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

In this case, the similarities to Moana are pretty staggering: a young princess leaves her homeland on a quest to save her world from a destructive plague that’s steadily destroying civilization, which can only be healed by restoring a magical gemstone to its rightful place, helped along the way by her wisecracking mystical sidekick and an animal voiced by Alan Tudyk.

There are some structural differences of course: Moana didn’t have a clear antagonist the way Raya does, and Raya is more interested in the subject of trust and redemption than Moana’s voyage of self-discovery, but in terms of the basic plot... they probably could have tried a little harder to make it more distinctive.

The specifics are different at least. Whereas Moana’s world was under threat due to the actions undertaken by demi-god Maui, who stole the heart of the nature goddess Ti’Fiti and doomed everyone to an ever-encroaching wave of entropy and pestilence, the threat that endangers Raya’s Kumandra is more self-inflicted and more terrifying. As revealed late in the story, the mobile tempests of black cloud and purple energy known as the Druun are the personification of human greed and conflict, which can sweep over living creatures and turn them instantly to stone.

Hundreds of years ago, the dragons came together to defeat the Druun, ultimately combining their magical essence and abilities into a single gemstone which was then given to the least of their number: a female dragon called Sisu, who was able to banish their opponents with one last burst of dragon energy. Or something, it’s not that clear. You know these sorts of things are always depicted as a sonic wave of power that expands in an expanding circle from its point of origin? It’s like that.

But all was not sunshine and roses after that. With the dragons having sacrificed themselves, the remaining gemstone is kept under heavy security at Heart, one of the five divided tribes of Kumandra, the others being Fang, Talon, Spine and Tail. Naturally this privilege causes no small degree of resentment among the other tribes, and during a peace summit things go horribly awry when Raya – in a gesture of goodwill inspired by her father – shows the Dragon Gem to Namaari, the Princess of Fang.

Namaari immediately tries to steal the gem, and in the struggle that follows the Druun attack and the gem is shattered into five pieces, each one nabbed by a member of a different tribe. Raya’s father Benja is turned to stone in the ensuing chaos, leaving his daughter alone in a world that she feels responsible for breaking.  

There is a ton of exposition to work through, and not all of it is conveyed particularly elegantly, but by the time the story catches up to the present day, we’ve got our plot: Raya must find the last dragon, reunite the broken pieces of the gem, and save the world. That’s not a bad setup... just a rather convoluted one. I’m still not entirely sure why the dragon and the gemstone are necessary (the stone seemed to work just fine on its own) and Sisu is found so easily at the beginning of the story that it’s a wonder Raya needed eight years to do it.

But the real crux of the story, when we finally get to it, is Raya going in search of the five missing pieces of the gemstone, pursued by Namaari, who wants them for her own ends, and arguing with Sisu about the issue of trust. You’ve probably already heard the iconic dialogue in the trailer, in which Raya says no one trusts each other because the world is broken, and Sisu rejoins that perhaps the world is broken because no one trusts each other.

It’s a good line, and trust is the big theme of the story – but unfortunately, they really don’t have anything meaningful or profound to say about it. In fact, towards the end they fall into the line of thinking that I am well and truly beginning to despise: that the onus of social responsibility is on the good guys; that they are morally obligated to give second chance after second chance to the people who seriously hurt them, and that any mistake or flaw they might temporarily succumb to is not only equal to, but greater than, the very serious crimes that the antagonists commit.

At one point Namaari says to Raya: “this is as much your fault as it is mine,” a staggeringly false claim that the movie itself presumably wants us to believe.

Look, I liked the set up: that it is initially Raya who distrusts the other tribes, only for her benevolent father to urge her towards a more open-minded way of thinking. Later, I also enjoyed the unusual switch in roles between heroine and mystical side-kick, in that it’s the former who is more jaded and cynical, and the latter who is upbeat and optimistic. A Disney Princess with serious trust issues is definitely not something the studio has done before.

But the way her arc pans out is completely absurd. Raya has EVERY RIGHT to distrust Namaari: as children she deliberately stabbed her in the back to get her hands on the gemstone that not only tore the world apart, but cost Raya her beloved father. Once Sisu has awoken, Namaari chases them across the length of Kumandra, intent on robbing her of the tools she needs to – you know – save the world. Finally, when a truce is finally declared and the two of them meet up in secret, Namaari brings a weapon, points it at them, and seems very nearly about to pull the trigger before Raya’s own trust issues make her pre-emptively shoot first.

