Raya and The Last Dragon

We recently watched the new Disney animated movie, Raya and The Last Dragon. I thought this movie was super cute. In typical Disney fashion, they are trying to show the good in all people. Although as you’ll see here, it is a big and difficult task to undertake. Humans are selfish, fearful, flawed, and that’s what we’ll find here.

In the film, you have 5 different tribes named after the main parts of a dragon. As usual, they have conflict with each other, don’t trust each other, and think that the others are better off for whatever reason. That’s the flaw in humanity, that storyline, it is all too familiar.

Then we meet a dragon. Now here’s the interesting part, the dragon is played by Awkafina! As we were watching, we thought we recognized the voice, and when I looked it up, I saw it was her. That’s pretty awesome.

So throughout the movie there were some parts where I got really frustrated because of the level of naïveté and stupidity that I saw from some of the characters. Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but I am not all that trusting of people. Still, I suppose that is part of what makes these characters who they are isn’t it?

In this film, it was nice to see that many of the characters were played by Asian actors. I always thought it was kind of weird when they have a white person playing an Asian person in a film. (Even in a cartoon.) There are so many Asian actors to choose from, why not utilize their talents? It’s nice to see representation, that really does matter.

The villains in this film, aside from humanity’s flaws, look like damn viruses that turn people to stone. I wonder if covid influenced that aspect of it?

Overall, this is a super cute film for children as well as adults. The artwork was amazing and the storyline was really great, I think you will enjoy it, we did!