Adipurush: Saif Ali Khan's Lankesh/Ravan VFX sparks meme-fest

When the first teaser of director Om Raut’s Adipurush came out, there was just so much backlash over the poor quality of its visual effects that the team pushed the film’s theatrical release ahead to give them more time to work on upgrading the product. Six months later, a new teaser came out, which was marginally better, but still not of the quality one would expect in a film that’s cost Rs 600 crore+ to make.

The film, which has Prabhas in the lead as Raghav/Ram, had Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh/Ravan, a choice that audiences were not completely on board with and now that Adipurush is in theatres, it turns out that their scepticism was not unfounded after all. In Om Raut’s Ramayan, not only does Lankesh sport a modern-day haircut, but he also wears T-shirts. The worst, though, netizens point out, is the VFX used to show Ravan in his 10-headed avatar, which, unlike all earlier iterations of them being in one row, was now like a double-decker bus – five floating heads stacked over five others with a blue halo around them that looked like the glow of a jetpack, as if they were all set to take off.

Social media, of course, has been abuzz with a meme fest about how poorly Saif’s character was handled. Comments ranged from “Ravan will come looking for Om Raut for making him look like this”, to “Starplus ravan and VFX was far better”, “Is Ravan me to lakh se bhi jyada buraiyaan hai”, “Ravan is wearing black T-shirt in war”, “Didn't know there were Salons during Ramayana time”, “New generation Barber for haircut of ravan and his team”, “They couldn't fit all 10 heads of Ravan all together in VFX but a cartoon could?”, "Ravan ka Itna apmaan toh kabhi Ram ne bhi nahi kiya 😂😂😂😂#VFX2023", “Why does Ravan have the Kurla chhapri tiktoker haircut?”, among many others.

Here's a look at some of the memes that have popped up since morning:

Even Kannada actor Jayaram Karthik made it to the Ravan meme fest as a better option to play the character. Karthik was Ravan on the Hindi serial Siya Ke Ram. 

Netizens felt that the VFX used to create Ravan's multi-headed look in a commercial was better than the one in Adipurush.

Saif's stylish hair cut and slicked back locks were other issues that netizens pointed out as inconsistent with the timeline the story is set in. 

Overall, netizens were quite disappointed with how Saif was presented as Ravan. 

Adipurush, which also stars Kriti Sanon and Sunny Singh, among others, released in 3D and 2D in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. The film has, apparently, been picked up by Amazon Prime Video for post-theatrical streaming rights.