Raya and the Last Dragon Review

Xander Gallup- Staff Writer

Raya and the Last Dragon is Disney’s latest release, premiering on Disney+ for thirty dollars. It was a movie that I had been looking forward to for quite a while before its release. I mean come on, who wouldn’t be excited for an action-packed movie with a dragon in it?

The movie features a young woman looking to save the world from the Druun by bringing back the legendary Sisu, a trusting dragon who doesn’t know how treacherous people can be. To save the world they must reassemble the Dragon Gem, the only thing that can destroy the Druun for good, while also assembling a team to help defeat the Druun. The movie was fun to watch, especially near the end when things started to really kick off. I’d have to say that the best part was the fight scenes, because you could tell that the animators made a tremendous effort to make the fight scenes as fluid as possible.

I have only a couple critiques about the movie. For one thing, I felt like it was too short, like too much of the movie had been left out just to further the plot along. To go off of that, I feel like Raya discovered Sisu a bit too soon. It should have been more like Aladdin, where a lot of the conflict was introduced and pushed before Genie was discovered.

Another critique I have is that it didn’t really seem realistic, which is strange to say due to the fact that this was a fantasy movie, but it makes more sense if you were to actually watch it. One of the main plot points is that the world is broken because no one trusts anyone else. And yet Raya seems to fully trust every person that joins her hero squad within the first five minutes of them meeting. At first, this seems like a good thing, until you remember that she is the one saying throughout the movie that you can’t trust anyone. It just doesn’t seem in character for her to be trusting of anyone.Raya and the Last Dragon wasn’t my favorite movie, but I could honestly see myself watching it on my own again. I don’t think it’s worth spending thirty dollars on a streaming service to watch it early, but when it becomes free to watch on Disney+ I’d recommend it.