How Hollywood Films Have Reimagined The South Asian Epic Ramayana

Latest stories How non-state alliances are reshaping the global order US banks on bunker-busting Tomahawks to crack China's missile wall Why Chinese culture lands so fluently and freely in Vietnam

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, whereupon 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.

In the original“Black Panther” comics, this gorilla god is known as Ghekre and is based on a deity of the same name revered by the Akan Baoule people of the Ivory Coast. But in the“Black Panther” movies, the Jabari's gorilla god is referred to as Hanuman.

Hanuman is at the heart of Dev Patel's 2024 critically acclaimed action-thriller“Monkey Man.” The unnamed hero of this movie is an Adivasi belonging to one of India's many Indigenous groups. Hanuman inspires him to avenge the rape of his mother by a corrupt policeman working for a deceitful Hindu nationalist spiritual leader.

My current book project is about cinematic adaptations of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, a South Asian epic tradition about a catastrophic war. I argue that“Monkey Man” draws from a variety of different narratives, including the Ramayana tradition and popular American revenge films like“John Wick” to shed light on key social justice issues in India, including sexual violence and Hindu nationalism.

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.