We meet Raya, voiced by Kelly Marie Tran (the recent “Star Wars” trilogy), apprenticed to her Guardian of the Dragon Gem father ( Daniel Dae Kim).
Accidentally a tad on-the-nose, and eyebrow-raising in theme? Oh yes. The story is a made-up mash-up of Pan-Asian/Southeast Asian myths hanging on learning to “trust” people again, and features a plague that has decimated the land and a heroine whose lifelong pal is a pet pangolin, the pill-bug armadillo which the Chinese government blames for the global pandemic COVID-19. That said, “Raya” is a pleasant enough kids’ adventure - “Raiders of the Lost Ark” meets “Mulan” who is now a “Tomb Raider.” The strain shows, and slang is no substitute for actual humor - sight gags or funny lines. “BOOM goes the dynamite,” which even the kids have moved on from, thank heavens. She’s voiced by the comic actress Awkwafina, so the pale blue dragon lets us know “I’m gonna be real with you, I’m not the BEST dragon,” that “I got water skills that kill!” and “I gotcha girl. That’s all over the script to Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon,” where a lot of effort was put into making the dragon, in particular, sound flip and hip.
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And while some may seemingly only be there for comedic emphasis, there’s a sense of loss the characters share that is deep and profound, especially when looking at the movie through the lens of 2021, with half-a-million souls gone in America alone.Nothing more instantly-dates an animated film for children than over-earnest efforts to contemporize the dialogue, to render it slangy and to-the-minute current.
Part of the fun of Raya and the Last Dragon is the unexpected ways these characters come together just know that you are going to encounter some of your favorite new Disney characters along the way. And along the way, they come across various members of the other sections of Kumandra. Still, together they set out on a quest to collect the fragments of the gem and set things right. It was her brothers and sisters, the fallen dragons, who did most of the work when it came to saving humanity. As it turns out, though, Sisu isn’t some all-powerful deity like Maui in Moana she doesn’t have much mojo left. Of course, to do this, Raya must traverse the post-apocalyptic landscape, search for the last surviving dragon, Sisu, and reunite the shards of the shattered gem. The Druun are back, and it’s up to Raya to stop them. But after Raya makes a mistake (she trusts her friend, Namaari, voiced by Gemma Chan), the gem is divided, with each land given a different chunk. And it was up to her people, in Heart, to protect a mystical gem that keeps the evil marauders at bay. As Raya was growing up, she heard stories about this epic battle between the water dragons and the Druun, and how all but one was killed. That is until a sinister force called the Druun (the latest in a long line of shapeless, ethereal Disney baddies) turns townspeople into stone and survivors against one another. Each area is named after a part of the dragon (Fang, Heart, Tail, Spine, and Talon) and each area has a specific type of inhabitant.
Raya and the Last Dragon starts in the scorched earth of Kumandra, a fictionalized Southeast Asian country shaped like a spindly water dragon. Read: ‘Flora & Ulysses’ Review: This Year’s Cuddliest Superhero Film (It’ll debut on Disney+, via Premiere Access, as well as in theaters.) And this was before the pandemic forced everybody apart, working independently to get the film completed on time. Additional writers (playwright Qui Nguyen joined already announced Adele Lim) and producers (Peter Del Vecho worked alongside Osnat Shurer) were brought on as well. Don Hall, a Disney workhorse who had directed the underrated 2011 Winnie the Pooh feature and Big Hero 6 (he also helped nudge Moana across the finish line as a co-director), was installed as a new director, alongside independent live-action filmmaker Carlos López Estrada, who had come to the studio to develop an original, unrelated project but was handed the Raya assignment (his other movie is still in development). Weeks later Briggs and Wellins were removed (Briggs stuck around in a reduced capacity as a co-director) and the role of Raya was recast with Kelly Marie Tran from The Last Jedi. The actors and filmmakers appeared on stage together, beaming and hopeful about their upcoming animated action movie. Under the direction of longtime Disney story artists Paul Briggs and Dean Wellins (who nearly made a cool space race movie years earlier), the film would star Cassie Steele as Raya, a lone warrior who teams up with a shapeshifting water dragon named Sisu (played by Awkwafina). To explain: Raya and the Last Dragon was announced back at the D23 Expo in 2019.
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