Adipurush: 2023 Bollywood Mythological Film

Movie Name: Adipurush
Directed by: Om Raut
Starring: Prabhas, Kriti Sanon, Saif Ali Khan, Sunny Singh, Devdatta Nage, Vatsal Sheth, Sonal Chauhan, Trupti Toradmal
Genre: Action, Drama
Running Time: 174 Minutes
Release Date: 16 June, 2023
Original Network: AA Films
Rating: 
Budget: ₹ 500 crore

In Hinduism, Lord Ram is also addressed as Adi Purusha. Prabhas will be seen playing the role of Lord Rama and Saif Ali Khan will play the role of Lankesh, the demon King Ravan, in the film.

Adipurush is an upcoming Indian Hindu mythological film based on the epic Ramayana. The film is directed by Om Raut and produced by T-Series Films and Retrophiles. Shot simultaneously in Hindi and Telugu languages, the film stars Prabhas as Raghava, Kriti Sanon as Janaki, and Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh. Made on a budget of ₹500 crore (US$63 million), Adipurush is one of the most expensive Indian films ever made.

7,000 years ago, Ayodhya’s king Raghava travels to the island of Lanka when the help of hanuman’s army with an aim to rescue his wife Janaki, who has been abducted by Lankesh, the king of Lanka.

Adipurush, an adaptation of the Hindu epic Ramayana, was announced on 18 August 2020, via a promotional poster. Prabhas portrays Lord Rama under the direction of Om Raut who earlier helmed the period action film Tanhaji (2020). Om Raut was fascinated by the 1992 Japanese film Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama and was motivated to adapt the epic Ramayana into a film using modern technology. Raut wrote the script amidst COVID-19 lockdown in India. Prabhas immediately liked the project and the production company T-Series Films was on-board for the project.

Adipurush is one of the most expensive Indian films ever made, with a budget of ₹500 crore (US$63 million). An amount of ₹250 crore (US$31 million) is estimated to be spent on visual effects. It is shot simultaneously in Hindi and Telugu languages, and is filmed in 3D.

In September 2020, the makers revealed that Prabhas is enacting Lord Rama’s portrayal whose character name was later revealed as Raghava. Saif Ali Khan who already worked as an antagonist in Raut’s Tanhaji has been signed for the role of Ravana with the name Lankesh. After rumours of Anushka Shetty, Anushka Sharma, Kiara Advani, and Keerthy Suresh being approached for the role of Sita, it was reported in November 2020 that Kriti Sanon has been cast to essay the role; her inclusion into the film was confirmed by makers four months later in March 2021. Sunny Singh who joined the sets in February 2021 is playing Lord Rama’s younger brother Lakshmana.

Motion capture shoot for Adipurush begun on 19 January 2021. Muhurat shot and formal launch was done on 2 February 2021 in Mumbai, India. Principal photography of the movie began that day, as informed by the makers. A massive fire accident took place at the filming location in Mumbai on the same day. Duplicate sets were erected same wise due to the fire breakout. In October 2021, Saif Ali Khan and Kriti Sanon wrapped up shoot. In November 2021, Prabhas also wrapped up shoot. On 10 November 2021, entire shooting of the film was completed.

The movie’s teaser was released on 2 October 2022 on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. The teaser gained 69 million views and 1 million likes within 24 hours of its release and became 2nd most viewed Indian film teaser after K.G.F: Chapter 2. The teaser was heavily criticized for the quality of CGI and VFX.

Adipurush is scheduled to theatrically release on 12 January 2023 in Hindi and Telugu, along with dubbed versions in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada. It was previously scheduled to release on 11 August 2022, but was later postponed due to the release of Laal Singh Chaddha.

Adipurush: Movie Trailer

Adipurush (Final Trailer) Hindi

Adipurush: Movie Review

Reimagining a mythological epic for the times that we live in is a perfectly permissible exercise as the long as the filmmaker is aware that there is a huge difference between adaptation and distortion. Writer-director Om Raut clearly isn’t. Adipurush, a bloated and vacuous cinematic version of a part of the Ramayana, does the epic or its civilisation-defining characters no justice at all.

The story of Lord Rama is an intrinsic part of Indian life, culture and religion and any attempt to bring it to the big screen demands both rigour and reverence. The veneration is all here – nothing wrong with that except for the fact that much of it does not ring true – but it isn’t backed up with firm creative integrity and storytelling acumen.

The ambition is mammoth but the imagination that the makers of Adipurush bring to the table is no bigger than the size of the computer screens that have been used to give the film its final shape. Neither the jungle where Raghav (Prabhas) agrees to be exiled for 14 years in deference to his stepmother’s wish, nor Lanka, the kingdom that Ravana (Saif Ali Khan) lords over, resemble any part that could be on the Indian subcontinent.

