Ramayana: Rise of a Legend review: India's costliest film is a spectacular epic

India's most expensive film ever has arrived, and it runs three hours. Ramayana: Rise of a Legend, directed by Nitesh Tiwari, adapts the ancient classical poem about Rama, the avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, into what our reviewer calls a thoroughly engaging, rousing and spectacular Indian epic melodrama. The film is only the first half of the story.

The score pairs two of cinema's most prominent composers: Hans Zimmer and AR Rahman. There are no musical numbers, a notable departure for a production of this scale in Indian cinema.

Ranbir Kapoor plays the mythical Rama, a noble warrior and statesman brought into being in the city state of Ayodhya as a bodily representative of Vishnu. From his first appearance, the reviewer notes, his sense of destiny is overwhelming.

But what exactly is that destiny? In broad terms, his fate is to face off with Ravana, king of far-off Lanka, played by Naveen "Yash" Kumar. Ravana is a figure whose former slave status once triggered in him a cosmically intense prayer for justice, and Lord Brahma answered by granting him the superpower of athletic strength and indifference to pain.

Where does the story sit in the epic tradition?

The reviewer draws a line to Western canon. The idea of aristocrats submitting stoically and yet playfully to exile in the forest has something Shakespearean about it, the review argues. And for audiences still coming down from Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, released earlier in July 2026, a story about the noble Prince Rama finally vowing to wage war on a distant city where his wife has been abducted might just fit the bill.

The Ramayana has often been adapted for live-action and animated movies in the past. Not, the review suggests, on this scale.

What does this change for Indian cinema?

The production sets a new spending benchmark for the industry, and its decision to split the narrative across two films signals a franchise ambition on the order of Hollywood's largest epics. The pairing of Zimmer with Rahman also marks a rare convergence of Western and Indian film music at the top tier of budget and prestige.

The three-hour runtime covers only the first half of the poem. A second installment, carrying the war for Rama's abducted wife, remains ahead. On this evidence, the review finds the opening chapter highly enjoyable, and the epic's stakes have only begun to escalate.