Review of Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) by Duncanblack — 16 Mar 2021

Rather than introducing interesting and rounded characters to create an engaging story, it introduces unlikable, under-developed automatons to further the plot in unsatisfying and predictable ways.

Some highlight idiocies of the movie follow, so spoilers.

After knowing the antagonist of the movie for all of 3 seconds, the protagonist (Raya) takes her to the dragon gem even though it makes little sense to the story. The move was incredibly shoehorned and out of place in the story and the protagonist clearly understands that it would be a bad idea and is old enough to know better. She isn't even slightly pressured into it, she just goes "hey I have a terrible idea that will advance the plot" and then breaks the world.

All of the character conflict points take the form of 'No, Please, Yes' where characters are required to learn nothing and prove nothing to get what they want, every request is instantly gratified and the ones that aren't are delayed for seemily pointless reasons. Here are is an example of each: Firstly the antagonist of the movie requests from her mother to take "The entire imperial army" (which consists of about 8 people with crossbows by the way) directly into a region where the mother/chief thinks they will be obliterated leaving them entirely defenseless. She requests to take the army, her mother says no, the antagonist basically says 'you never trust me' and the mother relinquishes and lets her take the army. This happens over and over in the movie, the "No, Please, Yes" model leaves a lot to be desired in the story and feels uninspired and lazy. Second example is that the protagonist Raya tells Sisu the dragon that she should remain hidden in human form for some reason because it will keep her safe or make people aggressive or something stupid like that. This would be all well and good if it were true, except that every case where Sisu is in dragon form people give them exactly what they want with no questions asked. The world is crumbling, literally the entire human population could die at any moment and the only being capable of solving this rocks up in the city and says 'give me the gem' I think I'm going to give her the gem. Who wouldn't, but this is yet another example of characters doing the complete opposite of what any rational person would do.

Every region they go to ends up with a new character coming along for the ride. When they find themselves in Spine, they end up being robbed by a literal toddler and some monkeys, the whole scene is just awful and out of place and feels like a strange attempt at comedic relief, but just drags on. The worst part is at the end of this scene, for seemingly no reason the protagonist invites the baby and monkeys that just robbed them to come along for the ride. This is likely the worst example of how all of these unlikable, bland characters are added to the story. It also highlights the awkwardly disjointed, episodic nature of the movie plot that feels more like watching a b-grade kids tv series than a AAA movie.

The main climax of the movie finds the main antagonist of the movie (badly) feigning change of heart. She brings the final piece of the orb (which is the only thing needed at this point to save the entire world by the way, including all of the people from her own faction) to the protagonist with no backup, right here she could have handed it over and rolled credits, but for some reason she, completely unprompted and with no backup, pulls a crossbow on the other 8 characters (all of which would have been sufficiently equipped to stop her) and says that "she doesn't have a choice". WHO GIVES HER NO CHOICE?! "Oh no everyone is going to be mad at me for saving the world!", Is her family being held at gunpoint in the other room? Is there a sniper trained on her location? Is there a whole sea of guards waiting to jump over from behind the ledge if she doesn't give up the gem? No. No. No. She simply chooses to kill the only hope that they have (literally kills the dragon) what a complete idiot, I sat there, mouth wide open wondering how they expected the audience to find this at all convincing or thrilling. Absolutely awful screenwriting. About 10 minutes later she then blames the protagonist for the dragons death (ever though it showed the antagonist literally pulling the trigger) and Raya just accepts that it's her own fault, made absolutely no sense.

In conclusion: This movie may be visually beautiful, but it is full of unlikeable, irrational characters. The plot is lazily written and leaves a lot to be desired. The conflicts are pointless and resolved immediately, the initial issue and the main climax of the movie are both completely avoidable and based in idiotic character decisions. If any of the characters made decisions that the audience would, the plot would be resolved in about 5 minutes.