Adipurush’s Prudent Approach To Retelling Ramayana Is Hijacked By Its Tone-Deaf CGI
Adipurush, a much-awaited high-budget, and prospective big-screen spectacle, finally announced its arrival through a weird looking teaser. The reaction towards this Tanha Ji-famed Om Raut’s directorial is mixed, if not mostly negative. Twitter is divided over the misleading portrayal of Ravana, childish and tone-deaf CGI, and most of all, Prabhas’s look as Lord Ram. While most of the controversial things could be sketched up to the makers’ creative liberty, the technical aspects cannot be ignored.
The teaser starts with an aerial shot of a valley and cuts to the next shot, where Prabhas meditates underwater. The voiceover announcing the victory of good over evil promises a lot until, in the next second, we see Prabhas in Lord Ram’s portrayal. With a moustache that doesn’t fit, to perpetually upset expressions, Prabhas’s portrayal doesn’t align with the image of the timeless character. The same goes with Saif’s gothic take on Ravana, where he flies a botched-up, cartoonish version of what appears to be a dragon. While Saif Ali’s expressions and gait favour the evil character, the costume department could have done much more research.
The film’s ambition of creating a Star Wars-like ensemble cast full of warriors and hairy creatures is very apparent from the shot where Prabhas walks the Ram Setu with his army. The scene is spectacular and promising, only to be marred by the next few shots of poorly executed VFX, where Devdatta Nage, Lord Hanuman, flies around Lanka with Prabhas on his back. Kriti Sanon’s Sita is a wash of relief in the teaser, with a serenely romantic score accentuating the scene. Conclusively, this 500 crores worth of film could have used a lot more budget allocation in its post-production. The film is scheduled to hit Indian theatres on January 12, 2023.
Soon After the release of the teaser, slew of meme went viral: