The visual effects in Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana: Rise of a Legend have ignited a fierce debate online, with a massive section of the audience hailing the CGI as a groundbreaking achievement for Indian cinema. Within hours of the film's release on November 5, social media platform X was flooded with reactions comparing the film's visual grandeur to Hollywood's most iconic fantasy epics. One viral tweet perfectly captured the sentiment: “Visuals are nowhere less than Avatar X LOTR. Yes Namit promised and did it”. For many viewers, the film's creature work, particularly the photorealistic rendition of Jatayu, represents a new benchmark for Indian visual effects, with some even calling the sequence “BAFTA-worthy” and declaring it “Easy LOTR level”.
The confidence behind these bold comparisons stems from the pedigree of the studio responsible for the film's visual effects. DNEG, the London-headquartered visual effects and animation company led by producer Namit Malhotra, is the creative force bringing the epic to life. With eight Academy Awards to its name—including recent wins for Dune: Part Two—DNEG has established itself as one of the most prestigious VFX houses in the world. Alongside its sister company ReDefine, DNEG handled the visual effects for Ramayana, working in collaboration with Prime Focus Studios and Yash's Monster Mind Creations. The involvement of a studio with credits spanning Blade Runner 2049, the Dune trilogy, and numerous other Hollywood blockbusters gave the film an instant air of credibility, and early reactions suggest that this investment in top-tier talent has paid off in the eyes of a significant portion of the audience.
Perhaps the most compelling evidence of the film's commitment to visual excellence lies in the sheer amount of time devoted to its most ambitious sequence. Director Nitesh Tiwari revealed that the epic confrontation between Ravana and Jatayu took approximately six and a half years to complete, from the initial briefing to the final shot. This staggering timeline involved thousands of artists contributing to the creation of the sequence, with the production team going through nearly 50 different designs for Ravana's mythical flying vehicle, the Pushpak Viman, over a period of almost two years. The decision to change the Viman's design late in the process even forced parts of the battle to be re-choreographed and reworked, underscoring the obsessive level of detail that went into crafting this single action block. Ranbir Kapoor, who portrays Lord Rama, also weighed in on the discourse surrounding the film's CGI, expressing disappointment over the casual dismissal of elaborate visual effects work as mere “AI” and emphasizing the immense human labor involved in each frame.
For the film's defenders, the VFX represents a quantum leap forward for Indian cinema. Viewers have described the film as a “visual spectacle” and a “grand cinematic experience,” with the VFX being described as “Avatar X LOTR level” and “award-worthy”. The climax and the Jatayu sequence have been singled out as major highlights, leaving audiences speechless and covered in goosebumps. One enthusiastic viewer even declared it “the best VFX movie in the entire history of Indian cinema,” while another noted that the animals look “so real that I thought they were straight out of Nat Geo”. International critics have echoed this sentiment. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described the film as having “a little of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings,” while another reviewer noted that it “literally looks like a Hollywood-produced epic... rendered with virtual production technology, as seen in Avatar”.
However, the public review is far from unanimous. A vocal contingent of viewers has taken to social media to express profound disappointment with the visual effects, describing the CGI as “cartoonish” and claiming that the film's creatures look like video game cutscenes. The most brutal comparison came from viewers who stated that after watching Ramayana, even the much-maligned Adipurush—a 2023 film heavily criticized for its poor VFX— “does not look that bad anymore”. One particularly scathing post claimed that the CGI is “so poor that even Chhota Bheem looks better”. This stark division in reception highlights a fundamental challenge: while the film's scale and ambition are undeniable, the execution of certain sequences has failed to convince a significant portion of the audience, particularly those with high expectations shaped by the very Hollywood blockbusters the film has been compared to.
The VFX of Ramayana exists at a fascinating crossroads. On one hand, it represents the most ambitious and expensive visual effects endeavor in the history of Indian cinema, backed by an Oscar-winning studio and years of painstaking labor. It has produced moments of genuine awe—the Jatayu sequence, the world-building of Ayodhya and Lanka, and the climactic confrontation—that have convinced many viewers that Indian cinema has finally arrived on the global stage. On the other hand, the criticism is equally passionate, with accusations of cartoonish execution and unfavorable comparisons to previous failures. What remains undeniable is that Ramayana has sparked a conversation about the future of visual effects in Indian cinema that will not be easily silenced. Whether the film is ultimately remembered as a pioneering triumph or a cautionary tale about the limits of spectacle, its impact on the discourse surrounding Indian VFX is already monumental.
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