Review: ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ Replicates Tried and True Disney Platitudes
From an early age, Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) has been accustomed to distrusting others. It’s not without good reason. The theft and fragmentation of a magical orb that once protected your homeland and the subsequent stone-paralysis of your father in conjunction with the advent of a hellish apocalypse is enough to cause that sort of thing. But it adversely cultivates a divide between people that inhibits mutual understanding and commonality, an adverse willingness to suspect the worst of people so to speak.
Such sentiments become the thematic and emotional core of Disney’s fifty-nineth animated release, Raya and the Last Dragon. Five hundred years after all the dragons sacrificed themselves to protect humanity from a Venom-like hostility known as the Druun, the land of Kumandra lives in relative peace. Five factions — Fang, Heart, Spine, Talon, and Tail — have divided up the land, and relegated themselves to isolation. Raya, heralding from the Heart tribe, helps protect the Dragon Gem with her father, but when a communal peace offering between tribes results in a bait and switch betrayal that breaks the gem, the Druun return and plunge the land into eight years of darkness. The remaining hope for Kumandra is finding Sisu (Awkwafina), the prolific last dragon who consolidated her powers and created the Dragon Gem; legend has it that she has been lying dormant for centuries just waiting to return. With the fragmented gem spread across Kumandra, Raya embarks on a quest to find Sisu, reassemble the Dragon Gem, and cast the Drunn out in the hopes of saving her homeland and bringing back her father.
Thematically, the film isn’t bringing much to the table in terms of new ideas. Core to its thesis is the notion of trust as a bridge between people. The factionalism taking hold of Kumandra has divided its people into regional clans where divisive power grabs have left each group distrusting of one another, relegating each to existence on literal isolationist islands (the Druun hate water so each faction builds their settlements on islands). The aforementioned betrayal has left Raya weary of all acquaintances, and her journey becomes one of breaking down barriers she has built up over all these years.
It’s a tame notion, one with its resolve written on the wall from the end of the first act, but I think what’s truly detrimental to the film is how binary the theme is. In one scenario someone lends trust too willingly and they get burned, another where someone mistrusts someone to the point of complication, and the ultimate litmus test comes when trust is extended to a former rival (outcome withheld for spoilers but it’s a Disney movie, so you probably know where it is headed). The grey area that comes with trust is often left unexplored, if not neutered by the simplicity of the film’s thematic solution, but then again, this is a Disney film, a film combed over for mass appeal and family demographics, so asking for more might be a fool’s errand.
What Raya and the Last Dragon lacks in thematic uniqueness, it makes up (partially) with its animation. The film’s art direction pulls from various Southest Asian cultures and imbues every facet of Kumandra's creation with its characteristics. Advancements in computer imaging makes for the annual, obligatory technical commendation that CGI likes to boast. Chief among those advancements is the film’s lighting which reflects and disperses across textures and skin as convincingly as ever, even flirting with real life singularity in certain frames. On a purely technical level, there is little complaint.
Raya and the Last Dragon is a perfectly serviceable film. It’s narrative progresses logically. It has a technical allure. And it checks all the boxes for the kiddos. The Achilles heel, however, is how it placates to the platitudes associated with the House of Mouse, a perennial byproduct of tried and true and bankable filmmaking. If you like the work Disney has been putting out for the last decade, then you should have no problem enjoying this film. Just know you’re buying a Disney product and expect as much.
