Raya And The Last Dragon is a formulaic but sometimes moving addition to the Disney princess canon
Image: Photo: Disney Film Reviews Raya
Note: The writer of this review watched Raya And The Last Dragon on a digital screener from home. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Here’s an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
Though it was in production years before the pandemic changed everyone’s way of life, Raya And The Last Dragon truly feels like the first Disney blockbuster of the COVID era. Accidentally or not, this lavish animated production resonates with the collective grief of the world it’s being released into, inviting everyone to sit with that pain, even as it hints at brighter days to come. Helmed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, together with co-directors Paul Briggs and John Ripa, the film is still very much a Disney princess story (with nods to a Disney acquisition). But with its muted palette and infusion of Southeast Asian cultures, Raya also brings some innovation to that framework, while raising some of the questions we’ve all posed to ourselves as infection rates and death tolls rose: How did we get here? And how do we find our way out?
Raya begins in somber fashion. A lone rider sweeps across sun-washed vistas, almost faded to reflect a world increasingly drained of its life. She is Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), who makes note of the dystopian setting in a somewhat winking voiceover: “How did this world get so broken?” Flashback to six years earlier, when her father, Benja (Daniel Dae Kim), chief of the Heart Lands, brought together representatives from the other four lands: Tail, Talon, Spine, and Fang. Together with Heart, these five nation-states, once collectively known as Kumandra, take their names from the parts of a dragon, though such a being hasn’t been seen in 500 years—not since the Druun, a malevolent and primordial entity, threatened to overrun human- and dragonkind alike. Benja’s attempts at diplomacy failed, which led to dire consequences for all the peoples of the former Kumandra. In the years since, even the landscape has been altered, creating a society of survivors—and opportunists.
This is the foreboding world that an adolescent Raya navigates with her trusty steed Tuk Tuk (Alan Tudyk), a playful hybrid of a pill bug and (maybe?) a hedgehog. Instead of scraping by like Aladdin, Raya is on a quest to put the Dragon Gem back together and bring back those who were lost. This hunt for magical jewelry as a means to revive loved ones has shades of Avengers: Endgame, as do Raya’s interactions with fellow orphans Boun (Izaac Wang) and a cherubic-only-in-appearance baby (Thalia Tran). As the Druun continue to roam the countryside, turning people to stone, everyone left alive—including the behemoth Spine warrior Tong (Benedict Wong)—is in some stage of mourning. It’s a chillingly topical theme for a Disney adventure.
Raya is cast from the same enterprising, plucky mold as other Disney protagonists. She’s also left to make sense of the world with not much more than an impressive sword, a gem fragment, and the parting words of her father: “Don’t give up on them.” Tran takes Raya on the journey from preteen to young adult with aplomb, her voice dancing over the lighter moments before turning thick with emotion. The Star Wars alum imbues this latest Disney princess with pathos instead of the usual precociousness, but without skimping on the charisma. Her exchanges with Namaari (Gemma Chan), a Fang warrior princess and the film’s chief antagonist, often convey their shared past—namely, Namaari’s betrayal of Raya when they were children—through tone alone. Given how formative that experience was for Raya, it’s a shame that Namaari isn’t more fleshed out in the film’s present day. Chan’s performance hints at Namaari’s inner turmoil, but her motivations remain underdeveloped. The focus on the Druun, a force described as an “unrelenting fire” only capable of destruction, ends up also consuming some of the character’s nuance.
The screenplay, from Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, rides a fine line between melancholy and buoyancy. No one bursts into song, not even to croon about their pain. But the found family that Raya builds with Boun, Con Baby (as the pocket-picking little tyke is known for a while), and Tong is marked as much by resilience as bouts of laughter and unexpected joy. No one embodies the latter like Sisu (Awkwafina), the dragon Raya rouses from a magical slumber. Even with the fate of the world at stake, Sisu finds time to make friends, shop for gifts, and slurp down bowl after bowl of shrimp congee. Her underwater frolic yields one of the most awe-inspiring sequences, as the muted palette and tone explode into vibrant hues and whimsy—a moment that recalls The Wizard Of Oz’s shift from black-and-white to color. Heralded as a Genie-like figure ahead of the film’s release, Awkwafina’s Sisu can’t find the many notes of the late Robin Williams’ performance in the animated Aladdin, nor quite match his zany energy. But Sisu’s boundless optimism is a type of magic in a story otherwise heavy with survivor’s remorse.