There are only a few glimpses of Namaari’s humanity throughput the film, largely in the reverence she has for the dragons and some conversations with her mother, but Raya is not privy to any of this.

So when the big climactic moment comes, and Raya relinquishes the shard of the gemstone that’s protecting her from the Druun (because it’s not like Namaari is going to give up her piece) and is subsequently turned to stone, it doesn’t feel like the triumph of trust and friendship, but rather just a long shot that maybe, just maybe, Namaari will do the right thing this time.

And it’s still a close call! Before Namaari does in fact put the pieces together, there’s a moment when she seriously considers just making a run for it. It’s a leap of faith that Namaari does not deserve in any way, shape or form, as we have been given NOTHING to make us believe that she’ll behave any differently in these circumstances than she has in the past. Although I appreciate the twist that it’s the antagonist and not the heroine who is ultimately tasked with the world-saving MacGuffin, Raya comes across as completely naïve to believe that Namaari will change her spots at the eleventh hour.

For any of this to work Namaari should have been seeking redemption for her part in the attack on Heart since the start of the film, and Raya stubbornly refusing to grant her absolution. Without that, the movie essentially wants us to believe that trust will save the world, when it’s trust that almost ended it.

And weirdly, the movie itself takes Raya’s side for most of its runtime. When she and Sisu reach the floating market city of Talon, the two separate in order to seek out its piece of the jewel: Raya is cautious but still gets tricked by the infamous “con baby” of the trailers, while Sisu marches in, announces her presence, and is taken in by the Talon chieftainess who promptly threatens her life by locking her behind a closed gate with the Druun.

Trust is for idiots, until it isn’t. Talk about mixed messages.

***

My other big problem is Sisu the dragon, from her design to her narrative function. From the start the film establishes dragons as creatures of reverential awe, which is certainly true to Asian mythology, and captured in the beautiful sequences of expository world-building that depict them like ornate puppets with fangs and frills and a sense of otherworldliness.

But when we see Sisu in person... well, I’m sure you’ve already noticed that she’s got Elsa’s face. ELSA’S FACE! It’s impossible not to see it, and it’s an inexplicable creative decision, one that I can only assume was born out of how cute the plush toys should look. And although I like Awkwafina, I’m not sure she was the right choice for Sisu. I mean, they were clearly going for a goofy underachiever with a self-deprecating sense of humour, which she’s obviously well-suited to pull off, but man – I dearly wish they had gone for numinous and primordial instead.

And weirdly enough, there’s not much that she actually adds to the film, beyond being an advocate for trusting people that the film never really bothers to support. Again, there’s that famous line from the trailer: “I’m gonna be real with you—I’m not, like, the best dragon. Have you ever done a group project but there’s just like that one kid who didn’t pitch in as much but still ended up with the same grade?”

It’s part of the tedious anachronistic humour that Disney seems unable to extract from their sidekick characters (I’m still haunted by Maui’s “when you use a bird to write with, it's called tweeting” gag) but the weird thing is, they really do nothing with her characterization after having established her as a bit of a screwup. Maui learnt humility, Mushu eventually fessed up to Mulan about his true intentions, but Sisu... gets nothing. No arc, no life lessons.

Neither does her realization that she’s woken up hundreds of years after her initial world-saving sacrifice come into play at any point. Though she mentions her brothers and sisters throughout the story, there’s no real sense of loss there, which kind of undermines their grand reunion at the end of the film.

And honestly, the fact that she gets a Disney Death before the big climatic battle goes down, and doesn’t actually do anything intrinsic to help destroy the Druun and save the world, kinda makes me wonder why she was even there in the first place. Removing her would have given more space and time to the Raya/Namaari rapport, the destruction of the five tribes, and the theme of trust in a less trivial way.

Perhaps the dragons could have been something humanity was never able to reclaim, regardless of whether or not they worked together to defeat the Druun, a bittersweet reminder of what greed and violence cost them.

***

But there’s plenty of good stuff here, and despite my complaining, it’s definitely not a bad movie. Unsurprisingly, the whole thing is beautiful to look at, with five distinct regions that all get their own culture, landscapes, architecture and cultural milieu, from grim fortresses in snowy bamboo forests to wind-blasted rock formations in vast deserts to bustling floating markets lit up with hundreds of lanterns. You almost wish the whole thing had been a television show to better explore the depth of world-building that went into Kumandra, but then of course, the similarities to Avatar: The Last Airbender would have been even more overt.

