Raya and the Last Dragon

[Farerb]

Honest Trailer:
https://youtu.be/6Cbw4RKmR44

[blackcauldron85]

SPOILER ALERT on the Honest Trailer that farerb posted, FYI!!!!!! I thought it was great!

[Kyle]

This is def one of those movies that got lost in the transition from concept to final product. The final wasn't bad, but the concepts were on another level. I even found myself wishing those not 2d but kinda stylized sequences to be the default movie. I was looking at those just thinking, there's your movie right there, why doesn't the whole thing just look like that?

Haven't seen the movie yet. (No way for me to do so, cinemas currently shuttered in my country and no Disney+ yet.)

I suspect the filmmakers might worry that an overly stylised look for the entirety of the film's runtime may tire viewers. I certainly wouldn't mind, though.

Perhaps the Lasseter mentality of "it looks too distracting" will need a few more years to flush itself out.

For context's sake, heres a couple of shots from it if you're curious. Kinda resembles a color'd paperman to me.




You're probably right about Lasseter mentality needing to die off first to allow for this.

[Farerb]

While a different style and a different medium would be nice, for me it's not something that will make a bad film good or a good film bad. Personally I would like for WDAS to stop giving their films a "kids movie" vibe and start trusting that kids will understand them. They should stop talking down to the audience otherwise I don't know how much longer I will be interested in their films.

[Disney's Divinity]

You're probably right about Lasseter mentality needing to die off first to allow for this.

Yeah, I hope WDAS shakes off Lasseter's blandification process bullet points eventually; if PIXAR wants to keep aping his model, feel free, never liked them anyway. This film was progress since at least it was focused on more than two predictably opposed characters and had a title that wasn't a stupid adjective, but it will take time to leave behind his influence entirely. Can't wait. At least in the old days, if I didn't like the film, at least I might be able to enjoy the visuals if nothing else.

[DisneyFan97]

I really liked this movie.

I think this is better than Zootopia and both Wreck-It Ralph movies.

[unprincess]

okay I actually saw this the day the forum went down again so I had to wait to post about it and then its only now Ive got some time to add my thoughts.

ok well I liked it but I was actually expecting something a bit darker for some reason. I should know better, this is a revival era Disney film after all. Like I was expecting more stakes/intensity and at least somewhat bittersweet ending with some loss, so I was surprised that everything was wrapped up in such a perfectly neat tidy bow, everyone comes back, everyone is forgiven and all's well. Especially after Frozen II.

I also really likes Namaari and how ruthless she was at first but I felt she got off way too easy at the end. I would have liked more remorse from her. More consequences? I mean not even her mother had to deal with the consequences of her actions. (Wanna bet if for Frozen 3 they decide to redeem a certain ginger prince he's gonna have to pay dearly and painfully for his past crimes? Yeah of course he will.)

I loved Sisu, she's adorbs, and I had accepted she was gonna be the cute toy friendly little sister dragon and was hoping that at least the other dragons would be more imposing with more impressive designs... Nopes, everyone's just a copy/paste of Sisu but with a different shaped horn and different pastel colors. My Little Dragon! I was really disappointed about that. I wonder if the fact they had to do most of this film at home b/c of covid is why they had to go for such a lazy simplified design choice.

Btw that scene were Sisu protects Raya from Namaari (I think it was when they were at Spine) about to attack her and she's like raaaaawr all fierce and feral looking like the world's angriest plushy, that's a good example of why the dragon design in this film doesn't work. Namaari is supposedly in shock and awe and fear at finally seeing this supposedly legendary divine beast for the first time and I'm like, seriously girl? I was more expecting her to go AWWWWWW!



like with Frozen 2 it had gorgeous atmospheric landscapes that I wanted to immerse myself in, Id love to see it the theater again just for that, but I don't know if I will be able to find the time before its yanked from theaters. The story was nothing special really, but at least the worldbulding was better executed than in Frozen II. I agree this film needs a series to flesh it out more. Nice score too! Wish we could have seen more of Fang's giant kitties.

[blackcauldron85]

Namaari is supposedly in shock and awe and fear at finally seeing this supposedly legendary divine beast for the first time and I'm like, seriously girl? I was more expecting her to go AWWWWWW!

