Disney's Raya and the Last Dragon

I mean, ultimately the problem isn't Namaari blaming Raya, it's that the actual moment is a bit too ambiguously shot to look like it was actually Raya's fault.

But it was clearly intended by context to be just as much Raya's fault as Namaari's (the intended read of the scene is "Namaari was starting to back down, but Raya hit her crossbow and the bolt went off anyway"), and ultimately Namaari is supposed to blame Raya. That's the whole ending Raya's character arc is leading up to: to realize that her distrust and rage is only causing problems.

The obvious solution to people crying "but Namaari was squeezing the trigger, so Raya didn't do anything" would be to just have Namaari's finger on the trigger, but not be squeezing it.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 23rd 2021 at 10:30:42 AM

Or hell, make it so that her finger isn't on it to begin with, or have some weird focus on that.

Nah, her finger has to be on the trigger so that both of them are culpable, so that it's still a tense situation where it's believable Raya might jump the gun even if she shouldn't have, and and so that it makes sense for the crossbow to go off.

They were going for "Namaari was squeezing the trigger, but was releasing it when Raya attacked," so maybe they could've simply put a bit more emphasis on Namaari standing down. I didn't really have a problem reading it as intended, but since so many people did maybe they could've lingered a couple seconds more on Namaari's finger moving away or something.

But kind of the soul of both characters throughout the entire film is that they blame each other for things they feel deep down are their own fault. Namaari vocally trying to spit Sisu's death in Raya's face is pretty on brand, especially since her actions throughout the entire final part make it clear she - like Raya - is in the midst of a breakdown. Their final fight is basically just the two of them taking their rage at themselves out on each other - Raya realizes that this isn't helping anyone and stops, but Namaari takes a little while longer to do the same.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 23rd 2021 at 11:19:34 AM

The Honest Trailer was hilarious. XD

But it really is hard to believe her side with how it's presented. And Sisu and Namaari didn't even share a scene outside of that one part, so making Sisu "believe" is hard to swallow, especially when that one time she did it it fell apart.

I guess the issue is that when dealing with oath-breakers, its better to just get rid of them however through death, imprisonment, or exile.

But the film has an optimistic bring everything together type message so that means making peace with someone....... you really shouldn't be making peace with.

Haven't watched the film yet, but Namaari just sounds like a really awful person.

Namaari is... interesting. If I were to give a comparison to a previous Disney villain, I'd probably say Denahi from Brother Bear. A deeply negative person who is that way and hunts the protagonist for ultimately personal reasons that can ultimately be worked through.

Basically - without getting into it too much - she's a person who lied to steal an artifact for her kingdom, which accidentally resulted in the end of the world when everyone got wind of her attempted theft and the ensuing fight broke the artifact. What she did is nasty, but the consequences are unintended, and we spend the entire movie slowly learning that she's less evil than Raya perceives her as - or at least, capable of change. Throughout the movie, she's hunting Raya less out of spite as much as out of sheer, unshakeable distrust: she can't believe Raya is actually trying to fix the world, then later her mother can't believe that fixing the world will actual bring everyone together and tasks her with taking over Raya's operation - which she does under some duress, but it's in the process of her trying to do it anyway that Sisu gets shot.

She's basically a Not So Different dark mirror to Raya, who after a lifetime of hardship has devolved into a person a lot like Namaari always was: so embittered by the world around her that she's willing to do anything to fix the world on her own terms, and who arguably has to be convinced that other people matter, let alone that they can be trusted. The final battle is pretty bluntly framed as the two having become the same.

The Fang (Namaari's tribe) as a whole are largely a deconstruction of the whole "evil raider empire" bit. They're described that way by Raya and outsiders, but are actually a rather advanced society whose entire ideology is more "do whatever you want, as long as I've got mine," and everything they do is for the protection of their own people even if at the expense of others - essentially, they're a singular representation of the main conflict of the movie, to afraid to not look out for themselves even when doing so only hurts them: Raya argues you can't do anything about that ideology but adopt it and get yours, while Sisu believes that only unity can overcome it.

We're supposed to believe that Sisu realizes Namaari might be turnable from her reaction to first seeing her (awe and near tears, rather than aggression). It's a risk, but taking the risk to trust people is pretty bluntly what the movie is about.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 23rd 2021 at 2:41:13 AM

Watched it. It was okay.

So... is there a downside to one nation stealing the whole Dragon Gem? If worst case scenario Namaari actually did nab all the pieces from her attempt at the climax, wouldn’t Fang putting them all back together just end the apocalypse anyway? Or what if any one nation stole the whole Gem from Heart at the beginning? Would it not matter as long as the Gem was intact?

Yes. The point of Heart keeping the Gem to begin with was to prevent it from being the Apple of Discord. Hypothetically a smooth steal would have been better, but then who knows how the next attempted theft would go once it's out of Heart's hands.

Edited by RhymeBeat on Mar 27th 2021 at 7:46:12 AM

No, there isn't. The big tragedy in the beginning of the movie is that the other nations believe that the complete Gem gives whoever owns it great power, and only the only the person who has is knows that it does jack as it only important in that it being intact keeps the world safe. Any one of the nations could have it, and it would fulfill the same function, but four of the five refuse to believe that.

