With Ramayana Part 1 now less than a month from its worldwide release, Nitesh Tiwari’s ambitious adaptation is facing the kind of close reading that only a story rooted in faith can attract. The trailer has drawn mixed reactions; some viewers have praised the scale, while others have called for a boycott. Into that debate steps Aarya Babbar, who plays Ravana in a Broadway-style stage adaptation of the epic, with a defence of the film and a blunt diagnosis of why an earlier attempt went wrong.
What Babbar said about Ramayana
Speaking to Filmibeat, Babbar kept the focus on where the film is heading rather than the noise around the trailer. He praised the makers for taking Indian mythology, culture and history to an international audience, and said the project is being made on a “very, very big scale.”
“Kudos to them to reach and internationally show our mythology, our story, our culture, our history is Ramayana,” he said, adding that he hopes it gives Indian cinema the global stature it deserves.
The film brings together Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Ram, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana. Here is where things stand:
- Release: November 5 in cinemas worldwide
- Director: Nitesh Tiwari
- Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi, Yash
- Reported special screening: Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, on November 5, per a Mid-Day report cited by Filmibeat
The Adipurush lesson
Asked about the backlash to Adipurush, Babbar separated the two projects. He argued that creative interpretations should not be compared too easily, because “interpretations can sometimes go wrong.” But he was direct about the core failure: when a story is connected to dharma, it cannot afford to play with people’s emotions.
“What went wrong with Adipurush, honestly, was the fact that they forgot that they were making a project which is connected to people’s dharma, people’s emotions,” he said. In his reading, the makers had the scale and the intent; what they missed was the emotional register.
Why the fan audience is watching closely
For Hindi cinema fans, this is not just another big-ticket release. Ramayana sits at the meeting point of spectacle and belief, so the trailer debate is really a debate about tone: how modern a treatment can be before it stops feeling like the epic audiences grew up with. Babbar’s point frames the risk in plain terms — scale gets people to the theatre, but the right emotion keeps the story from alienating them.
The next checkpoint is November 5, when the film arrives in cinemas. Until then, the cast, the visuals and the music will keep carrying the conversation; the test is whether the film itself can hold the faith of its audience.
Source: Filmibeat