I didn't have an issue with Sisu's cuteness at all, but I think even despite her cuteness, Namaari, a dragon nerd, was meeting a divine being, right? She wasn't expecting Sisu, the divine water dragon that saved the world, right, so I think that it's normal for her to be in shock and awe. And I mean, Lotso was cute and evil, so sure, I give Namaari the right to be fearful of the cute, fog-breathing dragon...

Wish we could have seen more of Fang's giant kitties.

I agree!


Disney Movie Insiders sent an email saying:

You're invited to earn up to 300 points when you experience the movie event in theaters or order it on Disney+ with Premier Access!

(tiny print) Bonus Points offer valid when you unlock Premier Access to Raya and the Last Dragon, either during pre-order from 2/5/21 - 3/4/21 or when Premier Access is available from 3/5/21 - 5/3/21, with your Disney+ subscription and additional fee of $29.99 US/$34.99 CAN and submission of the Premier Access purchase confirmation email via DisneyMovieInsiders.com or the Disney Movie Insiders app. Purchase confirmation emails from 3rd party platforms are acceptable if they legibly include the terms “Premiere Access,” “Raya And The Last Dragon” or both of these terms. Only 1 submission per account will be eligible for the bonus points offer. Disney Movie Insiders membership required; membership is free. Premier Access purchase confirmation email must be submitted as described above by 11:59:59PM PT on 5/31/21 to receive bonus points. Members may earn up to 1500 points per month per account through the manual submission process during the promotional period ending 5/31/21. Get Premier Access for $29.99 US ($34.99 CA). Disney+ subscription required. Points offer expires 5/31/21.

I just used the Snipping Tool to take snippets of both pages of the emailed Disney+ receipt and pasted them into Paint and uploaded that. I wonder why they're just telling people now...maybe it's been available on the site this whole time, I don't know.

[Disney's Divinity]

Is Lindsay Ellis the person who does the Honest Trailers thing? I think she's in a controversy over Raya right now, although I'm not sure I understand it.

Anyway, when I was Googling news around this, I saw that its performance on Disney+ was 20% less than Mulan's early weeks. :/ But I suppose it makes sense because Mulan is a known brand to most people over an entirely new property you don’t know have as strong an impression of? And there’s always the possibility some paid the exorbitant $30 for Mulan, were turned off by how bad it was and regretted wasting so much money, discouraging people from doing it again. I guess there would be more data to draw conclusions from if Disney+ had done this $30 thing with the PIXAR movies, too.

[Farerb]

No, she's not behind Honest Trailers, and from what I saw she just compared Raya and the Last Dragon to Avatar the Last Airbender (though she clarified that she only compared them about story and characters, like saying that Namaari is like Zuko). However, that was said by a lot of people even when the first trailer came out and afterwards, including Honest Trailers. But none of them got any of this backlash.
I think there are some people who just have it in for a group of pop culture youtubers, mostly women like Lindsay, Jenny, etc... mainly because they probably said something negative about something they like or something positive about something they hate. Going through this, I saw that people also called Lindsay antisemitic because she doesn't like Prince of Egypt and that she hates Native Americans because she defended Stephanie Meyer and people call Jenny racist because she criticized John Boyega for a sexist demeaning joke he made about Rey and they say that she promotes abuse because she likes Reylo. It's all twitter nonsense in the end in my opinion

[Disney's Divinity]

Oh, yeah. I wasn't sure. I don't watch most YouTube videos posted here. Not because I'm not interested, but because it would probably take an hour or more to load three minutes. It's easier with music when they're videos with just lyrics on a black screen or simply an album cover that stays the same the whole time. Any kind of movement makes the loading times longer. Anyway, I remember hearing that name Lindsay Ellis somewhere on DVDizzy before and thought maybe the reason she was in a controversy was something to do with that video if she was the person behind them. It does sound like a nontroversy from what little I read about it.

[DC Fan]

Said it in the FUNKO POP post. To me this movie was extremely MEH. I get what they were trying to do but they just didn´t have the time to develop that story. That´s the biggest issue. They go from place to place with such brief time that you don´t get to experience anything.

Oh, and I´m SO tired of Disney female leads that need no man and are basically perfect. And not just in Disney movies: Bo Beep, Rey, Vanellope in Wreck it Ralph 2, Mulan in the live action version...And, the worst part, is that they feel the need to disregard the men- didn´t mention Moana because they were smart enough to have Maui there. And in the case of RAYA it was extremely in your face. There were just 3 males in the entire movie and their screen time was insgnificant.

