Ranbir Kapoor’s Ramayana English stuns fans with AI-like dubs: 'How is this real?'

When the English-language trailer for Nitesh Tiwari's two-part epic Ramayana dropped, the conversation wasn't dominated by Ranbir Kapoor's turn as Rama, Yash's imposing take on Ravana, or the film's sweeping visual ambition. Instead, viewers fixated on something more technical: the characters' mouths.

The dialogue was in English, yet the lip movements matched with striking precision, precise enough that many assumed they were watching something other than a conventional dub.

The technology behind the buzz

The trailer, released as part of the film's push into international markets, uses DNEG's Brahma AI system to align lip movements with the English dialogue track. Rather than layering an English voice-over on top of unrelated Hindi-language mouth movements, the standard approach to dubbing, the technology reshapes the on-screen performance so actors appear to be speaking English directly.

Reactions online were swift and largely enthusiastic. Some viewers argued the English dub even outperformed the Hindi original in places, singling out the texture of Ravana's voice for praise. Others zeroed in on the technical achievement itself, marveling at how convincingly the lip movements tracked the English dialogue.

For audiences encountering Indian mythology for the first time through the trailer, the visual spectacle proved just as compelling. Viewers steeped in Greek and Norse mythology expressed surprise at how epic the source material could be, and Airavata, Indra's mythical flying white elephant, featured in a battle sequence with Ravana drew particular attention.

A question of casting

Not all the feedback was celebratory. A vocal contingent of viewers questioned why the filmmakers relied on Indian-accented English voices rather than casting native English speakers from markets like the US or UK, arguing that a global release calls for voice actors attuned to the emotional cadences of native English delivery, and that the current dub felt emotionally flattened by comparison.

That critique fed into a broader debate: Whether the polish of the vocal performances was itself a product of AI. The combination of near-perfect lip synchronisation and uniformly clean audio led some to suspect the voices were synthetic rather than performed. Opinions split on what to make of that. Some viewers saw it as a genuine technical leap forward; others felt the very smoothness came at a cost, stripping away the small imperfections and natural rhythms that make a performance feel human.

The trailer's release follows producer Namit Malhotra's announcement that Sony has signed on as the film's worldwide distributor, a signal of the scale of ambition behind bringing this retelling of the Indian epic to audiences well beyond its traditional markets.

Ramayana stars Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Rama, Sai Pallavi as Sita, and Yash as Ravana, with a supporting cast that includes Ravi Dubey, Sunny Deol, Rakul Preet Singh, Vivek Oberoi, Arun Govil, Lara Dutta, and Kunal Kapoor. The first installment of the two-part saga arrives in theaters on November 6, just ahead of Diwali.