As it heads into its final act, Raya And The Last Dragon increasingly takes the form of a standard Disney fable, with big action sequences and even bigger leaps of faith. But on its way to a fairly conventional conclusion, the film offers a few inspired detours, too. In creating the lands of former Kumandra, Raya follows the cue of Disney Channel series Elena Of Avalor by taking inspiration from multiple countries. The swirl of influences from Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines can be found in everything from the galvanizing fight scenes (which incorporate Muay Thai and Arnis, among other forms of martial arts) to the culinary delights that foster community among this chosen family. The reverent preparation of bún thịt nướng, the well-seasoned skewers, the overflowing bowls of lychee—they’re all homages to the exuberant food scenes from Hayao Miyazaki’s films. This thoughtful treatment extends to the raiment of the various Lands’ leaders and Raya’s own attire, which includes a salakot, as well as her use of her father’s moro sword.
When Raya And The Last Dragon takes the time to ruminate on grief and recovery from trauma, it meaningfully distinguishes itself from the rest of the princess oeuvre. Just as unique as the film’s world-building is its sense of hope burnished by loss, not undermined by it. Only the Disney boilerplate messaging—believe in yourself/others—obscures the power of this moving tale and how it captures, intentionally or not, a specific form of sorrow.
42 Comments
Raya follows the cue of Disney Channel series Elena Of Avalor by taking inspiration from multiple countries
I’ve actually seen SEA people pretty ticked off about that (but I assume others are happy about it). As a Latin American, I don’t know if I agree Elena of Avalor putting it all in the blender is ‘thoughtful’. At least in my circles, that kind of worldbuilding is seen as disrespectful-but-we-can’t-we-expect-any-better, not as something cool.
Yeah, kind of strikes me as “Chinese, Japanese, what’s the difference, it’s all the same, right?” kind of thinking.I’m no expert on southeast Asian cultures, but I don’t think you can just say that Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand are all the same, with some Cambodian and Malaysian sprinkled in.
I’m a cynical kind of Southeast Asian American, and while I’m happy to see stories focusing on people/characters of color, this kind of pulling-from-everything feels like a way to hedge against criticisms of inaccuracy or misrepresentation. It’s a real minefield, and it’s no easy task navigating this kind of stuff, so I don’t envy that position of making something that won’t offend. I think this is the easier route, and while not ideal I can see why that’s the route they’re taking.As for this movie, I’ll admit that trailer (and especially Awkwafina’s dragon) does make this look reeeaaal formulaic.
I guess a relevant question is, is this story based on any specific myth or folklore, and if so, which culture or cultures does it come from?I suppose I can accept that this is set in a fantasy realm, where these cultures are more blended together than they are in the real world, than if it is, say, a story that originates from a particular group of people.
I mean, they could’ve pulled one myth from one specific part of SEA – from the Philippines, Indo, Malaysia, Thailand, wherever, instead of just shoving them all in the blender and saying “Eh, you’re all the same, right?”
But it CAN be done “well.” Note the worldbuilding in AtLA/TLoK and how well it works. It DOES help that the nations have distinct analogues, but they still mix it up a lot and interject occasional other cultures into the mix.
Americans get pissed if you mistake which state they’re from, but a whole diverse geographic region with thousands of years of history spread out over thousands of square kilometres? “Meh. All the same.” Akwafina is Chinese/Korean, which isn’t even in the same fucking region.
What Americans have you ever encountered, who have gotten genuinely pissed about your not picking up their state, haha?Not talking about a ball-busting “Fuck you, I’m from NY, not Boston!” – I mean “Fuck you, Ireland isn’t in the UK” anger.Like, did you piss off a North Carolinian by thinking they were from TN?
i lived in boston, and i knew people who legit got mad about boston accents in movies.
That’s a different thing, though – like taking the piss out of David Boreanaz’s Irish accent, haha.
