Ramayana, A Version that Finally gives the story the respect it deserves.

The Poster itself right, from the beginning there was this implication that this was going to be much more than, lets say what older Ramayana Adaptations have been, for all their accuracy or lack there of(*Cough* Adipurush *Cough)

Have always kept the story pretty self contained, one might say that at its simplest it is a story of a man whose wife was unjustly taken from him and the he even though could have an entire kingdom's worth of Army for himself, chooses to make an Army of his own instead and rises up to the man who thinks he can do anything just cause he has a Kingdom.

If anyone got offended by this, yes, I am aware, but keeping this story in an outsider's context is very important because the makers made it a point that they are going to market this movie to a western audience, and they have no personal connection to this story, it is only because we do that we understand who Ravan really was, and that Ram was a Avatar of the God Vishnu, and even so, given the stature of Vishnu, most adaptations do not really justify calling up on him for help, that is not the case in this version.

Because it split the movie into two it provides room for some much needed context that is absent from the other adaptations.

This movie begins with the ever going battle between Deva's and Asura's.

Now it is important to make a distinction that Deva's and Asura's are not exactly Angels and Demons or Gods and Monsters as much as they are two separate races that represent different aspects of Human Nature. Where Devas represent Order and Beauty, Demons Represent the desire for Freedom and the often resulting Disorder.

This distinction is important not just because of the Socio Cultural context of this Story, but also because of its ending, as anyone familiar with Ramayana knows, Vibhishan becomes the next king of Lanka, and he is Ravan's Brother.

If you use your head that means he is a Demon as well.

And that is counted as a Victory.

So Demon's while having a heavy leaning towards Evil are not necessarily so.

And as such their race does not necessarily deserve to live in the conditions that they do.

This is important because this is why Ravan takes over Lanka from the former King Kuber, that and to please his mother.

He went to Mount Gokarna to do his Tapasya and while in Adipurush that is like one scene, here they show the tree branches growing around him and the entire mountain catching on Fire due to it. Then when he comes back he is all drained and starving, even though his strength is clearly ten fold due to his blessings.

It is in a way the story of the little guy winning over the big guy after gaining strength through hard work.

His story is in that way similar to Ram's and before you get angry at me for saying that, remember that the movie itself implies that Ravan deliberately left out humans while asking his blessing because he considered Humans to be too weak.

And literally every artist's depiction of Ram killing Ravan is playing into that trope

And it should be because Ramayan is a Leela.

And what that means is the god in this story(Vishnu) has come down to earth as one of us and deliberately taken on limitation not just to do the job properly because once again only a Human could kill Ravan and without limitations he is not a really human is he, but also to understand humans better.

Another thing which they added to his back story was that of Surpanakha's husband who prior to her meeting Ram was killed by Ravan.

That gives once again, some much needed context to her actions and potentially gives the interpretation that she sabotaged her Brother.

There are also Multiple scenes where Ram wonders about his destiny, which culminate when by the end he decides it will be in his own hands.

The two most surprising and yet very important additions were that of Sita being a Warrior and Keikei loving Ram.

A lot, and I mean a lot of adaptations limit these two women to their bare minimum of step mother wo screwed over the main character and woman who got kidnapped.

The other brothers of Ram are not even mentioned.

Here, the four are unified, their mutual love is beautiful to see on screen, and equally heartbreaking to see them separated.

And equally it is amazing to see that as common sense dictates Sita and Lakshman could smell something Fishy when they are tricked by the Golden Deer.

There are a lot of positives I can go over like the visuals the soundtrack the score but the one negative is while there are a lot more Asuras in the movie, quite a lot of them aren't given voice lines, which once again makes them feel like mindless monsters instead of characters.

But that is kind of it, everything else is amazing, We get to see Ram interact with Parshuram for pete's sake, the dialogue between him Ram and Lakshman is legendary.

It was good to see this story or at least the first half of it in this grand way.

Also R.I.P. Jatayu.