As online criticism of the visual effects in Ramayana gathers pace, two supervisors with credits on Sacred Games, Farzi and Gangs of Wasseypur have made a public case for the film. Yashoda Parthasarthy and Vijesh Rajan are not asking audiences to stop judging; they are asking for a different register of criticism.
Flaws are fair, trolling is not
Rajan told Hindustan Times, via The Times of India, that he sees “some sort of campaign against the film.” His point is not that Ramayana is beyond review. It is that abusive feedback leaves filmmakers with a bad taste and makes large bets feel punishing rather than worthwhile.
Parthasarthy, whose credits include Raman Raghav 2.0 and Ghoul, framed the stakes differently. She pointed to the thousands of artists behind photoreal work and to a structural disadvantage: Hollywood comparators such as Marvel and Avengers films are often made with ten times the budget.
“It will only open doors for other Indian filmmakers to reach the international audience,” Rajan said.
The 10,000-person frame
The most concrete figure in the defence is not a box-office number; it is a headcount. Parthasarthy said that roughly 10,000 people worked on the film, and that dismissive statements can feel heartbreaking because of what those people delivered. That number matters in a film economy where visual effects are frequently judged against resources Indian productions do not have.
- Judge the shots, not the crew: specific criticism of frames is fair; personal abuse is not.
- Compare resources honestly: Hollywood epics often operate at ten times the budget.
- See the global release as a door: Rajan argues it can open international routes for Indian filmmakers and technicians.
- Remember the short as proof of craft: the duo’s latest short, Aakhri Ride, arrives on October 31.
Why this matters for Hindi cinema
The debate is bigger than one film. Hindi cinema has spent years trying to close the gap between Indian mythology and global spectacle. A Ramayana mounted with collaborators such as Hans Zimmer and AR Rahman is a test of that ambition. If the response becomes a pile-on, the supervisors argue, the next filmmaker may hesitate before attempting something similar.
Rajan said the question first occurred to him during an MA in Film in Australia: whether an epic like Ramayana or Mahabharata could be made on the scale of The Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia. For him, Ramayana is the attempt that deserves backing, even with flaws.
Audit the frame, not the artist
For readers who watch VFX-heavy films closely, one useful habit is to separate technical critique from personal judgement. Ask whether a shot breaks lighting, texture, or motion continuity rather than reaching for the label of bad CGI. That specificity gives artists something actionable and keeps the public conversation from becoming a campaign.
That does not mean the criticism is manufactured. Audiences have a right to ask whether the effects hold the frame. But the craft conversation becomes more useful when it names what is failing visually, and when it acknowledges the resource gap that shapes the final image.
The comments arrived as Parthasarthy and Rajan’s short film Aakhri Ride, presented by Anurag Kashyap and Vasan Bala, was releasing on the YouTube channel Oh Short Flips on October 31.
Source: The Times of India
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