I’ve never heard of an American being “pissed” about someone not knowing what state they are from. I mean, Americans tend to be so mobile, tons of them aren’t even really from any single “state,” anyway.
unfortunately, disney is about money above all. so a movie about a vaguely asian character will pick up the chinese as well as other markets, where as a movie about a thai character will not pick up china and any regional market that feels they don’t associate with thai culture.the preview looks dope, tho
I (part Puerto Rican) have mixed feelings about that sort of thing to the extent that I feel like I can’t really judge without taking in the movie (show/book) and trying to understand the context for what it’s trying to do. One prominent example where I think I was wrong: I suspected in advance of Black Panther coming out that audiences in Africa would have a mixed-to-negative reaction to the way the movie makes Wakanda a pan-African smorgasbord. At least based on the press reactions I saw at the time that wasn’t the case.Thinking about context … the world of European-derived fantasy, it isn’t so different. Sometimes you have a clear 1:1 attempt to mirror a specific culture/place/time, but it’s a lot of generic ideas of the middle ages, generic ideas about Celtic and Germanic mythology, done with varying degrees of skill. The difference is if you grew up with fantasy fiction in the US (at least if you’re my age), that’s the kind of material you swam in as a default, and fantasy drawing on different cultural heritages got (and still does get) marked as Distinctive for that reason, which puts more pressure on it to do Representation Right, even though there probably shouldn’t be one way to do that.
I wouldn’t presume to speak for all Latin Americans, let alone everybody who has been in this position, of course. I did see African critiques of Wakanda pan-Africanism and some thoughtful articles engaging with it as specifically African-American fantasy. But there were probably people who disagreed with that. Cultures are not monoliths, after all.In this case, it’s because I first learned of the movie even existing from SEA friends who were eyerolling at it, so it’s more about the review presenting this as a… 100% thoughtful, great choice when it’s obvious that for some people it’s going to hit in the they’re all the same anyway. Which is why I don’t think, exactly, that this is the same as generic European fantasy. People have some incredibly dumb ideas about Latin America in RL, so it’s hard to divorce the cute Latin American random princess from Nowhere In Particular from ‘so how was Día de los Muertos’ ‘i wouldn’t know, I’m Uruguayan’.
Oof, great point about doing Representation Right. Definitely not something that European fantasy classics thought about, and let’s be real, no one is gonna look at GoT and assume it’s meant to be representative of people from medieval England, whereas people are 100% gonna assume this is meant to represent the culture, because gods forbid we have a fun story with a non-Western setting that isn’t educational.
The only thing African about Black Panther is its visual design; other than that, it’s probably the most ‘Murrican of all the Marvel films. Seriously. It’s one big Stars & Stripes fantasy. But there is, at least, a history of Pan-Africanism, which isn’t something that can be said about SE Asia.
Well, generally speaking, this is what the “fantasy” label is about, yeah? If the world in the film was built only around a specific culture in a specific place at a specific time, it would be de-facto “historical fiction”. And in Disney’s case, this sort of artistic interpretation is built in from the very, very beginning. “Snow White” takes place in – where – Germany? Poland? Russia? Hungary? Austria? The mythology of the witch/sorceress – is that borrowed from France? England? It’s all wibbly-wobbly vaguely European, and far enough removed from modern life that it feels interesting and metaphorical – but not too far that we can’t see ourselves living there. This is Disney just doing more of that.
Maybe I am turning into a right wing blowhard in my dotage, but but this sort of cultural mishmash is standard practice in fantasy. Usually it’s a Western/Northern European mishmash, so it’s exciting to see it from another angle.
Good worldbuilding rarely invents something totally new, authors are pretty much always inspired to swipe elements from reality and other fiction and blend them into something intriguing.
As an SEAn, I personally think part of that is the inherent inter-racism and rivalry between our countries, as most of us don’t have the best image of our neighboring countries. Those who take it to such extremes usually want to be differentiated as much as possible from the others, especially since so many stuff could be really similar.This us vs them mentality also unfortunately makes Chinese-descent SEAn like me struggle to be acknowledged by our own home countries, since we’re seen as outsiders at best(at worst, we’re subjected to basically ethnic genocide) even though our ancestors have been here for hundreds and hundreds of years and helped shaped the cultural landscape of these countries.
