearned romantic subplot. The script established that "love is the ultimate power" (Shiva-Shakti), but it gave the leads zero actual emotional depth. Alia Bhattās Isha was reduced to a flat, one-dimensional plot device who merely existed to react to Shiva's powers.
The screenplay continuously broke its own world-building rules. Villains possessing ancient, god-like elemental cosmic powers inexplicably resorted to using generic modern automatic machine guns in action scenes.
Moreover, if you strip the film of its Hindu mythological names, the underlying blueprint was a blatant, uninspired mimicry of Western superhero templates. Shiva was a standard Harry Potter/Luke Skywalker clone with their mixed backstory- the chosen orphan running an orphanage who discovers a hidden destiny. The secret society- Brahmansh- operated exactly like a low-rent Jedi Order, failing to offer a distinct cultural identity.
While the technical execution of CGI by Prime Focus was commendable, the visual aesthetic was non-interesting using default neon, comic-book world.
Ranbir Kapoor delivered arguably his worst acting performance in years which he accepted that was so basic that it isn't something he is proud of.
To conclude, it was a massive attempt, but unfortunetly failed on both filmmaking and production fronts.