Hype is a cheap currency. In the churning engine of Mumbai’s film industry, it’s practically the local legal tender. So, when the first whispers from a "first-cut" screening of Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana started hitting the wires, the internet did exactly what it was programmed to do. It melted.

The buzzword of the day? "Rooted."

Apparently, Ranbir Kapoor’s turn as Lord Ram isn't just a performance; it’s an exercise in "rooted storytelling." That’s industry shorthand. It’s the phrase PR teams deploy when they want to convince you that a $100 million production—drenched in high-end VFX and global post-production pipelines—somehow has the soul of a campfire story. It’s a calculated defense mechanism. They’re trying to distance themselves from the radioactive crater left by Adipurush, a film so visually offensive it briefly united the internet in a rare moment of collective revulsion.

But let’s look at the friction. You don't spend $100 million to be "rooted." You spend that kind of money because you want to build a digital world that makes James Cameron look like he’s playing with Legos.

The technical heavy lifting is being handled by DNEG, the Oscar-winning powerhouse that’s basically the go-to for anyone wanting to render a believable galaxy or a photorealistic god. This is where the "rooted" narrative starts to show its seams. We’re told the film prioritizes emotion over spectacle, yet the production cycle is locked in a grueling dance with some of the most complex CGI rendering ever attempted in Asian cinema. You can’t have it both ways. Either you’re making an intimate, character-driven epic, or you’re stress-testing server farms in London and Mumbai.

Ranbir Kapoor is the pivot point here. He’s an actor who excels at a certain kind of modern, urban angst—the guy who doesn’t know how to grow up. Seeing him pivot to the stoic, divine perfection of Ram is a pivot that requires more than just a diet plan and a voice coach. It requires us to forget the meta-narrative of the Bollywood superstar. The early "reviews" say he’s nailed it. Of course they do. Nobody invites a skeptic to a first-cut show. These screenings are curated ecosystems, designed to generate the kind of glowing LinkedIn-tier praise that keeps investors from jumping off the ledge.

The real tension isn't whether Kapoor can act; it’s whether Tiwari can balance the weight of the source material with the demands of a modern blockbuster. The Ramayana isn't just a story in India; it’s the cultural operating system. Tinkering with the UI is dangerous. Mess up the VFX, and you’re a joke. Change the tone too much, and you’re a target.

We’ve seen this play out before. The "rooted" claim is often a smokescreen for "we spent all the money on the backgrounds and forgot to write a script." It’s the classic blockbuster trade-off. To get the scale, you usually have to sacrifice the texture. You trade the "grit" for a polished, 4K sheen that looks great in a trailer but feels hollow in the third act.

There’s also the matter of the release strategy. Splitting the epic into a trilogy is the kind of move that reeks of studio-mandated "franchise building." It’s a way to amortize those massive VFX costs over three ticket cycles instead of one. It’s a sensible business move, but it’s rarely a win for the pacing of the story. It turns a cohesive narrative into a series of "events."

The insiders are currently shouting about the "visual grammar" and the "soulful" approach. They want us to believe this is a turning point, a moment where the tech finally catches up to the mythology without overshadowing it. Maybe they’re right. Tiwari is a disciplined filmmaker, and Kapoor doesn't usually phone it in.

But "rooted storytelling" feels like a strange way to describe a project that is, by its very nature, an artificial construct of pixels and high-finance pressure. It’s a bit like calling a Tesla "organic" because the seats are vegan leather. The tech is the point. The spectacle is the product. Everything else is just a way to make the medicine go down.

If the film actually manages to deliver a human story amidst the inevitable storm of particle effects and digital lighting, it’ll be a miracle of engineering, not just art. For now, we’re just watching the marketing department perform its own version of a divine feat: trying to sell a massive, corporate-backed CGI machine as something that grew out of the dirt.

It’s a bold pitch. It’s also the only one they have.

The real question is whether the audience will see the "roots," or if they’ll just be looking for the seams in the green screen.