Adipurush is part Planet of the Apes, part King Kong, and part all the Hollywood superhero movies that the director and his ilk have been weaned on. It presents Lord Rama (Prabhas) as a comic book hero with a bow and a quiver that never runs out of arrows, Sita (Kriti Sanon) as a whimpering damsel in distress, Ravana as a cross between Thanos and Voldemort, and Bajrang/Hanuman (Devdatta Nage) as a mighty acrobat barely aware of his incredible powers until somebody reminds him that he can leap across a sea.

Watching Adipurush is not unlike watching a Marvel or DC movie. It is, to draw an analogy from within the film and the epic that it adapts, like the Swarna Mrig (golden deer) that the exiled Raghav chases at the behest of his consort. The creature is only a mirage. It isn’t what it pretends to be.

Adipurush is full of magic and miracles, but no trick that it rustles up over the three hours that it takes to peddle its wares can offset the consequences of the trivialisation of a great epic. The film makes a complete hash of a wonderful legend about the triumph of good over evil that has inspired Indian storytelling since time immemorial.

The world that Adipurush builds around the cottage that Raghav, Sita and Shesh/Lakshmana (Sunny Singh) occupy, is pretty as a picture. Ravana’s palace in Lanka, too, is mind-numbingly imposing. But neither of the two spaces look habitable, let alone lived-in.

It is easy to see from the word go that Adipurush is going to be a difficult film to wade through. With each passing minute, it gets more and more tiresome as the bag of sleights at its disposal is not only limited in range but also lacking in uniformity.

A movie like Adipurush would be nothing without its computer imagery. Its makers have spared no effort to pack it, end to end, with the most excessive of visual effects. That is tantamount to a terrible artistic choice especially given the fact that the VFX on show barely passes muster. The visuals look like they have been yanked out of a hyperactive child’s overly-coloured drawing book.

As a consequence, nothing on the screen looks real or believable. This revered story of men and monkey gods should have been marked by far greater attention to detail, and more painstaking execution. The human characters do not walk like real people. The gait of the talking primates is probably more human.

All of them seem to float in the air when they aren’t actually flying. The film does neither. It hobbles and crawls in ways that are neither particularly watchable nor narratively purposeful

Adipurush is weird blend of fantasy and fallacy – the result of an overkill of the sort of technical wizardry that Hollywood has mastered and done to death. In any case, the VFX that the film uses is hardly suited to the cinematic retelling of an Indian epic. If the film was going to be so derivative in terms of its visual design and its spatial dimensions, it should have gone in for a story that isn’t as rooted in the Indian ethos as the Ramayana.

What Adipurush thinks of women is made amply clear in the cavalier manner in which it places them on the periphery of the saga and deprives them of the power to intervene in a meaningful manner when push comes to shove. Be it Rani Mandodari, Ravana’s neglected wife, or Surpanakha, the demon king’s sister who seeks vengeance after her nose is chopped off by Lakshmana, they can only whine and complain.

Saif Ali Khan towers over everybody else in Adipurush and in a very physical sense at that. On the battlefield, when he squares off against the actor embodying the titular hero, he stands much taller. The actor revels in fleshing out the arch-villain although the performance would have gained appreciably in impact hadn’t the lines that he spouts been as stilted.

That is true of Prabhas’ performance, too. He has strong screen presence but it appears to be wasted on an undeserving film.

If there is anything worse than what Adipurush passes off as dialogues, it is the film’s sound design. Not only is it ear-splittingly loud, it is shockingly unimaginative. But why complain when virtually everything else in Adipurush is as just as phenomenally slapdash?

Movie Songs:

Song Title: Jai Shri Ram
Lyrics: Manoj Muntashir
Music Composer(s): Ajay-Atul
Singer(s): Atul Gogavale,Gwen Dias, Shazneen Arethna, Crystal Sequeira, Marianne D’Cruz Aiman, Umesh Joshi, Swapnil Godbole, Janardan Dhatrak, Vivek Naik, Santosh Bote, Devendra Chitnis, Yash Kulkarni, Mangesh Shirke, Anil Bhilare, Gaurav Dandekar, Siddhant Karawde, Rishikesh Patil, Ameya Paranjape, Vidit Patankar, Yashad Ghanekar, Prasad Manjrekar

Song Title: Ram Siya Ram
Lyrics: Manoj Muntashir
Music Composer(s): Sachet–Parampara
Singer(s): Sachet–Parampara