YMMV / Once Upon a Warrior

• Adaptation Displacement: This is actually a remake of a lower-budgeted 1992 fantasy film, Yoddha, which was pretty much forgotten even by fans of Indian cinema.
• Awesome Music: The film's opening score is simply epic. The Disney opening slowly and smoothly segues into a slow, Indian-style musical tone, which suddenly peaks into a booming, powerful, awe-inspiring theme as the title kicks in. The same score can be heard in several action scenes, where Yodha battles past hordes and hordes of Snake Cult minions, and later in the final battle against Irendri.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The movie tends to get a bit, ahem, surreal at times.
  • The reunion scene at the beach had a fat lady on a merry-go-round... in ancient India? Granted, Yodha is hallucinating the scene, but it's still jarring to say the least.
  • Right in the middle of an intense breakout scene from Irendri's citadel; Yodha had freed Priya, and is battling Snake Cult minions left and right, just as Yodha's about to cut down the cult's leader, cue an Imagine Spot as Yodha and Priya flashes back to happier times, a Bollywood-style musical montage that lasts for nearly 5 minutes... in the middle of an action scene, no less!
• Complete Monster: Sorceress Irendri started the Snake Cult to remain powerful forever. Ordering her cult to commit massacres, with survivors being forcefully converted into her cult, Irendri established dominance over the survivors by using her powers to raze a village full of people to the ground. Her reign of terror lasting for decades until her defeat, upon being revived centuries later Irendri restarts her Snake Cult and began her campaign of dominance. Learning of a Mysterious Waif, a 9-year-old girl named Moksha, being the key to Irendri's invincibility, Irendri sends her cult to attack villages to kidnap Moksha, while frequently bathing in blood from ritual sacrifices to maintain her eternal youth. After sucking the life force from hundreds of children from several villages to enhance her powers, Irendri, having Moksha captured, intends to sacrifice her during an eclipse; preparing for the ritual in Moksha's village, Irendri has all its inhabitants, save for Moksha herself and her protector Yodha, cocooned alive, to feast on their flesh after the ritual, and upon being bestowed powers by the eclipse, reveals her ultimate form as a snake-human hybrid monster to deliver a brutal beating on Yodha, nearly killing him, and tries to devour Moksha later on.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The film's visual effects really sticks out, compared to other Bollywood pictures at the time. Sorceress Irendri turning into a snake-human hybrid monster is quite a sight to behold.

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