The film does better than expected with its use of Boun, Noi and Tong, individuals from Tail, Talon and Spine respectively. Their purpose is obvious: for Raya to pick up allies from each of the five tribes (with herself as Heart and Namaari as Fang) so that all of Kumandra contributes to the defeat of the Druun, and there’s a beautiful motif of sharing food that carries through from beginning to end, namely a dish that’s prepared with specialities from each of the five tribes.

Boun was far less irritating than I expected him to be, and though it’s a bit of a stretch to accept Noi is an accomplished con artist before she can even speak, there’s some solid characterization here, and some beautiful work done in depicting their unspoken losses: Noi is cared for by monkeys because her parents are gone, Boun is clearly reluctant to leave the safety of his boat for fear of the Druun (who cannot cross water) and Tong is the only surviving member of his settlement, with an empty crib in the corner of his living quarters.

So by the end of the story, when they’re each reunited with their families, we have emotional payoff that feels genuinely earned.

And Raya herself is a great heroine. Yes, I wish that they had handled her “trust” arc better, but there’s a good character here, one who is trying to right a wrong that wasn’t really hers to fix in the first place (though she carries the burden of it) and who never stops trying despite a deep weariness with the way her life has turned out. There’s a beautiful subtext to her actions that suggest she doesn’t really believe she’ll be able to heal the world, but she’ll try to do it anyway out of respect for her father’s last wishes, and because there is simply nothing left for her to live for.

And as many have pointed out, there are some genuinely striking parallels to real life throughout the course of the story: that human greed has all but torn apart the world, with a vicious plague separating families and loved ones, and a desperate need for reconciliation and healing between different tribes. Whew, that’s pretty heavy stuff, and even in the face of the convoluted backstory and confused themes, it’s timely enough to give the film resonance that might not have otherwise existed outside this specific point in history. As Raya says at its inception: “how did this world get so broken?”

Miscellaneous Observations:

Kelly Marie Tran does a great job as Raya, and though it’s still a bit dodgy that they dropped Cassie Steele in what was certainly an attempt to make amends with Tran after the shit Star Wars put her through, she makes for a strong addition to the Disney Princess line-up, to which there hasn’t been a new member since Moana nearly five years ago. It’s a shame that Covid has put something of a damper on the film’s release, but I suppose we’ll find out soon enough how well it does on Disney+.  

You can actually see something of Tran's face in her features.

The rest of the cast backs her up nicely: Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Sandra Oh, Benedict Wong – they all put in good work here.

Tuk Tuk is adorable, a blend of pangolin and pill-bug, whose design makes for a fantastically innovative mode of travel... but you don’t get a sense of the bond between girl and beloved companion that other Disney animals managed, and he has far less personality than the likes of other non-verbal pets like Pascal, Rajah, Meeko or even Khan.

The fight and action scenes are great though, especially ones involving Raya’s retractable sword. Ditto the Tomb Raider scenes and the shadow puppetry.

Disney was never going to go there with Raya and Namaari, but there’s certainly enough subtext in their heated glances to give fan-fic writers plenty of fuel.

The last four out of six Disney Princesses have had living mothers, so it's a damn shame that Raya's mother is absent without explanation. Was there any reason that Chief Benja couldn't have been Chieftainess Benja?  

It was halfway through this movie when I realized that there were no songs, making this the first Disney Princess movie to not to be a musical. I’d have thought that would have garnered more discussion.

I’m not remotely qualified enough to weigh in on the cultural aspects of the South Asian mash-up that inspired the world of Kumandra – like Avatar: The Last Airbender it’s inspired by those cultures without claiming to represent them – so check out some of these links and draw your own conclusions.

Raya and the Last Dragon is a good movie, but not quite a great one. The visuals are gorgeous, the heroine winning, the ideas certainly well-intended, but it suffers from adhering too closely to a formula when a little bravery and innovation could have elevated it beyond the familiar tropes. And my God, I wish writers would start taking cause and effect seriously. When people do bad things, the very LEAST they owe their victims is a simple apology – though these days all they have to say is “bad childhood” (even if they didn’t actually have one) and all sins are not only forgiven, but apparently weren’t even sins in the first place. It’s so exhausting.