Namit Malhotra’s Ramayana has revealed its first look of Shri Ram. It is made on a humongous budget of more than 4000 crores but the reception is not the best. There are scenes in the first look which look like AI slop. Just look at the scene where we see people showering flowers on Ranbir Kapoor as Ram, the color grading screams AI.
More importantly, there is a scene that raises even bigger questions.
If you look closely, Arun Govil appears in the crowd as Dasharath. Ram, meanwhile, is dressed in full royal attire, which places this somewhere before the exile.
But almost immediately, the visual language shifts. Ranbir Kapoor’s Ram is shown holding a battle axe which is an iconography that belongs to Parashurama, not the Ram of Ayodhya.
And that’s where the confusion deepens.
There’s no version of the story where Dasharath and Ram march into battle together. So what is this sequence meant to represent?
If it’s supposed to depict a training phase after his time at Vashishtha’s ashram, the styling makes even less sense. A student in training wouldn’t be presented like a crowned prince.
Individually, these images might look grand. Together, they don’t form a coherent idea.
They just don’t add up.
The fact that people aren’t trolling Adipurush today says a lot about the reception of the first look. It is very mediocre. Namit Malhotra needs to work a lot on the visuals before he presents this story to the world.
Otherwise this will be remembered as the biggest fiasco ever in the Indian cinema.
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