Did memes kill the trailer? Decoding 'Ramayana' and its perception on social media

The weirdest thing about the Internet today is that it has made us entitled enough to think that everyonersquos opinion is worth sharing But is an opinion devoid of any influence at all To remain truly uninfluenced you would need to be scrollingfreeThe days of experiencing things firsthand or in isolation are long gone there is a quite a dearth of original thoughtTake Nitesh Tiwarirsquos upcoming multicrore epic Ramayana I didnrsquot care about watching the official trailer because ever since Animal I am not really a Ranbir Kapoor fan anymore I have genuinely enjoyed his previous performances mdash the likes of Wake Up Sid 2009 Tamasha 2015 and Rockstar 2011 But Ranbir as Ram It feels like a complete mismatchBut long before I even considered not pressing play the memes had already told me everything I needed to know It further discouraged me from watching the trailer and maybe even the film mdash although thatrsquos a call I will save for laterHaving consumed the trailer in the form of memes I agree with most of the jokes floating aroundRanbir Kapoor genuinely looks like hersquos about to turn to the camera and say ldquoMain udna chahta hu main daudna chahta hu Nainardquo I want to fly I want to run Naina like he did in Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani 2013The cross over of Ramayan and Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani that has people in splits right Salman Khan for few is the better choiceAnd I think that disconnect is largely because we have spent years loving Kapoor in vulnerable comingofage contemporary urban roles Seeing those viral Internet jokes made me realise Kapoor is a brilliant actor no doubt but lately hersquos been picking up projects that leave me wondering who is actually enjoying seeing him in them We need the Tamasha era Ranbir backBeing in the cast of Ramayana demands a sort of looming physical presence You know the kind of heft only a Godking would have Like the meme AI edits of Salman Khan as Ram and honestly He looked like a much better fit likely because of his natural build Itrsquos not Kapoorrsquos fault and this isnrsquot bodyshaming but I would prefer a depiction of Lord Ram to be imposing yet somehow comfortingPlus Kapoor with a topknot Maybe notBeyond the casting the visual execution of this film is supposed to be this grand declaration of Indian cinemarsquos command over worldclass VFX The budget for the twopart film is a whopping Rs 4000 crores making it Indiarsquos most ambitious and expensive project yet So do the visual effects justify it From the few that I have come across not reallyThe wider landscapes miss the mark Raavanrsquos army looks like a swarm of bees and the entire digital universe created here has never looked more unnaturalThen there are the memes on the catrsquos appearance Kapoorrsquos makeup makes him look far too orange While Sai Pallavi has that gentle doelike look one imagines Sita to possess but her saree blouse is definitely not era appropriateIt makes me nostalgic for what we consumed as kids mdash Ramayana The Legend of Prince Rama the 1993 IndoJapanese coproduced anime film that played on Cartoon Network as a series Its art style leaned Japanese anime with characterrsquos features that werenrsquot entirely traditional and yet it looked and felt infinitely more real than this hyperrendered CGI soupItrsquos entirely possible that social media is unfairly steering my opinion And that my algorithm has kept the good stuff at bayAfter all itrsquos the Ramayana and we are yet to encounter a version of it that audiences fundamentally hateBut couldnrsquot this movie have been made better Right now it feels less like a narrative masterpiece and more like a point the producers are desperately trying to prove about their budget and VFXMy suspicion is that these hyperVFX spectacles will eventually carve out their own separate isolated genre with a niche audience But I have yet to encounter a single person who has watched the trailer and genuinely liked itWhen people used AI to easily swap Ranbir Kapoor out for Salman Khan as the better Ram it proved two things either the original casting looks completely unnatural or AI has gotten terrifyingly good Take your pickRealistically the memes might not actually hurt the film If this type of relentless meme backlash happened to a smallbudget film with little to no marketing it could easily tank it But in the case of a behemoth like Ramayana it wonrsquot impact the box office at allItrsquos a massive production with ample cash left for marketing it tells the story of the Ramayana and at the end of the day people will still go Some might argue that memes are just Internet opinions and well we understand that itrsquos hardly in favour of the subjectBut the memes arenrsquot going anywhere They have become the cultural lens or the first draft review of any film We arenrsquot watching trailers anymore we are watching the Internet critique films before the popcorn even pops