How Hollywood Films Have Reimagined The South Asian Epic ‘Ramayana’
(ANALYSIS) American audiences will be able to watch an English-dubbed version of “Ramayana,” a Hindi film based on a South Asian epic tradition, in theaters in November 2026.
The Sanskrit “Ramayana,” or “Journey of Rama,” is an epic poem that was composed sometime between 400 B.C.E. and 400 C.E. The epic follows Rama, an exiled prince and an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, as he journeys to rescue his wife, Sita, from the demon king Ravana.
For hundreds of years, people from different religious traditions across South Asia have retold the “Ramayana” through dramas, narrative poems, shadow puppet plays, pageants, folk songs, comics, television shows and many other mediums. Director Nitesh Tiwari’s upcoming “Ramayana” film is the latest retelling of this epic tradition.
For over a decade, I have studied how South Asian epics have been retold within and outside the Indian subcontinent. While many American moviegoers may not recognize the word “Ramayana,” they may have already encountered its characters and stories on the big screen.
Sita’s struggles in ‘A Little Princess’
A striking example is Academy Award-winning director Alfonso Cuarón’s 1995 film, “A Little Princess.” Although an adaption of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s well-known 1905 children’s novel of the same name, Cuarón’s movie begins with Sara Crewe — the daughter of a wealthy British Army captain posted in colonial India – telling the story of the Ramayana.
As Sara narrates the tale of Rama, the film presents scenes inspired by the epic. Actors portraying Rama and Sita are shown living in exile in a lush green forest. When Sita begs Rama to follow a demon disguised as a beautiful golden deer, Rama draws a magical protective circle around the princess and instructs her to stay within the circle’s borders. The story reaches a turning point with the demon king Ravana’s abduction of Sita after she exits the circle.
But the Ramayana is more than a story to Sara – it has parallels with her own life, especially after she is separated from her father when she moves to New York to attend boarding school. Cinema and media studies scholar Jyotsna Kapur explains that “the man cast as Rama is Sara’s father and the Ramayana is the imaginative thread that binds father and daughter together through their struggles while apart.”
At boarding school, Sara initially lives like a princess — like Sita — thanks to her father’s immense fortune. Yet after the apparent death of Captain Crewe in World War I, Sara’s headmistress confines the now-penniless child in the school’s attic.
While mourning her father, the heartbroken Sara uses a piece of chalk to draw a circle on the floor of the attic resembling the one Rama creates to protect Sita. Like Sita, Sara is eventually rescued — by Captain Crewe, who survives the war, and they return home to India.
By weaving these stories together, Cuarón used the epic’s themes of exile and separation to provide a fresh take on Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel.
Many cinematic Hanumans
The divine monkey Hanuman is one of the most beloved Ramayana characters. In the epic tradition, Hanuman is a loyal devotee of Rama, and he is the one who locates where Sita is being held captive in Ravana’s kingdom of Lanka.
Hanuman shows up in multiple different films. Pixar animator Sanjay Patel’s Academy Award-nominated 2015 short film, “Sanjay’s Super Team,” focuses on Sanjay, an Indian American boy who would rather watch cartoons than worship Hindu deities like Hanuman, Vishnu and the goddess Durga with his father.
Sanjay, however, gains a new appreciation for his family’s religious traditions when he reimagines Hanuman, Vishnu and Durga as superheroes resembling the three protagonists of his favorite animated television show, “Super Team.”
Ryan Coogler’s massively popular Marvel movies “Black Panther” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” are set in the fictional African country of Wakanda. In both films, a character called M'Baku proclaims “Glory to Hanuman!” M'Baku is the leader of the Jabari tribe, a Wakandan community that worships a gigantic white gorilla deity.
Rama and Hindu nationalism in “Slumdog Millionaire”
Hindu nationalist interpretations of the Ramayana in modern India surface in the 2008 Oscar winner for Best Picture: Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire.”
While many Hindus worship Rama, Sita and Hanuman as deities, Hindu nationalists have also presented Rama as a historical figure – the legendary ruler of the ancient kingdom of Ayodhya.
On Dec. 6, 1992, a mob of Hindu nationalists demolished the Babri Masjid — a 16th-century mosque in the city of Ayodhya in northern India. They claimed that the mosque had been built by first destroying a Hindu temple that marked the location of Rama’s birth. Following the Babri Masjid demolition, more than 2,000 people were murdered in riots across South Asia in 1992 and 1993.
“Slumdog Millionaire” follows Jamal Malik, an impoverished Muslim contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
When asked “In depictions of God Rama, he is famously holding what in his right hand?” Jamal has a flashback to the violent riots in the city of Mumbai after the destruction of the Babri Masjid.
As a 5-year-old, as Jamal flees the Hindu nationalist mob that had just killed his mother, he encounters a boy dressed as Rama holding a bow and arrow.
The adult Jamal then states: “I wake up every morning wishing I didn’t know the answer to that question. If it weren’t for Rama and Allah, I’d still have a mother.”
The new Ramayana film
The newest Ramayana movie’s tagline, “Our Truth, Our History,” seems to suggest that there is just one “accurate” and “historical” way to tell the Ramayana.
This reflects a prominent Hindu nationalist ideology that the Sanskrit “Ramayana,” along with retellings that closely follow the ancient epic, are the only legitimate versions of Rama’s story.
Yet as indicated by Hollywood films like “A Little Princess,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Sanjay’s Super Team,” the “Black Panther” movies and “Monkey Man,” there is no single way to depict or understand this immensely diverse epic tradition.
This article was originally published in The Conversation.
Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai is Assistant Professor of Religion, Director of Film and Media Studies, and the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Kalamazoo College where she teaches courses on religious traditions in South Asia, religion and popular media, and religion and epic narratives. Her research focuses on literary, cinematic, and television retellings of South Asian religious narratives and representations of South Asian religions in mainstream media.