It has been 1 year, 2 months, 21 days (or 449 days) since the last time I set foot in a movie theatre.
And while it feels like no time has passed, it also feels like it's been forever.
Which is just to give some general context to my experience with Raya and the Last Dragon.
As is my way of approaching movies for the last few years, I went into this knowing nothing. Not having seen any trailers, not reading anything. Nothing. No, that's a lie. I saw two seconds of trailer footage that was about an inch tall, when I hovered over a YouTube video thumbnail that didn't seem to be about this movie at all. Oh, and I saw at least one of the posters. But that was it. I'm not even sure that I'd seen the full dragon design.
So I didn't really have any expectations beyond the general Disneyness of it all. And knowing that it I was fairly certain that it would have both Raya and the last dragon.
And... I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
Oh, it was gorgeous. The world, the lighting, the hair and clothing textures, the water effects. Everything. There were moments I was legitimately unsure whether some of the establishing landscape shots were either partially a model or real actual landscape photography. That's how good we're talking. Unable to tell CGI from reality good.
And the clothing... especially on one of the characters, where you could see the weave on the cloth of her outfit, and I just knew how that it would feel if I touched it.
But that's my general refrain at every new Disney or Pixar movie. The technology has always come along in great leaps and bounds and, as is expected, totally blew my hair back.
I also really loved the ideas and design that went into the world. It was very much based around South East Asia... Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, which I absolutely wasn't expecting. And it made for an interesting "Asian dragon story" without being China or Japan. I have no doubt that somewhere, someone who watched this movie is already writing up a RPG version of the world. Because it's absolutely perfect for that. There's very much an "Avatar The Last Airbender" vibe to the world of Raya. And I dug it.
And I also dug Raya, a flawed hero at times, but one who can definitely kick your ass all day long.
I will also say that the resolution of the movie didn't go the way I expected it to. It took a turn, but one that I appreciate, and one that made sense within the world of the movie.
But... and there sadly is a but... I don't quite know what the problem with it was and why it didn't completely grab me. I cried more at the wonderful, wonderful short, Us Again, which was AMAZING, than I did at Raya.
It may have been the pure Disney of it all. The sugar coating, the urge to dip into the wacky bucket. As opposed to the same kind of story from Pixar. Which would have had me bawling my eyes out, I'm sure.
It maybe have been that there were four directors (well, two directors and two others listed as "co-directors", whatever that means), or the fact that it had two screenplay writers and eight "story by" writers (two of whom were the same as the screenplay writers).
Especially when you compare it to something like Onward which has one director who was also one of three writers who all had a "story by" credit.
This just... had too much going on.
And I didn't like the dragon, or at least not in the way I wanted to. I'm sorry, I just didn't. The design was fine... and yes, she had her moments, and there were times I didn't mind her. But overall... I wasn't feeling it. And while I kept thinking that I recognised Awkwafina's voice, I don't know how I could have, only having ever seen her in Ocean's Eight. It's more that they were trying too hard to go for a Genie from Aladdin vibe I think. It wasn't quite that obvious, but I feel like Awkwafina did some improvising and they left it in. If it wasn't that, they the dragon was, in parts, not the most well written.
There were also "wacky characters for the sake of being wacky" as I mentioned, but which don't make any logical sense if you think about it for more than about eight seconds.
The world was going for a Last Airbender "weird animal" vibe but only a little bit (I can only think of... four animals in total, two of which are on this version of the poster)... it was like they said "well, we have these animals in the story already, we should put some animals in the world" and then added one. And it was set in a world that is like part of our world, but not... with people who are divided very neatly into different tribes who all live in geographically different parts of the land.
There were also story threads that felt like they should have gone... somewhere... but didn't. And a flashback introduction that I felt just went on entirely too long. I mean, I got the point of it (oh, and take a drink for another absent Disney Mother), fairly quickly, it just seemed to take too long to get to the place that seemed like the foregone conclusion.
And I also disliked that there aren't really repercussions to the actions of certain characters. Well, a certain character. Not having the movie calling that out, in the context of the movie, stuck out to me like a sore thumb. And yes, that wasn't the theme or moral of the movie, but still... it stood out to me.
I did appreciate that they clearly (like in Moana before it) had a group of experts they went to about the region they were basing their world on... it had a specific name in the credits, "story and cultural consultants" I think, and there were a number of names listed, which is always good.
The other thing that stood out to me about the credits was a message which read:
The making of this movie from over 400 individual homes was completely unprecedented, and relied entirely on the talent, ingenuity, and dedication of everyone at Walt Disney Animation Studios. The filmmakers would like to thank them for their tireless hard work, good humor, and most of all patience... with our inability to properly use the internet. (Dude, you're still on mute.)
Which makes perfect sense when you think about it, but was something I hadn't even considered. The fact that they made this, essentially, from home. I mean, I'm sure that a lot of the storyboarding and maybe a first animatic, maybe the temp voices, has been done by March last year, but just the fact that they, potentially, took their work computers home and worked on this remotely for almost a year is kind of mind blowing.
yani's rating: 3 crystal shards out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment