How Ra.One is a modern-day Ramayana in pixels and code whose Ravana delivers a special message!

Anubhav Sinha’s Ra.One is much more than just a superhero action thriller; it’s a modern retelling of our mythological tale, reminding us why the burning of Ravana remains so important!

When Ra.One released in 2010, most people, especially adults either didn’t enjoy it or walked out talking about the spectacle that it was, especially kids like me who would have and still defend the film in a heartbeat. Because despite the flaws of the film in terms of representation, the CGI, superhero angle, the video-game action sequences with SRK vs Arjun Rampal made it all bigger, louder, shinier than anything Bollywood had attempted at the time. It was the first time when many collaborations with the west were made from Akon singing to foreign stunts and the VFX team working on the film to craft it. But underneath the dazzle was a story that, in hindsight, feels far more philosophical than it first seemed, especially to me because while I was fascinated with Ra.One’s ideology, at its core, the film is a retelling of the Ramayana. Not in the most straightforward way of kings, queens, and demons, but through the prism of modern day technology where Rama is a video game hero, G.One, Ravana is a self-learning AI villain, Ra.One and the battlefield is not Lanka, but our modern anxieties around control, ambition, and the systems we ourselves create.

Let's dive deeper into it!

When the game spills into life

The most striking thing about Ra.One is that it doesn’t keep its battles locked inside the digital world. The film’s play is a video game that bleeds into reality which is almost prophetic when you think about it today. Ra.One, the AI villain, isn’t just a character inside the console, as he finds a way to step out, to walk among humans, to continue his mission in the real world. In doing so, he echoes the mythical Ravana who was never just a “monster out there”  but was the embodiment of ego, arrogance, and imbalance inside society. That’s the cleverness of this retelling as it suggests that our battles with evil don’t remain locked in epics or stories. They cross over into our daily lives. And in an AI-driven age, the film feels even sharper. What if the code we build, meant for entertainment, efficiency, or control, takes on a life of its own? What happens when our own creations turn into our demons, snatching our ability to think critically? 

The scene that lingers

There’s one particular moment in the film that has stayed with me far longer than the action sequences. It’s when Ra.One, during Dussehra, says something to a bunch of kids that felt profound even when I first heard it as a teenager: “Why do you burn Ravana every year? Because the truth is, he never really dies. Why would you kill someone who’s already been killed?” Back then, I was more fascinated by the cinematic staging of it, the villain standing against the backdrop of a Ravana burning, and festival drama just like seen in real life. But as I grew older, I realized the weight of that line. Ravana never dies because we keep bringing him back. We create him, year after year, age after age. And each time, we tell ourselves the fire will end him. But that’s the thing - we look at evil as something outward when it is hiding in our temptation, arrogance that doesn't burn away. It just regenerates and sometimes, it's born from our own hands.

A Ravana made of code

What madeRavana such a compelling villain in mythology was that he wasn’t one-dimensional. He was arrogant, yes, but he was also learned, powerful, and deeply devoted in his own ways. He was a king, a scholar, and a devotee - a character so layered with contradictions just like humans. Ra.One’s is also an updated version of this villain just not in flesh and blood but in code and algorithm. He learns, adapts, and evolves faster than his creator ever imagined. He isn’t just “bad” for the sake of being bad; he’s the natural outcome of ambition unchecked. He’s not an alien invader or a mythical curse, but our ego, our shortcuts, our obsession with control just rewritten into lines of code. And that’s what makes him frightening as he is more human than G.one whose moral good is somewhat saint-like superhero. 

Ritual of burning as a reckoning

Traditionally, the epic of the Ramayanaends with Ravana’s destruction, the burning of ten headed demon that still defines Dussehra’s spectacle. The fire is cathartic as good wins, evil loses, something that even the film stages in the end. But as Prateek(Suresh's child) revives G.One, it gives a chance for Ra.One to also revive itself back, as they are all codes. This is where the film stages the good over evil as something of a self check. Because what does burning mean in the age of algorithms and AI? If Ravana is now a self-learning machine, a system of code that multiplies and backs itself up, can we really burn him at all? 

That’s where it becomes more than a superhero story. It suggests that burning Ravana isn’t about hero's win. It’s about questioning why we built him in the first place. It’s about asking ourselves why our fantasies so often lean toward unchecked power, domination, and control. Because if we don’t confront that, the Ravanas we build, whether as AI or corporations, political systems will keep regenerating.

Also Read: Dissecting The Ba***ds of Bollywood: Bastards, Bollywood, and the meta joke we’re all in on!

Good vs evil, or creator vs creation?

The final battle between G.One and Ra.One may look like a traditional good-versus-evil showdown but underneath it lies something more troubling. G.One is not just fighting a villain; he’s fighting the unintended consequences of human ambition. In that sense,Ra.One mirrors our anxieties about AI today. We love the possibilities it promises of smarter systems, endless efficiency, dazzling innovation. But we also worry about what happens when we lose control. What happens when creations stop serving us and start pursuing their own logic? That is the heart of the Ramayana retelling here. The story isn’t just about Ram (or G.One) being stronger than Ravana (or Ra.One) or better. It’s about the reminder that Ravana keeps returning because he is, ultimately, of our making.

Which brings me back to Ra.One's question because in today’s AI-driven world, that feels even more urgent. If we think about it, every new technology we celebrate comes with its own potential Ravana hidden inside. Every system we build to simplify life can, in the wrong context, complicate it beyond control. We keep burning Ravana through rituals, films, victories on screen but unless we change the conditions that create him, the fire is only symbolic.

That, to me, is what makesRa.One stand apart. Despite the criticism it got, it’s perhaps the Bollywood film that came closest to reimagining the Ramayana for our times. Because it isn’t just about whether G.One wins. It’s about whether we can stop ourselves from building Ravanas that need to be burned in the first place. This means taking responsibility in how we design technology, ethics in how we deploy it, and awareness of what our ambitions can unleash. The film is all spectacle and fireworks but it goes beyond to makes us reckon with the fact that Ravana never dies because we keep him alive. And maybe that’s the most powerful retelling of all to realize that the battle isn’t out there, in Lanka or in code. It's in here, in the choices we make, the systems we design, the ambitions we feed! 

For more such in depth pieces, follow us on @socialketchupbinge.