Review: Raya and the Last Dragon

I took my friend’s two eldest kids to Raya and the Last Dragon over the weekend, partly because she’s just had her fourth child and needs a break, and partly because I wanted to see it myself. Disney Princess films are always going to have a special place in my heart, and seeing how they evolve over the decades is something I find genuinely fascinating.

Since Mulan, many of their stories have existed outside a Euro-centric setting, since Tiana, more princesses have been allowed to exhibit personality flaws to some extent, and since Elsa, they haven’t necessarily had a love interest along for the ride. Raya ticks all these boxes, being a young princess trained in martial arts, living in an Asian-inspired setting (filled with various cultural references to Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia) and no romantic arc to speak of – unless you count her rapport with Namaari, the film’s antagonist.

A word that’s been coming up a lot in various reviews is “formulaic” – and yeah, it’s fair. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, as a familiar plot with the right characterization and garnishes can be more rewarding than whatever gibberish Christopher Nolan has just released, but Disney (as we can clearly see with the MCU and Star Wars) is definitely making itself comfortable in the “familiar, risk-free” mode of storytelling.

SPOILERS

Legend of the Seeker: Home

The one with the clip show...

Yes, we’re twelve episodes into the first season and they’re already hitting us with a Clip Show. Okay, so clip show episodes aren’t always bad – often they’re a necessary evil in order to keep the budget under control, and if the writers play their cards right, they can choose thematically relevant clips in order to better highlight characterization or upcoming events.

This... is not one of those clip shows, though they do try to justify it with a tried-and-true framework: The Lotus Eater Machine. This is when a hero finds themselves in an alternate reality, where everything is peaceful and happy, and they can go about their lives without any of the trauma that their day-to-day existence usually requires. Only when things are too good to be true, it’s because they usually are: the truth is they’re being manipulated by a villain: either to distract them, torment them, or (in this case) extract information.

Legend of the Seeker: Confession

The one with the whodunnit...

With this, we’re about to move into a rather stale stretch of episodes, all of which are largely forgettable filler. In all honesty, I had absolutely no memory of this particular episode when I started watching it, and now, in the midst of doing this write-up, I’m still struggling to recall what actually happened.

It’s essentially a murder-mystery, with an added world-specific wrinkle in the usual procedural, in that one of the characters has the ability to compel other people to tell the truth. Perhaps it’s a bit of a cheat that having established that absolutely no one can resist the thrall of confession, the show now decides to introduce an exception to Kahlan’s abilities, but a part of me wonders if the writers wanted to lay the groundwork in this regard, just in case another scenario came along in which they would have to write around her otherwise infallible power in drawing out the truth of any given situation.

Legend of the Seeker: Sacrifice

The one with Confessors galore...

Let’s be honest here, as charming as Richard is as the show’s protagonist, the most interesting character of the show is – by a country mile – Kahlan. By extension, the concepts of the Confessors and the Mord Sith are also fascinating: that these two sects comprise two sides of the same coin, that they’re made up entirely of women who wield complex and dangerous power, and that they live by the rules of a fascinating subculture that strictly controls their behaviour and belief systems. Who cares about a Seeker and his magic sword when there’s a Confessor in town?

And in this case, town is full of Confessors.

Woman of the Month: Lara Jean Covey

Lara Jean Covey from All the Boys I've Loved Before

The To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy, adapted from Jenny Han’s YA novels, ended with Always and Forever this Valentine’s Day weekend, and no one should doubt that the project was carried from start to finish by Lana Condor as Lara Jean Covey: a dreamy introvert who wins the ultimate prize of every teenage romantic comedy: the social status that comes through hooking up with high school’s most popular boy.

As is the way of things, it was her screen partner that got all the attention on social media, but there’s really no understating how vital Lara Jean is in making this all work. Often love stories write their female leads as little more than ciphers, their main purpose being to provide a blank slate for readers to project themselves onto, but Lara Jean is interesting enough on her own, and the romance itself is built heavily upon the quirks of her distinct personality.

Specifically, that the death of her mother at a young age means she relies heavily on rules and conditions – things that she can control. The initial fake relationship with Peter involves them drawing up a contract of dos and don’ts, sealed with a handshake and strictly adhered to (at least at first) and it’s genuinely beautiful the way this love story premise reflects so deeply on Lara Jean’s inner self.

As such, the romance doesn’t just happen for its own sake, but reintroduces Lara to both spontaneity and risk-taking. She’s allowed to set her boundaries and literally make the rules, but – as is the way in stories – these are gradually eroded (on her terms!) as the story goes on. A teenage love story in which the girl is completely in control? That’s the fantasy.

And naturally, there’s more to her than that. From her dynamics with her widowed father and two sisters (one older, one younger), to her love of baking and romance novels, her Korean heritage and distinctive fashion style, Lara Jean carries the series with ease and charm and depth.

Reading/Watching Log #62

I have myself a New Year’s Resolution which kickstarted this month (though won’t be into full effect until April) and that’s: no more library books. Only my own books, of which there are probably hundreds that I have not yet read. As of now, I have only one more library book to read and return, and then it’s full steam ahead on my very own TBR pile.

More than that, I’m going to make a valiant effort to try and stick to a single subject for each month. February was all about the dark fairy tale, and though a few other things slipped through, this was largely the theme of the last four weeks, with books by Catherynne Valente and Neil Gaiman, two completely unasked-for sequels to fantasy films that weren’t that good in the first place, and (in honour of the terrible Netflix series that just dropped) the first season of the original animated Winx.

And no, I have not been watching Wandavision, though I have been reading comments/looking at GIF sets, and... people realize that this is just one long prologue to the next influx of movies, right?

Angela Barrett: The Snow Queen

There are very few original fairy tales that have the power of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, so much so that people often forget it’s the work of a single mind and not part of our collective folklore. As C.S. Lewis put it so beautifully in regards to the archetype that Anderson codified in our minds: “we are born knowing the witch.”

But it’s not just the titular Snow Queen that makes this story so fascinating; it’s very much a story about women in all their guises. There’s Gerda the protagonist, the fierce Little Robber Girl and her mother, the Crow and the Princess, the Lappish Woman and the Finnish Woman, and the children’s Grandmother, whose presence frames the story in its entirety.

But of most interest to me is the Old Lady Who Knew Magic, an elderly woman that Gerda meets almost immediately after she sets out in search of Kay, and who very nearly ends the journey before it’s even properly begun...