Nitesh Tiwari’s two-part Ramayana had its first public-facing test with a Los Angeles premiere on October 27, and the early word is built around size. Viewers walked out reaching for the same benchmark: Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings.
One content creator said nothing in the “cinematic universe” had felt like this since the first Rings film and that the cliffhanger made him shout “no” because a second part is coming. He described the first instalment as a “hefty 3-hour movie.”
Scale and star power lead the early praise
Ranbir Kapoor plays Lord Ram, Sai Pallavi plays Sita, and Yash plays Ravana in the adaptation. Early posts praise Kapoor as “sublime” and Yash as “magnetic”, particularly in his introduction as Ravana. Sunny Deol appears as Hanuman and Ravi Dubey as Lakshman.
One viewer called the experience a “grand spectacle” and said the visuals, dances, music and action felt colossal. Even with that praise, the reaction was not uniform.
The music becomes the sharpest dividing line
Not every early review is glowing. The score, credited to AR Rahman and Hans Zimmer, is drawing the most direct criticism. One reviewer said the Indian-Hollywood blend “largely backfires” and can feel like neither tradition rather than a true fusion. Another called the music “the biggest letdown” for an epic that needs its score to carry the divinity and emotion of the story.
Some of the same reviews also felt the second half was stretched and that the film “leans more on spectacle and action than drama and emotion.” That leaves the project with a familiar big-film tension: it is clearly an event, but the emotional pull is still up for debate.
Why the comparisons matter
Ramayana is one of the most ambitious Indian adaptations in years, and a Lord of the Rings comparison raises expectations for its worldwide theatrical release on November 5, 2026. Early word about scale, visuals and performances is the exact momentum a three-hour epic needs. The music response, however, suggests that the Rahman-Zimmer fusion is the biggest creative risk in the rollout.
- The first instalment runs a hefty 3 hours, by one viewer’s account.
- Ranbir Kapoor, Yash and Sai Pallavi are attracting the strongest early mentions.
- The AR Rahman-Hans Zimmer score is being called the biggest letdown by some first viewers.
- Ramayana opens worldwide in theatres on November 5, 2026.
For now, the premiere has done the job of framing Ramayana as a global-sized event. The real test arrives when regular audiences decide whether the scale and performances outweigh a score that has already split the room.
Source: Hindustan Times
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