The much-awaited Ramayana trailer finally arrived after months of anticipation, but the response was far from unanimous. While many viewers praised its scale and ambition, others heavily trolled the VFX, CGI and costumes, particularly the modern-looking sarees.
Now, Ranbir Kapoor, director Nitesh Tiwari and producer Namit Malhotra have responded to the backlash. And they are clearly unhappy with how the film’s visuals are being judged online.
Speaking to Collider, Ranbir pointed out that the rise of AI and social media has created a strange trend where people quickly present themselves as CGI experts. He said viewers often watch a few seconds of footage on their phones and immediately decide whether the VFX is good or bad.
Ranbir stressed that Ramayana involves years of work by VFX artists. He has personally seen Tiwari and Malhotra spend countless hours discussing tiny details, even something as specific as the color of the sky.
Namit Malhotra was even more direct. He argued that Ramayana is being judged in the wrong format. The film is designed as a massive theatrical experience, yet people are judging its visuals through compressed videos on smartphone screens.
He compared it with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, saying certain films are created specifically for the big screen and should be experienced in that environment before their technical quality is judged.
At the same time, Malhotra acknowledged that audiences have every right to dislike the film. His issue is with making definitive judgments about the technical execution without experiencing the finished product.
Nitesh Tiwari also expressed frustration with online nitpicking. According to him, once people decide to find faults, one small mistake can overshadow years of work.
However, social media users quickly brought up an uncomfortable comparison: Adipurush.
The team behind Adipurush made similar arguments before release, asking audiences not to judge the film’s visuals from promotional material and to wait for the theatrical experience. We all know how that experiment ended. The film was brutally trolled and became an embarrassment for Indian cinema.
That history is now making some fans nervous. The argument of just wait until you see it on the big screen sounds reasonable, but audiences have heard it before.
Ultimately, Ramayana will have to prove its VFX in theatres. Until then, the internet will continue doing what it does best: judging a few seconds of footage as if everyone has a PhD in CGI.
And after Adipurush, asking people to simply trust the VFX team is going to be a much harder sell.
Ranbir Kapoor BREAKS Silence on #Ramayana Negativity
“The last few years everyone has become a CGI critic, people are interested in the technology, but it’s also funny how countless hours of work is called AI because they don’t understand it. It’s tricky to impress everyone” pic.twitter.com/gPT29ylvFG
— The Climax India (@TheClimaxIndia) August 12, 2026
