Watched Raya and the Last Dragon on a small stream, to determine whether I wanted to purchase the steelbox. (not really sure still.)
It's beautifully rendered, and Kelly Marie Tran proves she can carry an animated movie after she got ripped off by Star Wars (one film where she got a thankless part, another where she was shamelessly written out of the film). But the movie itself? Eh. I think kids will like it but it's all kind of derivative of other films, so it's not as much fun and/or funny. Awkwafina is okay but nothing spectacular.
I did appreciate the fact that trust is hard-won. There's multiple failures of trust in this film, and in the end it involves one person trusting another with no take-backs, leaving the trusted to decide whether they will be worthy of such trust. Pretty gutsy and true to life in how trust works.
I find Namaari the most interesting character in the film, NOT Raya who is rather predictable and driving much of the plot. It's about at the midway point where Namaari becomes more than one-dimensional, when she experiences something she had not expected, and you realize that she is more complex a person than the film had originally indicated. At that point, I was curious to see how she would work everything out. In that aspect, the film doesn't disappoint. This is also another film where the dissenters and/or rejects end up representing each of their own separate cultures, kind of the "losers club" saving the day.
The film still doesn't make a lot of sense at times. like, with the evil beaten back by a whole/unbroken gemstone, I'm not sure why the gemstone needed to be taken / owned by anyone at all. The film "Brave" had its problems, but at least the four brothers involved were warring over a throne, leading to the eldest brother selling his soul so to speak for the power to overcome his brothers and breaking their familial trust... so it made sense, one brother's ambition and an actual family conflict is what led to the breaking of trust. Here, the initial conflict resulting in the entire film's plot seems rather stupid and forced, it's like everything was fine and there was no reason to fight except the film decided there was. It also doesn't quite make sense why none of the dragons came back when the stone existed the first time, but they do this time -- except I guess it is suggesting that the five lands did not trust each other and had to be saved by a dragon before, whereas this time it was the five lands who bonded and saved the land together, which restored the dragons. But it's kind of vague.
(This isn't really much of a spoiler. After all, it's not like Avengers Infinity War, the film spells out early what needs to happen and of course it is a Disney film, so... you know it will all work out.)
