Raya and the Last Dragon - Review

 

Anybody who knows me knows that I have a complicated relationship with Disney. Even though I admire a lot of the animated films they’ve made (Fantasia being a particular high mark that I don’t think they’ve managed to surpass in the eighty years since it came out) and, like many millennials my age, enjoy the Disney Renaissance stuff, I despise how big of a corporation they’ve become, absorbing 20^th Century Fox, bullying movie theaters, and just doing the kind of stuff that big, evil corporations do. And this anger also extends to some of what their films have been doing as of late, i.e. trying to incorporate more socially conscious messages but only doing them halfheartedly and superficially (once again, Lindsay Ellis’s video Woke Disney explains it best). All of these elements have added up to me just outright hating Disney as of late, actively staying away from subscribing to Disney+ and watching The Mandalorian or WandaVision.

 

However, I have made one exception to this personal rule, and that is to see Disney’s latest animated flick, Raya and the Last Dragon. When the trailers came out, I was definitely intrigued because it looked like their attempt to make something along the lines of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but with the Disney touch. Color me interested! So, I subscribed to Disney+ for a month, paid the extra $30 for Premier Access (because it’s still not safe for me to go theaters until I’m vaccinated), and…consider me straight-up shocked that I enjoyed the hell out of this film! This is probably the first Disney animated film I’ve actually enjoyed since Zootopia. Yes, it’s that good!

 

Our story: 500 years ago in the mythical land of Kumandra, a peaceful coexistence between humans and dragons was disrupted by evil spirts known as Druun, who kill their victims by turning them to stone; the dragons were thus forced to sacrifice their magic and their lives to form an orb that would save everyone and protect them from the Druun. Unfortunately, this also had the adverse effect of creating a power struggle for the orb and separating Kumandra into five regions, all of which are named after a part of the dragon. The orb subsequently falls into the possession of the Heart region, whose chief, Benja (Daniel Dae Kim), tries to mend fences by inviting all of the regions to a feast. But this plan backfires when malfeasants from the Fang region try to steal the orb, leading to a struggle where all the regions fight and break the orb, each region stealing a peace of it, which suddenly reawakens the Druun and kills a lotta people. Six years later, the chief’s daughter Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) has been searching for the only surviving dragon Sisu to help bring Kumandra back. She successfully revives Sisu (Awkwafina), and they embark on a journey to reassemble the orb, accompanied by a 10-year-old shrimp boat restaurant captain named Boun, a con baby named Noi, and a tough, Drax-like warrior named Tong. But they will have to watch their step as they are being pursued by the deadly warrior princess Namari (Gemma Chan), who also wants to find the orb pieces for her homeland of Fang.

 

As you can tell from my attempt to summarize all that into a paragraph, that’s a pretty frontloaded setup, which is par for the course when it comes to these kinds of fantasy stories. But thankfully, once all the exposition is out of the way and the adventure gets going, the movie is a lot of fun.

 

This is probably one of the most fast-paced, energetic animated films I’ve seen Disney put out in a while. Not only are the action scenes surprisingly slick and well-choreographed, but there are a lot of comedic exposition/planning/heist scenes that put me in mind of not only Avatar: The Last Airbender, but also of Kung Fu Panda and even some of Guy Ritchie’s stuff, like Snatch or The Gentlemen. Surprising absolutely no one, this is a gorgeous-looking movie. Not only are all the regions well-realized, but everything from the water to the terrain to, hell, even the food, looks incredibly realistic. As a matter of fact, after watching this film, I almost had a hankering to give Southeast Asian cuisine a try. In fact, I may do that one of these days.

 

All of the characters are extremely likable and relatable. Kelly Marie Tran gives great gravitas to the cynical-but-still-somewhat hopeful Raya, Gemma Chan makes Namari appropriately threatening but also sympathetic, Benedict Wong is hilarious as Tong, and relative newcomer Izaac Wang is very funny as Boun. However, my favorite character would have to be Awkwafina as Sisu. Not only does she have a great design, both in human and dragon form, but she also serves as a great vessel for the film’s main message, i.e. learning to trust people in order to fix the world rather than remaining stoically closed off.

 

If there’s a small downside, it’s that Act II, I felt, was a little bit rushed. Even though I did like the characters Sisu and Raya come across on their journey, I didn’t feel like there were enough downtime scenes for all of these characters to really bond. Now, don’t get me wrong, the downtime scenes we do get with them – i.e. when they’re sharing a meal or bonding over loved ones lost to the Druun – are incredibly effective. I just wish we could have gotten more of them so that when the big emotional, nigh-haunting climax hits, it could have hit a little stronger. There were also some jokes, most of them courtesy of Sisu, that I thought went on a little too long, but these are minor issues at best.

 

All in all, Raya and the Last Dragon is a fun, action-packed, heartfelt animated Disney film that is definitely worth checking out. It’s got great action, a good moral, and a wonderful score by James Newton Howard! I don’t know what Disney’s plans for this world are going forward, but I would definitely love to see some kind of continuation with these characters. And considering where the film leaves off (not spoiling!), I think there are a lot of places and ideas that could explored with a Disney+ show and maybe even another movie. As a matter of fact, if Disney were to do it and they really played their cards right, they could very well have the next Avatar: The Last Airbender on their hands. Boy, that’d be awesome! Maybe they could even get the guys who are doing Big Hero 6: The Series to handle it. I dunno, but Disney should get on that because it’s too good of an idea to pass up!