Later, Fang wants to steal the pieces/whole thing not because they get any physical benefit from it, but because they want the optics of being the ones to save the world.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 27th 2021 at 4:43:18 AM

What gets me is that after everything is done somehow magically everyone is all "let's hug and kiss!" which I seriously, seriously doubt. And there's even that one chief who died.

So what's the general opinion on the movie, without getting into spoilers?

The general reception is that it's good, with some thinking it's amazing and others thinking it could be better. There isn't really much in the way of detractors.

“ If I were to give a comparison to a previous Disney villain, I'd probably say Denahi from Brother Bear. A deeply negative person who is that way and hunts the protagonist for ultimately personal reasons that can ultimately be worked through.”

I mean he at least behaved better than the Phoenix character (can’t remember his name). You can at least understand his motive of wanting to kill the bear he thinks killed his brother but Phoenix’s unnecessary murder of the bear was driven by a lack of personal responsibility. I mean he did cause the events that lead to his big brother’s death, and the bear didn’t kill him; he sacrificed himself.

But yeah, I can kinda see the comparisons.

Edited by HBarnill on Mar 28th 2021 at 6:24:36 AM

Beautiful film, but ultimately too surface-level due to the runtime and would've been better suited as a limited series.

The representation for Southeast Asia, besides the VA controversy, is not bad but again, kinda shallow, in part due to the short runtime.

The representation for female characters is somewhat better, insofar as each of them is interesting with distinct personalities, and the film does good on having women who are varied enough in both appearance and personalities that we can even have debates over their motives, even if I think the overall writing is uneven.

It's not as good as Coco, and while Zootopia was all over the place with its own moral, the worldbuilding was way stronger.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 28th 2021 at 2:11:49 PM

Zootopia gave us a candy version of racism, neglecting to acknowledge that it’s far more complicated than “I don’t like you”, particularly when it’s carnivore getting the shaft, when they’re usually on top of the food chain. Y’know, like how the whites are on top of the privilege meter. The Judy Hopp conference was the only time they found the complications with her having unconscious bias. But hey, let’s have a dance party!

Raya doesn’t try to talk about serious subject matter, unless you count Humans Are Bastards one, but it at least handles its own message better.

Wasn't the primary racism in Zootopia based on both physical prejudice and racial stereotyping (in the case of the prejudice Judy faces in the workplace) and fear-based prejudice with a splash of assumptions of savagery (in the case of the prejudice predator's face). The main villain is an attempted demagogue who plays on the majority's ingrained fear of a supposedly dangerous minority in order to gain power, which exacerbates the latter. Generally speaking, Judy's experience is something of an allegory to gender stereotyping in professional contexts, whereas Nick's and predator's are allegorical to racial stereotyping in social contexts. The overall message of the story was "always examine your prejudices and social impact, even if you're the subject of prejudice yourself."

These things are fairly explicit in the story. The idea that the movie generalizes it as "I don't like you" seems like a rather poor read.

Where Zootopia missteps is in that it doesn't always balance the animal stereotypes it's lampoons with the irl stereotypes it's referencing (with such odd conflicts as, for instance, the mayor being a lion who is inherently seen as honorable and kingly, but also being a predator and thus being inherently seen as dangerous, at the same time), but even that's not an especially big problem given that the movie is more about the things it's trying to say than about perfectly 1-to-1 replicating real life situations.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 28th 2021 at 2:23:31 AM

The thing about Zootopia is that its mechanisms aren't really comparable to real life conflicts. Like for instance trying to equate predators to whites can be jarring since there's also a conflation to them being prey via numbers or just out being favored socially, among other things. It's why, while I admire seeing things, when people double down on real life comparisons to it, I draw the line.

Raya is weaker and shallow in that rather than being just a story about an adventure, it tries to pull this wider narrative and aesop but falls flat on delivering them, to the point that it becomes questionable. I'm going to ignore the whole "south east asian" thing since honestly it's just window dressing.

Edited by Ookamikun on Mar 29th 2021 at 9:47:52 PM

A deleted scene had Raya with a magical Dragon Blade she used to defeat a Drunn warrior.

Aw man, that would have been cool to see.

Random musing.

I found it so amusing that when Sisu described herself she mentioned the term "group project."

That just felt so random yet so appropriate.

Sisu is one of those typical Disney comic relief characters who use modern language in a non-modern setting, right?

Everyone speaks modern lingo here that it's kinda distracting.

I just remembered this. Why were the statues the people got turned into put in what looked like offering poses, rather than getting literally frozen in terror like what usually happens when somebody is Taken for Granite?

Saw it. Enjoyed it. Solid 7.5/10. Nothing worldbreaking but beautiful and fun.

I really think the Avatar comparisons are wildly overblown, though. "Fantasy Asia setting with nations, a hunt for a MacGuffin (living or otherwise), and a villain who has a Heel–Face Turn" are so incredibly vague.

That said, the one think that felt incredibly Avatar is Tuk-Tuk felt like an expy of Appa. "Fantasy hybrid animal team transport who frequently performs a Big Damn Heroes moment" might be a bit common, but the specifics of those moments and especially his splashdown in the land of Tail felt ridiculously Appa.