![]() Raya’s sense of independence is undoubtably modern, but the events she’s dealing with feel as old as time itself. In Frozen, now eight years old, the story ideas at work felt fresh and progressive like a studio coming to terms with its own complicated legacy. ![]() But there are too many familiar elements at play, the plot unnecessarily convoluted and quickly leaning on an overcomplicated narration to untangle itself right from the word go. Here the narrative – essentially a two-hour fetch quest – has Raya moving from land-to-land collecting crystal shards in hope that she can bring back a population of people who have been tuned to stone, restore some dragons, and banish an ancient evil. Disney is operating at a point where they can afford to experiment and innovate and redefine what an animated film means in 2021. This quest, we’ve seen, and Raya sorely misses an interesting narrative to match its visual invention and intimate research. Shouldn't these faceless, abstract entities be a last resort for any blockbuster movie baddie, though? Surely any actual, breathing villain is better than the anonymous force of darkness that Hollywood filmmakers continually fall back on, time and time again? How many times do we really need to watch a vague mass of “badness” – this one called “the Druun” – as it sets out to consume the landscape? At least once more, Raya argues. Where Raya and the Dragon feels less inspired, though, is the story itself. Whether the idea of a fictional south-east Asia-like world is actually better than a film set plainly in the real region will depend on the viewer, but there's no denying Kumandra is an evocative and magical place – even if the names of its divided lands, named after dragon parts, are not (“Tail”? Come on!). ![]() ![]() Raya is also gorgeously rendered, packed with what at times feels like an impossible amount of detail displaying the studio’s intricate, intimate, and well-publicised research process the fictional land of Kumandra absorbs elements of Thailand's night markets, architecture from Cambodia's Angkor Wat, a river based on the Mekong. ![]()
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