Raya and the Last Dragon

I watched the new Disney movie and enjoyed it immensely. Kelly Marie Tran is great as Raya, and Awkafina's Sisu wasn't just a comic relief dragon. She actually made good points about optimism and giving trust to help others trust you, so she wasn't as annoying to me as stupid characters like Mushu the dragon from the animated Mulan. Raya is a warrior princess, as the daughter of the chief charged with protecting the magical dragon gem. But she jumps the gun too fast in trusting a brand new friend Namaari, who attempts to steal the gem, only for disaster to strike when the gem gets broken, unleashing a plague upon the world. Namaari also is a princess of her own tribe, the Fang, and though she is Raya's enemy, the movie allows her to have complex motives and genuine awe and love for the dragon Sisu. This is the key to turning her and other enemies to help restore the dragon gem and heal the world.

It's a lovely message movie about taking a risk and striving for unity and peace. (Unity doesn't mean you can't be diverse societies.) I have seen some complaints online about Raya being a mishmash of different Asian identities into the Kumandra tribes. Are they Thai, are they Vietnamese, are they Malaysian, etc? Instead they're more vague, like a Pan-Asian fusion. I see the point, that white people mix us up and think we're all the same. But I don't care in the context of this movie. It's an original fantasy rather than drawing on a country-specific myth like Mulan, so this mythical Kumandra land is not confined to one real-world place. If anything, it reminds me of how Black Panther was Pan-African, taking different cultural elements from throughout the continent and creating a fantasy society; they even had different River, Mountain, and Border Tribes. I think of it as an homage celebrating the variety of African peoples, in a quest to speak to Blacks everywhere. So I don't mind Raya doing that for several Southeast Asian countries, who have long been overshadowed by China, Japan, and Korea in the rare times that Hollywood ever makes any Asian content. If it helps, white people do also make up generic European countries such as Euphrania and its hostile neighbors in the Cinderella movie The Slipper and the Rose. I just hope that we get more Asian TV and movies overall, then we can have more specific stories for each underrepresented community.

Anyway, for the release, Disney made a "virtual red carpet" event featuring the voice cast, as well as past Disney princesses welcoming Kelly to the fold. She wore a beautiful ao dai and headdress, apparently made by a Paris By Night designer. (Vietnamese kids know the phenomenon of Paris By Night videos which our parents constantly bought and played on TV.) Seeing the other Asian cast members talk about representation is great too, and it helps to have something to celebrate our heritage in the face of all the anti-Asian hate crimes since the pandemic. How I miss the days of the "Gold Open" with Searching, Crazy Rich Asians, and more.