The Flawed Fantasy World of 'Raya and the Last Dragon'
And Kumandra is incredibly detailed. The characters wear draped sabai tops and sampot pants, and wield kris-inspired swords and arnis sticks. The martial-arts choreography incorporates moves from fighting styles such as muay thai and krabi-krabong. There are shots of durian and dragon fruit and the Vietnamese rice cake bánh tét. The fictional kingdom Fang draws on geometric architecture from Indonesia, while Talon is made up of floating markets reminiscent of those in Thailand. The titular last dragon, Sisu (voiced by Awkwafina), is modeled after naga, serpent-like creatures from Southeast Asian folklore. These elements fill every inch of the screen, making Raya an eye-popping, vibrant spectacle. That was the point, Nguyen explained in an interview: “It was like a bunch of Easter eggs culturally for all of us to be able to go, ‘Hey, you find your culture in this movie.’”
But culture isn’t a collection of Easter eggs. For all its dazzling details, Raya’s world-building comes at the expense of Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) herself.
Raya even spends the opening minutes of the film running down the extensive backstory of Kumandra: The land once existed as a unified region where humans lived alongside dragons, until purple smoke monsters called Druuns, which turn living beings to stone, showed up. The dragons saved the humans, but in the process sacrificed themselves to the Druuns. The humans, left on their own, began fighting one another, splitting Kumandra up into five kingdoms, each named after parts of a dragon: Fang, Heart, Talon, Spine, and Tail. Given their different climates and values, each one developed a distinct lifestyle, refusing to reunify as one Kumandra. Raya embarks on a quest to stitch together the kingdoms, collects a motley crew of wayward Kumandrans, and forms a found family that teaches her that trust is key to unity.
As gorgeous as Kumandra may be, Raya’s story feels empty and irrelevant compared with the world around her. She acts like a tourist, hopscotching from kingdom to kingdom in search of pieces of a dragon gem to stop the Druuns, which transformed her father, the chief of the Heart kingdom. Sure, she engages with people from the kingdoms, but they mostly provide comic relief, rather than act as fully formed characters—one of them is a baby who can only babble and produce slapstick gags. In the desert land of Tail, Raya grabs the gem piece from the skeleton of the kingdom’s chief. Raya is a quick-witted adventurer, but her character scantly reflects the filmmakers’ sweeping cultural research; Disney’s attention to authenticity becomes little more than window dressing.
Better fantasy worlds make their cultural specificity essential to the hero’s journey. In Black Panther, Wakanda represents Black excellence, and thus serves T’Challa’s arc, as a man trying to earn his position as a ruler. The world of Avatar: The Last Airbender is based on Asia, and that’s woven into the narrative of its protagonist, the monk Aang. His plot incorporates Buddhist rituals and themes of harmony; he travels to four kingdoms not to pick up souvenirs, but to learn from each nation’s philosophies and lifestyles. The world of Moana draws on Polynesian cultures, in particular the tradition of wayfinding, which is pivotal to the lead character’s story. She sails across the ocean to protect her home island and connect her people to their heritage as voyagers.