...imagine if it was done the other way around?

[Disney's Divinity]

We don't have to imagine. I've seen many WDAS films where there are two female characters tops in a cast of 10 to 15 characters... Even in the supposed female-lead princess films, the majority of the cast is always male; the ratio usually isn't even close.

[DC Fan]

A couple of things:

1. Women weren´t disrgarded as bland or non existent.

-Jasmine in Aladdin was an increible character; so much so that, sadly, she has become more popular than the male lead himself. Same in Pocahontas. Also true in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

2. So, the alternative is: "Since we were so one sided for so much time let´s do now the opposite for the same amount of time or more."

PS

I should have been clearer on my statement before. I meant to say what I´m clarifying now. Have few female characters and on top of that boring and/or not adding anything to the movie.

[Disney's Divinity]

1. Women weren´t disrgarded as bland or non existent.

Men weren't disregarded in Raya either.Boun is the first one to join Raya after she turns to stone. If your logic is that a male character wasn't a co-lead in Raya therefore male characters are disregarded, then you could flip that statement on its head and say every buddy roadtrip film made in the last 25 years that didn't include a female character as one of the co-leads disregarded the female characters. And the latter were the majority of those films.

I don't agree that Jasmine is an incredible character. Her extent of influence in the finale is being a damsel to drive Aladdin's urgency.

EDIT:
If you look at the sex of the two leads, it stacks out like this:

Both Male:
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
Cars
Cars 2
Cars 3
Monsters, Inc.
Monsters University
Up
Ratatouille
Big Hero 6
Coco
Onward
Luca
The Good Dinosaur
Meet the Robinsons

Female/Male:
The Princess and the Frog
Tangled
Frozen
Wreck-It Ralph
Ralph Breaks the Internet
The Incredibles
Incredibles 2
Finding Nemo
Finding Dory
A Bug’s Life
WALL E
Moana
Soul
Bolt
Zootopia

Both Female:
Inside Out
Frozen II
Raya and the Last Dragon
Brave


Most of the female / male-lead films are at WDAS. I guess because female-lead films are a big part of WDAS' legacy, but they didn't actually trust female characters to hold all the spotlight under Lasseter's leadership, so they were always paired with a male character for 90% of the screentime in those films to tone down the "girliness" or whatever. And two of the films in that last category (Frozen II and Raya) only happened after Lasseter was ousted and a woman was put in charge of WDAS. Sisu was going to be a male character in the early stages of Raya when Lasseter was still on board.

[Farerb]

I'm watching Into the Unknown again and it's funny how I didn't notice it back then but when Paul Briggs speaks, he's credited as "Co-director, Raya and the Last Dragon" while Ron Clements and others are credited as "Director, [projects]". The series came out before the article announcing the new directors and informing that Paul Briggs had been demoted.

[Farerb]

Confirmation that the prologue was CGI:

All 3D assets, all rendered in 3D. They were just always staged toward the camera (even when it moved around) to maintain appeal of the puppet designs.

https://twitter.com/TylerKupferer/statu ... 71233?s=19

[D82]

'Raya and the Last Dragon' exclusive deleted scene: Escaping Namaari
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ray ... 22272.html

Confirmation that the prologue was CGI:

All 3D assets, all rendered in 3D. They were just always staged toward the camera (even when it moved around) to maintain appeal of the puppet designs.

https://twitter.com/TylerKupferer/statu ... 71233?s=19

Thanks for posting! I imagined that was the case, but it's nice to have confirmation. I would've preferred the prologue was in traditional animation, but I think it doesn't look bad as it is. Probably, the fact that the puppets are flat is what makes the animation work for me. However, I don't like the other two scenes in the film that look like 2D. I wish they had used real 2D animation for them.

[estefan]

Even though there is no romance in "Raya and the Last Dragon" (and honestly, a romance would be largely unnecessary as there's no real place for it in this story), Raya's main motivation for finding Sisu and reversing this curse is wanting to see her father again. So a man is still an important character in the story and driving Raya's character.

[unprincess]

They were just always staged toward the camera (even when it moved around) to maintain appeal of the puppet designs.

what does that mean?