Raya Deserved Better: Let’s Talk About Raya and the Last Dragon

As a 23 year old woman, I still thoroughly enjoy movies intended for kids. A relaxing night for me is often pouring myself a mixed drink and watching Toy Story or Wreck-It Ralph for the millionth time. A lot of children’s media brings me comfort and happiness.

While I do a lot of rewatching of old movies, I try to take the time every now and then to catch up on the latest in children’s media.

Recently, I gave Encanto, Luca, Turning Red, and Raya and the Last Dragon a watch.

Disney’s most recent trends seem to be centered around cultural representation and generational trauma.

And while Luca teaches us to embrace who we are and that beauty isn’t skin deep, Encanto teaches us that you don’t have to “have a gift” in order to contribute something to the world and that healing begins with love and understanding, and Turning Red teaches us that taking a stand and choosing your own path is incredibly important…

Raya and the Last Dragon attempts to teach us that blindly trusting people who have shown you they aren’t worthy of your trust is the key to improving the world.

Cultural Disclaimer

I want to preface this post by saying that while Raya and the Last Dragon takes place in a fantasy world, Disney’s initial claims were that Raya would be “the first Southeast Asian Disney princess” and the representation and culture is based on many countries in Southeast Asia.

As a garden variety white lady, to say it’s not my place to discuss the cultural impacts Raya may have had, or the various examples of Southeast Asian culture in the movie would be an understatement.

If you’d like to learn about the culture in Raya, or lack thereof, I recommend checking out Xiran Jay Zhao’s youtube channel and their extensive review of the movie with the help of a Discord server that pooled together many different SEA voices who made nearly five hours of presentations breaking down the cultural representation, impacts, and take the time to teach people about their culture, much of which has been robbed from them over time.

The majority of my cultural talk about this movie, which will be scant, will be backed up by said video, which I did watch after having watched Raya since I am a big fan of Xiran’s media analyses.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s jump into it!

**Also there will be spoilers**

First Impressions

At the time of writing this post, I have watched RTLD twice. The first time, I had just watched Encanto, which I found to be a delightful movie from start to finish, drenched in the rich culture of Colombia. It felt like a love letter to this culture, a beautiful movie filled with the music, food, clothing, and dance of the Colombian experience. On top of that, the message was solid and many felt represented, heard, and found themselves able to relate to at least one of the characters portrayed. My husband, who collectively hates musicals, even mentioned wanting to watch it again a few days ago.

Encanto’s competence made Raya feel a bit hollow in comparison during my first watch. The plot felt a bit rushed, but I loved the beautiful animation style in this film. I am of the opinion that Raya is one of Disney’s most beautiful characters ever put to screen, if not the most beautiful.

But I’ve been thinking about the movie since I watched it, and there were several things that started to bug me. I sat down a few nights ago to have a second watch and take some notes. Unfortunately, those initial things that I found bothersome have grown nearly unbearable, and I found a lot more to dislike the second time around.

Opening Scenes

The movie opens with one of those “how did we get here” scenes while Raya rolls through the desert on a giant round animal with a saddle.

We’re pretty much immediately launched into a flashback that sets up some scant worldbuilding for us. We learn that this world is called Kumandra, and the world used to be full of dragons. A dragon named Sisu used all of her magic to seal away these evil monsters called The Druun, which were traveling the world turning people and dragons alike to stone. The humans take Sisu’s sacrifice for granted and fight amongst themselves for the dragon gem, which is what Sisu used to seal the druun away.

Now, I will admit, upon first watching this movie, I was absolutely gobsmacked by how blatantly Sisu was an allegory for Jesus.

As a Christian, I normally wouldn’t complain about Jesus allegory in a film, but the entire premise of this movie was promised SEA themes. I haven’t seen a lot of people discussing this, and self sacrifice isn’t specifically a Christian idea, but as a westerner it stood out to me.

We make a jump from the worldbuilding exposition and we meet a young Raya.

Thus begins my incessant complaining at the only cultural discussion I will have openly in this post. We get an opening song as young Raya comes into frame, and it lasts mere seconds. We get less than a minute of beautiful SEA music before it cuts entirely and we get spooky soundbites, even though Raya barely talks.

