Raya and the Last Dragon
Year: 2021
Rating: PG
Length: 107 minutes / 1.78 hours
For a studio that built itself on Euro-centric fairy tales and stories, I can appreciate how Disney is (finally) trying to make movies that explore other cultures of the world. While not necessarily based in any lore from Asian countries, Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) pulls enough aesthetic influence from these cultures to be a nice homage. As always, I’m stunned at the visuals Disney can produce with CGI, and Raya and the Last Dragon is no exception to this rule. Add to this the incredibly well-choreographed fight sequences, and this film certainly had its moments.
However, what’s weird about Raya and the Last Dragon is how parts of it felt done before. Kung Fu Panda (2008) might not have had realistic humans using martial arts techniques. Still, the choreography for this kind of animated movie was already there more than a decade before Raya came along. Similarly, the “collect all the pieces of a thing” storyline is such a common trope among fantasy stories that it seemed a little uninspired. This, combined with the “unintentionally gather a rag-tag group of individuals” flow of the story made me check out about halfway through.
While most of these side characters were quirky, I found the titular “last Dragon” Sisu (Awkwafina) to be a bit annoying. Granted, I realize most of these characters are trying to appeal to children, but something about how her character acted made it feel like an anachronism of the era. This probably contributed to my lack of emotion at the moments that would have called for it. Then again, the predictable story beats didn’t help with this either. Still, I’ll watch movies like this for the visual spectacle alone, so the fact that not everything worked for me is fine.
Another visually stunning Disney movie that attempts to tell an Asian-inspired story, I give Raya and the Last Dragon 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