Don’t they do the same thing in all their movie inspired by European Folklore tho? Mix elements (architecture/clothing/names/flora and fauna) from differents times and places, not really looking for accuracy in the depiction of the culture as much as a sort of flavor.It has been the Disney formula for a while.
It depends on who is making the art. Like if you’re European descended and decide to write bad fantasy because you can’t be bothered to do any research on history, sure, it’s lame, but whatever. If you’re white, European descended and decide to mix 8+ Asian cultures in a blender for profit, I have further questions.
Avatar the Last Airbender pulled it off pretty gracefully, I’d say. So it can be done.
Another American made piece blending all of Asia as one thing
It seems a little weird to talk about how a fantasy movie reflects Our Current Situation, because for all the talk of loss and coping this is still a Disney movie where things HAVE to end happily for just about everybody. Unless it’s a twist ending where nobody who’s been turned to stone actually comes back and the heroes just move on? If they couldn’t let Endgame end that way, I kind of doubt the animated movie with the wacky talking dragon’s going to take that risk.
I totally thought that was what was going to happen
The issues with that movie’s trailer is that this kind of action-comedy with cartoon-physics-powered martial art and *wink wink* type of humor has been done everywhere. It felt incredibly generic from the get-go, and not only different asians cultures are mixed together, but story elements as well. Like the scheming baby feels pulled from the Boss Baby, Awkwafina’s dragon sounds just as obnoxious as Eddie Murphy was in Mulan… the divided nations is a tough trope in kid’s media, where the depiction of war often feels incredibly shallow, especially if peace need to be achieved in 90 minutes. Avatar worked because it explained to you that a complete genocide happened in episode 3, so it had stakes.So i am not surprised to ear it is, indeed, generic.
I feel that this kind of generic approach to film-making is what Disney eventually boils down to. Sure, it looks nice and the songs are catchy, but Disney’s overriding goal isn’t to be good so much as good enough. Which gives us stuff like Captain Marvel and The Rise of Skywalker, which run the gamut from fine-but-disposable to why-did-they-bother-to-make-this.
I won’t deny this about the brands they brought, because frankly it has always been the case with their Marvel and Star Wars products.
But with their animate movies, sometimes they achieve moment that transcend the formula. Sure they are kids movie, and Disney gonna disney-fy the myths and culture they represent. But when they keep the stakes personal they can achieve geniune moments of poignancy. Personally, i find that movies like Lilo & Stitch and Frozen 1 very moving in their description of sisterhood, and they are not movies i watched as a kid, so my opinion isn’t colored by the glow of childhood.
And before they turned to 3D their traditional animation had an amazing charm. Movies tended to look more unique and distinct from each others, as different styles where used to paint the background and design the characters. Lilo & Stitch’s character are fleshy, rendered with rounded lines. While Sleeping Beauty’s characters are much more angulars and it’s backgrounds look really unique.
That’s certainly true, and I love the animation style of the Lilo and Stitch era. My point was that there’s always going to be a ceiling to Disney’s imagination—at least from a storytelling perspective. Their animation is lovely, but by virtue of them being focussed on children (and a massive corporation) they’re never going to do anything too shocking or alienating in anything that carries the Disney label.
We have no gay protagonists in their animated movies, for example, or any cultural focus that might risk alienating a mass audience. We’re never going to get a movie like Pom Poko or Princess Mononoke from Disney directly. And that’s not a dealbreaker, per se, but it does mean we have to temper our expectations if we want to enjoy Disney on a deeper level than it looking nice.