Encanto was a musical, so you could argue that overloading a non-musical with music would be the wrong choice. But holy shit, does it feel like a missed opportunity in this movie. It was something I hardly noticed during my first watch, but during my second it grated on my nerves. At several points in the movie we get this beautiful setup of gorgeous sounding SEA music only to have it stop before even the minute mark. The music for this film was wasted, and I really can’t see why the producers would do this.

Raya’s animal companion is adorable. His name is Tuk-Tuk, and I’m not entirely sure what exactly he is, but he is one of my favorite Disney animal sidekicks. There seems to be some disagreement on the web about what he might be, ranging from a Pangolin, which is a scaly skinned mammal native to SEA, to a half pillbug half pug. He certainly doesn’t have the face of a Pangolin, but this is a fantasy world so I’m probably wasting my time trying to figure out what he is. Once Raya gets older she rides around on him as he rolls and it is both adorable and badass.

We see Raya break into a room and fight the person guarding the dragon gem, and it turns out to be her dad, who is training her to guard the gem herself.

Worldbuilding and the Introduction of Themes

Raya feels kind of juvenile and silly when she is younger. You might say that’s to be expected since she’s a kid, but I will admit it feels slightly out of place coming from a trained warrior princess.

We get some more worldbuilding in the next scene. We learn that the now broken Kumandra has become the countries/cities of Heart, Tail, Talon, Spine, and Fang.

We learn that Raya’s father is inviting all members of the other countries to Heart (where they live) for food. Her father is making food and combines different ingredients from the countries together, which makes the food better.

Raya’s father tells her not to make assumptions about the other countries and to try and show trust.

It is Raya who quiets the animosity between all of the countries by approaching them and asking them if they want food, and then making friends with a girl from Fang named Namaari. I will complain a lot about this character later on. We see a little bit of queer tension between the two, but it never amounts to anything.

Namaari uses the term “dragon nerd.”

In Xiran’s video about Raya, the speakers talk about how ultimately disrespectful it is to refer to oneself as a “dragon nerd,” comparing it to saying someone is a “Jesus nerd” or “Buddha nerd.”

Dragons are very clearly depicted as religious beings in the world of Kumandra. Humans bow when they see Sisu, and it’s clear she (along with the other dragons) is of the same status as a deity in a non-fantasy setting.

I’m not one of those people who learns that another group of people is offended by something and desperately searches for something to be offended about, but I will say it makes very little sense in a narrative and worldbuilding context to treat dragons like D&D or LOTR one minute, and have them depicted as holy or sacred figures the next.

Raya’s Mistake

Raya chooses to show Namaari the dragon gem. This is a good bit of character building for Raya and it makes sense on a narrative and thematic level. Raya yearns to make her father proud of her, and his dream is for a unified Kumandra again.

Namaari betrays her however, and after a disastrous action scene, the dragon gem is broken, the druun are set free, and each leader scoops up a piece of the dragon gem and runs. Raya’s father is turned to stone, and he tosses her into the river to be taken safely out of the area.

I want to preface the rest of this post by saying that Raya making a mistake is not an issue. Good protagonists often make costly and terrible mistakes. The problem is that Raya attempts to learn from her mistakes, and it’s implied that she is wrong for that. Everyone craps all over her for not wanting to blindly trust people, and she’s made to feel guilty for that, which is not only incredibly toxic but also sometimes falsely associated with the concept of religion and collectively puts people off of it.

Raya shows genuine remorse for what she does wrong and takes the weight of the world being broken on her shoulders. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have. Now the world is broken.”

We get more tiny snippets of music that immediately draws my attention and then stops. Sigh.

Sisu

We learn that Raya has been searching for where Sisu is laying dormant, something that Namaari mentions when they met. Raya has been looking for 6 years, and she finally finds her.

I’ve heard a lot of vitriol towards Sisu, and I agree with the majority of what is said. Sisu is portrayed as incredibly silly and ridiculous in her mannerisms, understanding of the world, and the messages she attempts to push. It’s kind of an insult to not only the characters in this story who worship dragons but anyone who values or worships a god.

Sisu discovers that she absorbs her siblings’ dragon powers when she touches the pieces of the dragon gem. Can I just say, these dragon powers are so dumb.

Sisu claims that each dragon has their own type of magic, and Sisu’s is her incredible swimming ability. She is repeatedly downplayed and made to be the “failure” of the family, but one of her sister’s powers is LITERALLY glowing. I won’t harp on this too long but wow.

