{"id":2783,"date":"2021-08-31T15:00:15","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=2783"},"modified":"2021-08-19T21:01:08","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T03:01:08","slug":"movie-raya-and-the-last-dragon-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/31\/movie-raya-and-the-last-dragon-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RayaRaya and the Last Dragon<\/u><\/strong>
\nYear: 2021
\nRating: PG
\nLength: 107 minutes \/ 1.78 hours<\/p>\n

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<\/em> (2021) pulls enough aesthetic influence from these cultures to be a nice homage. As always, I\u2019m stunned at the visuals Disney can produce with CGI, and Raya and the Last Dragon<\/em> is no exception to this rule. Add to this the incredibly well-choreographed fight sequences, and this film certainly had its moments.<\/p>\n

However, what\u2019s weird about Raya and the Last Dragon<\/em> is how parts of it felt done before. Kung Fu Panda<\/em> (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<\/em> came along. Similarly, the \u201ccollect all the pieces of a thing\u201d storyline is such a common trope among fantasy stories that it seemed a little uninspired. This, combined with the \u201cunintentionally gather a rag-tag group of individuals\u201d flow of the story made me check out about halfway through.<\/p>\n

While most of these side characters were quirky, I found the titular \u201clast Dragon\u201d 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\u2019t help with this either. Still, I\u2019ll watch movies like this for the visual spectacle alone, so the fact that not everything worked for me is fine.<\/p>\n

Another visually stunning Disney movie that attempts to tell an Asian-inspired story, I give Raya and the Last Dragon<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" 1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1199,2],"tags":[2715,2817,2818,2820,6,2819,2821,13,2816,8],"class_list":["post-2783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-animated","category-movie","tag-2715","tag-asian-culture","tag-awkwafina","tag-choreography","tag-disney","tag-kung-fu-panda","tag-martial-arts","tag-movie","tag-raya-and-the-last-dragon","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2783"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2791,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783\/revisions\/2791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}