I assume you mean modern Disney (though even stuff like from the so-called Disney renaissance was, more often than not, better than “good enough” and than it could have gotten away with). Of course the true classics, let’s say the first five animated films (Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi) are insanely ambitious. It’s easy to forget that the only ones that made any money on first release were Snow White and Dumbo (which was short and on a tight budget just so it would help offset the other films). But I’d argue they weren’t aiming for kids first and foremost, and in terms of how the films are made, even “directed” and the ‘cinematography” strongly rival the live action “grown up” movies from that era, if not surpass most of them.
sometimes it seems like they have a “GOOD” button that they push for certain things and not for others, like they can make it as good as they want they just choose not to a lot of the time
Probably because pushing that button doesn’t offer a great ROI, unfortunately.
they push it less and less, when they were acquiring all of these properties they were worried about them being good, now they’re mainly just worried about maintenanceI still have hopes for one out of every ten things they release, and the general level of quality is above that of most other companies, but it does seem like they are worried if it’s too good people will tune out
It’s probably more like if it takes too many risks it’ll turn off too big a potential audience and lose them money in the process.
I was very interested in this until I found out it was not a sequel to the 1985 classic The Last Dragon.
oh god damn it this interface is so obtuse
Everything about this movie’s ads say, “Generic.” A Chosen One on a quest to assemble items, and unite the broken kingdoms? How much more generic can it be? Mulan + Avatar.
They did Ms. Tran pretty dirty in Star Wars IX, nice of them to try to make up for it. Hopefully they’ll give John Boyega something as a consolation prize also (or just make a Finn series, FinnPhasma)
I really wanted to like this and I’m fond of many a Disney movie, but it felt a bit like it was put together by committee, Awkwafina’s dragon isn’t that funny at all, and the moralising is really on the nose and tiresome. It’ll probably be something the very young will like, but I can’t imagine many people in their teenage years and above will love it, it’s okay and certainly watchable but that’s about all frustratingly.
Raya’s not plucky, she’s basically Harrison Ford as a Disney Princess. She’s got Indiana Jones’ heist skills, and Han Solo’s hard bitten distrust and cynicism. Yeah, it’s a little bit didactic. I found it fun and a completely different vibe from the other Disney Renaissance Renaissance movies. I remember the same complaints about representation from Moana and even the Sami people in Frozen. Some Pacific Islander people I know like the representation even though it’s imperfect, and some find it insulting. YMMV, but at least Disney is making an effort now to hire people from the cultures both as consultants, creatives, and voice talent. I also think the whole debate is out of touch with the beauty of this kind of animation in the first place. Animation, particularly Disney style animation, is supposed to take flights of fancy and slightly blur the characterization to make the movies more timeless and widely relatable. I’m thinking about the difference between Disney animation and stuff like Waltz with Bashir. Sure, Waltz with Bashir is much more true to a specific culture, but if Disney imitated that style they would lose everything that makes their movies their movies.
Y’all, I just don’t know. There’s a lot to like here, in theory: beautiful design work, good voice acting (with caveats), fun world-building, and some nicely inventive animated sequences. On the other hand, the film consistently undercuts all of that through the first two acts by delivering a nonstop stream of “cool” and “hip” dialogue, to the point where I was actively gritting my teeth when many of the characters opened their mouths. It’s not just that it threw me out of the story once or twice; it’s that it threw me out of the story every time it happened, and it kept happening, which made continuing with the thing a real chore. (The worst offender here, incidentally, is Awkwafina, who does fine with the dramatic material but is nails-on-a-chalkboard grating whenever she’s asked to deliver Anachronistically Funny Lines, which is a problem since that’s basically all the character is for most of the movie.) But then! In the third act, the film stops mugging at the camera and actually gets down to the business of telling its story, delivering an audacious, inventive and emotionally affecting conclusion…which it did not remotely fucking earn, because it was too busy doing Bits in the first two acts to actually focus much on developing its characters. Stating your themes out loud early does technically count as signposting, I suppose, and the plot stuff hangs together, but the leap in quality is incredibly dramatic once it finally stops getting in its own way.That’s what frustrates me the most, I think: this could have been something really special. Instead it’s frankly pretty bad until it is, suddenly, great, and that’s just shoddy craftsmanship.
I really enjoyed the movie. I understand that the amalgamation of Asian cultures might rub people the wrong way, but the world they built really reminded me of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Disney basically went out and made a feature-length anime and I would love to see this world again as part of a Disney+ series.Also, Awkwafina was great as Sisu. No one’s ever going to top Robin Williams’ performance of Genie, but she did an absolutely stellar job and I can’t think of anyone else that’s come close to that level of performance since Aladdin.