Raya and Sisu plan to collect the rest of the dragon gem pieces so Sisu can drive the druun away again.

We start out in Tail, and see absolutely zero culture regarding their people, unless you count the Toot N Booms -bugs that shake their butts at you before exploding- (no I’m not kidding, although I wish I was). Their chieftess is dead and I guess all of the other members of Tail are too? The most we get is a limp wristed Indiana Jones style dungeon as Raya dodges booby traps and steals the gem from the Chief’s corpse.

Now, I realize this movie went with the ambitious goal of portraying five unique SEA fantasy countries in less than two hours of runtime. But the lack of culture does stand out to me, and I can’t help but feel that if Encanto can give us twelve memorable family members, each with their own goals, personalities, aspirations, and struggles, the producers of Raya should have been able to portray five countries in a more rich and culturally diverse way.

Namaari shows up and learns about Raya’s goals, as she’s been tracking her since she recently broke into Fang to steal their dragon scroll, which is what she used to find Sisu.

Sisu gets the ability to shapeshift, but only into a person, from the second piece of the dragon gem.

They narrowly escape and we meet Boun, I guess the only living member of Tail left? Raya is afraid to tell Boun about Sisu, but for some reason was completely fine with telling Namaari about her.

Sisu tells Raya that her problem is she has trust issues. This is one of the first of many of these moments, which grow more and more annoying as the story goes on as Sisu is nearly killed multiple times and both shows zero gratitude to Raya for keeping her safe and openly shits on her for not trusting the people who almost killed her. Make it make sense Sisu.

Next we go to Talon. I found this to be the most culturally engaging country, I guess it was a favorite of the developers. Talon is on the water, which is supposedly the reason why they’ve managed to thrive, but there is also tons of water around Tail and Heart so who the hell knows.

Raya tries to help an abandoned baby and is proven right once again since said baby immediately betrays her with a small group of monkeys.

Sisu also gets betrayed when she ignores Raya’s advice to stay on Boun’s boat and gets lured into a creepy graveyard by an old lady and almost murdered for the gem pieces. Raya saves her and rather than thank Raya for saving her, she reiterates and complains that maybe humans suck because they don’t trust each other enough, not because they’re greedy and self serving in nature.

I have to say, the complete flip from the trope that human beings are inherently greedy, covetous, and self centered to being fed the lie that the only reason war happens is because humans don’t trust each other enough by a bad joke spewing dragon is harrowing.

Sisu’s entire argument is that “maybe the world is broken because you don’t trust anyone.”

At the end of the day, this is a moot point, because the burden of trust is on the betrayer. If you trust someone and they betray that trust, it’s on that person to open up communications, apologize, and begin establishing trust again. Even movies like Shark Tale get that message right.

And that also doesn’t mean the person that was betrayed is obligated to accept that apology or ever trust that person again.

And I literally cannot express how much I hate that Raya is made out to be an idiot by Sisu, the biggest idiot of all, for not blindly trusting people.

We get a scene of Namaari convincing her mom to let her go after Raya for stealing gem pieces. There is a kind of limp wristed attempt at establishing racism towards Fang, since they were the ones who acted as a catalyst for all of the other tribes to attack and ultimately break the dragon gem. But the movie neither commits nor does anything substantial with this plot element, so you might as well forget about it now. Raya is specifically against Namaari, not Fang as a whole, so it kind of falls apart at a surface level. I’m not saying Raya should have been made into a racist, I’m just saying it’s like the studio was afraid to dive deeper into the idea. As we know, racism is a systemic issue, so including it in a fantasy world can be tricky, but unfortunately it makes for a more realistic world.

The Spine segment is pretty forgettable. Long story short Sisu trusts the Spine leader and gets them captured, but the guy turns out to be a good person, plus his baby got turned to stone so Raya immediately feels sympathy for him.

Sisu takes Raya to Heart and tries to make this argument that Raya should trust people because Sisu’s family trusted her when it came to sending the druun away. This argument is stupid because that was Sisu’s family.

Asking people to trust their family members who have placed their trust in you and vice versa is vastly different than asking them to trust strangers who have knowingly betrayed them in the past.

But either way Sisu’s garbage convinces Raya to trust Namaari again and try to convince her to hand over the dragon gem piece.

The Climax

This next bit gets a little confusing, and I have a LOT to say, so keep that in mind.

