Exactly a month ago, on 17 November 2022, I watched the recent Disney computer-animated fantasy feature film Raya and the Last Dragon.
Directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, co-directed and co-written by Paul Briggs, and released in 2021 by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Raya and the Last Dragon has a very (over?) complicated plot that tells of an ancient southeast Asian subcontinent kingdom, Kumandra, whose five nations (each named after a vital body portion of a dragon) formerly co-existed peacefully with its prosperity augmented by its benevolent deified dragons.
But 500 years ago came the Druun, amorphous purple-and-black entities that devastated Kumandra, turning many of its nations' people and all but one of its dragons to stone. Happily, Sisu (voiced by Awkwafina), the sole surviving dragon, was able to concentrate her departed dragon kin's powers together with her own into a dragon gem whose power warded off the Druun and revived all of the stone people, but, tragically, not the stone dragons. Since then, moreover, the five nations have no longer trusted one another.
Now, 500 years later, Benja the leader of the nation Heart, where Sisu's dragon gem is guarded, attempts to reunify Kumandra by inviting delegations from the other four nations to a feast, but he and his young daughter Raya (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran), trained by him as the gem's newest guardian, are ruthlessly betrayed by Namaari, the young daughter of the Fang nation's leader, resulting in a violent skirmish in which the gem is smashed into five sections. Each of the other four nations steals one, then flees, because the smashing of the gem has incited the release from the subterranean zone of the dreaded Druun, which promptly begin petrifying everyone again, including Benja.
Raya flees, riding her bizarre pet (a fictitious giant armadillo-like pill-bug known as a pill-bear and named Tuk Tuk), determined not only to recover the four missing gem sections but also to rediscover Sisu, the last dragon, who is the only one capable of uniting them into a single whole gem and utilising it to banish the Druun once more. Along the way, and five years later, Raya grudgingly accepts the assistance of various others who have lost family members to the Druun like she has done, though she doesn't trust any of them, and succeeds in locating Sisu.
Raya also encounters Namaari, now a teenage warrior like her (and voiced by Gemma Chan), who again like her is seeking to capture the five gem sections to ensure that Fang becomes the dominant nation. Having previously been betrayed by Namaari so vehemently, Raya is not ready to trust her again, but Sisu persuades her to do so, several times as the movie progresses, but each time Namaari betrays her, and even kills Sisu.
Eventually, however, because this is after all a fairytale, everything works out – the Druun are vanquished, the petrified people and all of the dragons (including Sisu) are revived, and the five nations of Kumandra are reconciled once more.
The computer-created, eye-popping visuals in Raya and the Last Dragon are absolutely gorgeous, especially Sisu, who at times resembles a pale azure unicorn as much as a dragon. There is plenty of amusing knockabout humour, both visual and verbal, to savour and enjoy too, particularly from Sisu, who, due to her incessantly manic utterings and monologues, courtesy of much ab-libbing throughout by Awkwafina, comes across at times like a dragonesque version of Robin Williams's hyperactive blue genie in Disney's Aladdin! Unusually for Disney animated movies, however, this one is not a musical – the only songs appear over the end credits.
Oh, and btw, for all of you trivia buffs reading this review, Raya is Disney's very first entirely original princess, not based upon or inspired by any pre-existing character or real person; and her name, 'Raya', happens to be Malay for 'hibiscus' (the national flower of Malaysia) and Indonesian for 'great' – so now you know!
BUT: here is my fundamental problem with this movie. The message preached long and hard throughout is that it is imperative that we trust one another – no matter how much we are betrayed, no matter how traitorous others behave, we must still trust, and eventually it will all turn out fine.
This may well be the case in a fairytale like the one that this movie unfurls, or in an ideal world. But as any victim of a con artist, swindler, shyster, or worse will only too readily confirm, to behave in such a naive manner in the real world is asking for trouble, big trouble. I wish it were not the case, and I hate to sound cynical, but I've been around long enough to know that's what happens in reality.
Consequently, I find myself concerned by how heavily this message of trust above all else is hammered out at its audience, which will certainly include impressionable youngsters who are yet to learn about the lowlife out there, not just on the streets and in business but on the other end of computers spouting forth spam and all manner of other online malware on a scale of deception unparalleled in human history.
So, enjoy Raya and the Last Dragon with its ravishing beauty and spellbinding magic by all means, but in my opinion it would be best to consign its saccharine platitudes about trust to the land of fairytale in which this film is set.
That apart, if you'd like to witness at first hand the dazzling spectacle awaiting you in Raya and the Last Dragon, be sure to click here to view a stunning trailer for this movie on YouTube.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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