Hey, it's been a while. Let's kick back into gear with something nice and light and fun like *checks notes* a movie about a divided land ravaged by a plague that's left families shattered and trust in our neighbors almost nonexistent.
...Damn, Disney.
Of all the films I've seen since all *gestures broadly at everything* this started, Raya and the Last Dragon is one of the top contenders for "Movies I desperately wish I'd been able to see in a theater with a bunch of people." Not just because I yearn for communal experiences, but also because Disney Animation's latest is a staggering work of artistic and technical beauty as well as being a rip-roaring and emotionally-loaded fantasy adventure.
I want to stress that last part first - for all that Disney's marketed all their "princess movies" since Tangled by cutting every trailer to mimic the comedic energy of their principal competitors, Raya is the film where they actually just went and "made a DreamWorks movie" instead of just marketing the movie like one, while still maintaining an identity all its own. While the studio has previously alternated between "princess movie" and "action adventure" (for every Frozen, there's a Ralph) this was clearly the time when someone not only asked "Why not both?" but found a creative team fully capable of pulling it off. There are no musical numbers here, and while Disney's newest heroine technically counts as a "princess" every bit as much as Moana does, she's got a very different energy to her in-house contemporaries as well as your average DreamWorks protagonist. She's emblematic of the entire approach to the film, a story that takes some familiar Disney Animation stock parts (magical companion, cute animals, Parent Feels, etc.) but throws them into an exciting original setting.
Said setting is the ancient land of Southeast Asian-inspired Kumandra, a once-peaceful united nation that has since become divided into feuding kingdoms. Hundreds of years before the film starts, the cataclysmic Druun appeared and started spreading darkness across the land and turning everyone it touched into stone, and the only thing that stopped the world from being overrun was the heroic sacrifice of (nearly) all the dragons to seal the away evil. While total catastrophe was averted, the various peoples turned on each other over posession of the magical gem that Sisu (Awkafina), the titualar last dragon, used to save the world. The day that 12-year-old Raya (magnificently voiced by Kelly Marie Tran) proves herself worthy of guarding the gem, a would-be peaceful gathering of the five kingdoms goes horribly wrong, the gem is broken, the Druun are set loose, and the world. . . kinda ends?
Like, in the prologue of the movie. Yeah, they do not waste time.
I don't want to get into spoiler territory, but I have to emphasize how bleak and empty the filmmakers allow this movie to be. As we pick up 6 years later to follow a now--grown Raya's quest to find Sisu and restore the gem, directors Don Hall and Carlos Lopez Estrada take us through broken landscapes and the type of post-apocalyptic imagery that would be far more at home in the first act of Avengers: Endgame or a Mad Max movie than a Disney animated film. Like Moana, there's no dashing prince ex machina to be found - Raya is pursued by Namaari (Gemma Chan), a deadly warrior princess who could have been a friend, but who's choices have instead made her a bitter enemy, so our heroine is understandably slow to trust new allies. It's genuinely impressive how well the directors and writers Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim juggle the various tones needed to sell the desperation of the situation, Raya's shattered idealism and (wholly understandable) selfish goals, and the emotionally-charged dynamic between her and Namaari while still bringing the adventure and comedy.
This is largely shouldered by Sisu (who is well-served by Awkafina's husky timbre as well as the choice to go fairly light on mugging for the audience), but even here much of the levity comes from a place of grief and loneliness, as these are an odd couple bound together by shared mourning and everything they learn about each other only highlights how much both have lost. This theme continues as they gather the rest of their mismatched fellowship: a preteen restaurateur, a toddler con artist, and a lonely barbarian, all of whom join up as much because they have literally no one else as because they think they can save they world.
The film begins to bulge at the seams introducing so much mythology, disparate kingdoms and cultures, and a cast of characters who could easily fill a season of television and packing them into a film that's almost non-stop propulsive momentum. The chase/race structure adds to the impending sense of doom of the creeping darkness over the world and the desperation to hold on to any light (aided in no small part by James Newton Howard's dynamite score), but it gets pretty breathless. This is one of the few Disney films where I'd happily take another 10 to 15 minutes, if nothing else than to have a few more scenes of these characters hanging out with each other. As it is, each quiet moment feels like a stolen reprieve from both the shared tragedy of their pasts as well as the constant reminders of the world's bleak future if they fail. The supporting cast mostly get distinctive and amusingly contradictive character traits rather than full arcs, but it helps that they're all imbued with a potent does of pathos by dint of the setting (Benedict Wong's towering Tong is a manic-yet-melancholy delight every time he speaks, and I'm not even sure how that works), and that they're all reflective of the trio at the spine of the film.
Because when the final act kicks in and the narrative through line between Raya, Sisu, and Namaari reveals its final hand, the emotional journey of the characters combine with the themes of taking steps to rebuild broken trust all land like a series of haymakers to the heart. Raya being a year or two older than many of her predecessors (and having enough emotional baggage for any three of them) gives her room to go to some seriously grim places, and the film eagerly follows. While it's easy to draw comparisons to Avatar: The Last Airbender (and, uh, that's fair), the desperation and uncertainty of the characters and the places the film goes in the finale recalls The Last Unicorn's cocktail of tragedy and triumph.
Raya and the Last Dragon is a movie that looks quite familiar on first blush, but the further you dig into it, the more it reveals not just the finely-tuned craft of spinning this many plates as well as the downright stunning animation (aside from mixing in far more stylistic elements to create a feel not quite like any of its predecessors, the action is the best of its kind since the original Kung Fu Panda), but also the "take the first step" mantra proves itself to be somewhat metatextual. If Moana was Disney finally finding the platonic ideal of their animated musical formula, Raya is a confident step in a new direction for what a "Disney animated film" can be.
Here's hoping they keep pushing forward.
(Raya and the Last Dragon is in theaters and streaming on Disney+ Premiere Access.)
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