We get a scene that I feel is supposed to be setup that Namaari’s mom convinces her to betray Sisu so they can capture her. This is wrong for a number of reasons.

For starters, we don’t see enough of Namaari and her mother’s relationship to get the impression that her mother is manipulating or controlling her. On the contrary, her mom literally lets her take control of their entire army to carry out her own personal vendetta.

Secondly, Namaari has shown time and time again that she’s pretty much just a bitch. I in no way blame her mom for the shit show that is this climax.

It’s incredibly unfortunate because buried beneath all of the bullshit of this movie, Raya has found a group of people from the different countries of Kumandra to give her trust and friendship. But Sisu literally can’t pull her dragon head out of her own butt long enough to stop worrying about Namaari and appreciate how Raya has grown as a person and found a group of friends to trust.

The Death Scene

Namaari is literally a horrible person.

She agrees to meet the group with her dragon gem, and surprise surprise she brings a crossbow and points it at Sisu, threatening her and Raya.

Sisu walks forward and says that she trusts Namaari, and Namaari literally starts tightening her finger on the trigger of the crossbow. Raya lashes out with her sword, Namaari fires, and Sisu dies.

Any normal human would fall to their knees and beg for forgiveness, but since Namaari is literally the worst human being to ever live, she scoops up her gem piece and runs off.

All of the water around Kumandra begins to drain, which leads me to believe that Sisu might have some amount of control over the water, being a water dragon. This explains in my own personal headcanon why they would trust Sisu, the dumbest of the dragons, to save the world and not die (turn to stone) like the rest of them. Water being kind of necessary to human life would make that make sense, and saves my rage from being taken out on Sisu’s family.

“I don’t care if you believe me. Sisu did. But you didn’t trust her. That’s why we’re here.”

-Namaari

Namaari is a manipulative jackass. After telling Raya that she “didn’t mean for Sisu to die.”

Still no apology mind you, Raya calls her a liar, which is absolutely justified, and she replies with the above quote.

At this point, I can practically feel my blood pressure rise, and all I can say is Raya deserves better than this.

Raya sees her friends trying to help the people of Fang escape from the druun, something Namaari didn’t even think to do even though they are her own people, and she regrets her decision to fall victim to revenge, running into the fray to help her friends.

To be fair, Namaari does help the group not be attacked at one point, but don’t worry, she’ll screw it up later.

The druun are closing in and the heroes are trapped.

This is the moment in the movie where I thought Namaari would hand her gem piece over to Raya. After all, like we discussed earlier, the burden of trust should be on the betrayer, not the betrayed.

But no.

All of the other characters hand their gem pieces to Namaari.

The cherry on the top of this shit cake, is that Namaari literally watches a baby turn to stone in front of her eyes, then turns to leave the cave they’re trapped in once she sees a gap open up.

Nope, I’m not kidding. She literally tries to escape.

At the last minute she changes her mind, but oh my gosh did they not have to put in the part about her attempting to escape if they wanted to push the message that she wasn’t still an awful person.

The gem is restored, and it’s implied that it wouldn’t have worked if Namaari hadn’t trusted them, but I don’t really care to be honest.

The only thought I really have about that part is maybe Sisu’s true sacrifice (death) was needed and it was up to humans to trust each other, because at the beginning of the movie, despite Sisu’s use of all of her power, she went dormant and all the other dragons stayed stone. Now they’re back, and that is my only guess as to why. It’s based on rumor and my own opinion though so take it with a grain of salt. None of the other dragons talk or contribute anything at all to the plot, so it’s pretty hollow.

That particular message is fine I guess, trusting friends is good and all, but the overreaching message is garbage.

And to top it all off, Namaari NEVER APOLOGIZES.

Sisu just stares at her majestically like she hasn’t just spent this entire movie being wrong and getting killed and traumatizing Raya.

Excellent.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this movie felt mediocre when I first watched it, and as time went on I got more and more upset at the themes and “lessons” being pushed in this movie.

Someday on this blog I want to have an in depth discussion about our responsibilities as writers or producers of YA media. I refuse to be one of those individuals who gets on a platform and screams about certain media POISONING THE MINDS OF OUR CHILDREN, but I do feel that we have a certain level of responsibility as creators to not push a toxic ass message in media that is inherently made for children.

This is all I have for now on Raya, and it feels good to get it off my chest.

Thank you so much for reading!

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I hope you have a beautiful day!

Happy watching!