Director Om Raut has finally broken his silence over the backlash that his upcoming directorial Adipurush has been facing ever since its teaser launch. A number of people have objected to the depiction of Ravan, played by Saif Ali Khan, in the film. Some have also bashed it for its inferior VFX work.
Talking to a news channel, Raut said that was highly influenced by Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and is a follower of Lord Ram. He also added that he is confident that he has “done nothing wrong” with Adipurush. “I am a big follower of Lord Ram. I have done nothing wrong in this film. We have not tampered with history, and I would call this history, our proud history. We kept the purity of this history while working on this. When I saw Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan on Doordarshan, it had a huge impact on me,” he said.
He continued, “When we saw that, it had a lot of modern technology. One arrow comes, 10 come out of it, then 100 come out of it. We had never seen all of this. This was very new for all of us. We didn’t know about it. It was very popular in those days.”
Talking about the character of Ravan, he said, “Ravan is a demon. He was a cruel being so he was given a big mustache, and they showed him as a demon in those times. It was their artistic representation of what a demon would look like. Our Ravan is demonic in today’s times. In today’s times, in my artistic opinion, a demon could look like this.”
When asked if he would make any changes in the film after all the negativity around it, he said, “We need everyone’s blessings. Because this is not a film, we are not treating this like a film, this is a mission for us. Adipurush is a symbol of our devotion. So whatever people are saying, they are all our elders, we are noting everything down. When you see the film, when it releases in January, no one will be disappointed.”
Adipurush stars Prabhas, Saif Ali Khan, Kriti Sanon, and Sunny Singh in lead roles and is set to hit screens on January 12, 2023.