Meth-cooking teacher becomes Ram | #260
+ Unexpected Music Collabs
Mitron,
The first look of Ramayana - a 2-part film series covering the Valmiki-verse, was released a couple of days ago. The grand scale of the film is highlighted by the star cast and an all-star collab between Oscar winners Hans Zimmer and AR Rahman. Not to mention the reported budget of a meagre 835 crores!
This got us thinking about foreign interpretations of Indian Epics and that’s the theme of this week’s newsletter.
Things we learnt this week 🤓
The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) At IWTK we’ve been known as purveyors of bad puns but the title of the movie is a bit much even for us. Bagger Vance (Will Smith) isn't just a caddie—his name derives from "Bhagavan," meaning Krishna in Sanskrit.
Wait there’s more:
In the movie Bagger Vance guides the troubled golfer Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), whose name R. Junuh should evoke Arjuna, the conflicted warrior from the Mahabharata. Ew.
Director Robert Redford adapted Steven Pressfield’s book which aims to answer the question no one ever asked - “ what if the Mahabharata was golf?”
Throw in bad racial stereotypes, clunky dialogue and everything we just mentioned earlier - this movie was a bogey from the start
Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama (1992) isn't just another anime—it's a masterpiece that makes Adipurush look like a high school drama project. Originally conceived by Japanese filmmaker Yugo Sako, this Indo-Japanese collaboration took over 450 artists and nearly 100,000 hand-drawn cells to bring the epic to life. When the film was released in the US as "The Prince of Light: The Legend of Ramayana" in 2001, Bryan Cranston lent his voice to Lord Ram. Yes, the same Bryan Cranston who would later become Walter White in Breaking Bad. Bryan Cranston has some range - Maryada Puroshatham to Meth Selling Teacher. The voice cast reads like a who's who of legendary performers. James Earl Jones—the voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa—served as the narrator. The original Hindi version featured Arun Govil (Ram from the iconic TV series), Amrish Puri as Ravana, and Shatrughan Sinha as narrator. The film currently holds a 9.1/10 rating on IMDb! This masterpiece was initially banned in India for three years due to protests from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who objected to foreigners making a film about their sacred text. Yet Japanese animator Yugo Sako had spent years studying 10 different versions of the Ramayana and chose animation specifically because, as he put it, "Ram is God, I felt it was best to depict him in animation, rather than by an actor". The story of Ram was quite well dRAMatized by the Japanese.
18 Days isn’t just a comic—it’s a multiverse of formats. It started as a script/art book hybrid (because Grant Morrison was under contract with DC and couldn’t do a “real” comic), then morphed into a YouTube motion comic, and finally became a full-blown graphic novel series in India. If you’re keeping score, that’s more reincarnations than the Pandavas themselves. Morrison, the mind behind The Invisibles and All-Star Superman, takes the Mahabharata and cranks it up to eleven. Imagine the Pandavas and Kauravas as “techno-cosmic super-warriors” wielding weapons. The art, mostly by Mukesh Singh and Jeevan J. Kang, is so bold and psychedelic you’ll wonder if you accidentally licked a blue lotus. Morrison doesn’t just retell the story—he re-engineers it. The focus is on the 18-day war, the “prototype for every war ever fought.” There’s no simple good vs. evil; the “heroes” cheat, the “villains” have a point, and everyone’s got a cosmic chip on their shoulder. It’s less about dharma and more about realpolitik with a side of astras. The series has been called everything from “a confusing mess” to “the best entry point into the Mahabharata for lazy readers”. But love it or hate it, you can’t deny the ambition. With a cult following online, 18 Days is proof that Indian mythology can go full Avengers and still keep its soul!
From IWTK, with love 💌
Here are some unexpected music collabs.
Wimbledon is going on at the moment, but throwback to the time the Australian Open circumvented copyright issues in their live stream.
Only In India 🇮🇳
Every Kutta Dutta has his day.
💟 IWTK