Where did the money go? That’s what everyone seems to be asking after the teaser for Namit Malhotra’s Ramayana—directed by Nitesh Tiwari—was released Thursday morning. Is the Rs 4,000 crore figure just a marketing gimmick? Is it a scheme to ‘turn black money white’? Neither Reddit nor X can figure it out, and for good reason.
The three rakshasas (monsters) featured in the teaser look like they’ve been airdropped from a Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones set. One, featured in a snowscape fight scene, looks like a scantily clad version of Wun Wun from Game of Thrones. And the scene is a carbon copy of the legendary confrontation between dragon-riding Daenerys Targaryen and the Night King.
Another monster, set in a haunted woods backdrop, must be a cousin of the ogres from one of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit films. And the third one, shown chasing Rama with a club, looks like its sister.
The VFX effects are what you’d expect from a run-of-the-mill video game or a mediocre fantasy show. But a film that supposedly cost thousands of crores? The audience deserves more.
The larger problem is that the monsters aren’t at all original. When Peter Jackson brought to life JRR Tolkien’s ogres and orcs, he wasn’t creating from scratch. Trolls and ogres were familiar territory for audiences—if a flat aesthetic category. But in designing his tar-drenched wretches, Jackson still created a distinct genre of monsters.
Even David Benioff and DB Weiss put their own spin on George RR Martin’s giants, wights, and the Night King.
Neither Malhotra—if he was involved in the project beyond supplying the much-touted Rs 4,000 crore—nor Tiwari bothered with this. They continued with Indian filmmakers’ long, unbroken tradition of shamelessly copying from the West.
Also read: Ramayana is more than just an epic—a cultural language that connects India, Southeast Asia
Playing it safe
The problem isn’t limited to the monsters. Look at the jewellery on the characters. It’s the same trinkets we’ve seen on TV serials. Even Adipurush, badly done as it was, did its own spin on Rama’s costume by giving him some leather armour. I also appreciated what Star Plus did with Sita’s early costumes in the series Siya Ke Ram. When you pay creatives real money to do real work, it shows.
Perhaps a substantial amount had to be spent on fixing up an ageing Ranbir Kapoor in post so he could pass off as a young Rama.
How could it have gone so wrong? The teaser proudly showcases “8-time Oscar-winning” VFX studio DNEG, which has worked on Interstellar (2014), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and all three Dunes (2021/2024/2026). Each of these projects has a distinct visual language. In fact, X nerds can’t get enough of Dune’s worldbuilding elements. So why did the company slap some NPC monsters on Ramayana and call it a day?
The production team for the film includes the likes of Ramsey Avery, who worked on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Ravi Bansal, who worked on Dune 2. It can’t have been a lack of talent. Was it a lack of courage? Did the producer worry that audiences would reject an original take on the epic? Most likely.
Having spent many, many crores on what looks like a cinematic Ram Mandir, Malhotra couldn’t risk originality. It was safer to pull references from the known and the loved, and churn out a palatable slopfest.
Who knows, if Adipurush didn’t exist, Malhotra and Tiwari’s Ramayana would’ve felt like a fresh, shiny take on the well-known story. But the Prabhas-starrer continues to haunt desi audiences even today.
The one saving grace for the new film seems to be its take on the Pushpak Viman. The design is still a distant cousin of something one would find in Star Plus’ Mahabharat series, but it takes a cue from the mythical plane’s name (pushp means flower). The lotus-cum-hot air balloon concept looks downright delicious. If only the same idea had been applied everywhere else.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)