Raya and the Last Dragon: a frustrating mess
Whilst I was surprised by Disney’s latest animated venture, Encanto, the same couldn’t be said for Raya and the Last Dragon.
Safe to say the project was ambitious, with much of the promotional material revealing the film’s wide cast of characters and its diverse setting. Over the past couple of years there has been a resurgence in the fantasy genre with new stories being told from fresh perspectives and old stories being reimagined in a new light. Other cultures, histories, and people are being more faithfully represented in the genre, and from everything we were given about the film before its release, Raya and the Last Dragon only seemed to add to this rising trend.
However, despite previewing the stunning visuals, when the trailers for the film finally dropped, it looked messy. We were given snapshots of each of the kingdoms with scenes from the film taken out of context and out of sync. It looked like Disney had bitten off more than they could chew when it came to the overall feel and passing of what they were making. It put me off. When Raya and the Last Dragon was released, I didn’t want to watch it, even when it came to Disney Plus, I gave it a pass. I only decided to give it a chance when I needed something on in the background and I was curious enough to see if I was wrong.
I’ll say this now. Raya and the Last Dragon is a frustrating mess.
When it comes to the story itself, I’m divided. In concept, I love it. In reality, it doesn’t work with a 107-minute runtime. The first twenty minutes are split into three, with a grown-up Raya, voiced by Kelly Marie Tran, travelling across the ‘dystopian world’ before explaining the history of Kumandra, setting up the importance of the Dragon Gem and the villainous entity of the Druun. This is done via voice over, which is coupled with some beautifully cut out images reminiscent of Asian shadow puppetry. It then skips forward 500 years, as Raya shows us what happened to cause the world to fall apart a second time, this time down in the animation style we should expect for the rest of the film. There are some beautiful scenes in this section of the film, with the kingdom of Heart being a stunning introduction to the world. The problem is only the first round of exposition – giving the history of the Druun and the formation of the Dragon Gem – is needed.
Let me explain. The pacing of this film is all over the place with a lot of scenes added to pad out the runtime. After the opening, we re-join present-day Raya at the end of her search of the mighty dragon, Sisudatu. Sisudatu has been asleep at the river’s end for the past 506 years, and when she awakens, Raya suddenly fills her in with the past 20 minutes of exposition and this is something that continues throughout the film. Information we, as an audience, know is constantly being repeated to us all because one character was not present for the events. I really feel that the opening sequence we see with a young Raya would have been better to experience through dialogue with Sisudatu alone. We would have been able to see Raya develop and Sisudatu, perhaps, come to a better understanding to Raya’s struggle with guilt and isolation. As it sits at the moment, Sisudatu just seems naïve and ignorant, and Raya seems cold and stubborn. There isn’t enough time to develop them as they quest across the five kingdoms, finding the gem pieces and adding more and more characters to their adventure.
There is a lot in Raya and the Last Dragon, and as a result, I don’t really care for any of it. They set up so many interesting narratives in this film and none of them gets the time they deserve. We jump from scene to scene and from kingdom to kingdom with very little development in the middle. For example, we spend 17 minutes in Tail, where only two minutes are spent in the kingdom itself. Likewise, less than ten minutes are spent in both Spine and Talon and yet both kingdoms have suffered changes and hardships that we never get to see outside of a few lines of dialogue. So much seems to be glossed over and as a result, characterisation seems inconsistent, especially with Raya. She goes from distrusting Boun, a boy from Tail (voiced by Izaac Wang), to suddenly trusting Tong, a man from Spine who threatened to kill her and Sisudatu (voiced by Benedict Wong), all because Naamari – the film’s perceived villain – shows up at the gates.
We are left to assume and accept a lot throughout the film, with the climax sacrificing any explanation in favour of a happy ending. The final scenes with the group turning to stone break the rules established as they are frozen in place holding one another whereas we previously see the magic of the Druun physically moving people to freeze them in a specific pose. We are also told at the very beginning of the film when Sisudatu used the magic of the gem people returned but dragons didn’t, at the end, everyone comes back, dragons included. Likewise, Sisudatu dies prior to the film’s climax and come the end of the film she is resurrected by the dragons who seemed to have no way of knowing she had passed.
I really think this movie was rushed and would have been more successful as an animated series. We would have been able to have more time in the kingdoms, see the characters thrive, and most importantly we would have been able to have so many questions answered rather than presumed. It’s why I say that this film was a frustrating mess. They tried to do so much with a runtime that just didn’t allow for everything they wanted to do. And with the number of successful series currently being released on Disney Plus and the resurgence in the popularity of things like Avatar: The Last Air Bender during the year of its release, I feel that it was a missed opportunity to got give Raya and the Last Dragon the chance to be something more.
