Holy crap, this movie is a work of art. I mean, wow. The visuals are amazing, the character and creature design fantastic, the landscapes living paintings, and the animation gorgeous. This movie feels alive in a way far more then James Cameron's Avatar ever did to me, and it really comes to life watching it.
Shame the writing tries it's best to kill that feeling dead, though. This is Raya and the Last Dragon.
The premise is that in the land of Kumandra, an area of land that follows a dragon shaped river, was ravaged by evil spirits known as Druun, 500 years ago. The last dragon not turned to stone by the Druun managed to use a concentrated magic gem that banished the Druun and turned the people back to normal but not the dragons.
All of the above and what comes next is basically just backstory; in present day in the movie, 5 warring tribes in Kumandra are fighting each other and trying to gain control over the Dragon Gem, which is being guarded by the tribe slash village known as Heart. However, a plot by the tribe Talon is revealed that they were trying to steal the Dragon gem at a feast for the five tribes, the aforementioned feast in an effort to stop the fighting. When this plot was discovered, the other four tribes came in, and started fighting over the dragon gem, which gets broken and releases a Druun(or possibly creates it?).
The druun, which multiples itself quite quickly, turns Heart's people to stone but has an aversion of water and the gem pieces, which quite conveniently is shattered into 5 pieces, so one for each tribe is taken. The main character, Raya, who is just a child at this time, is saved from the Druun by her father, the father having been turned to stone, and NOW the plot starts with a 6 years later message and Raya trying to find the last dragon to stop the Druun once again.
Wow, that took quite awhile to type out. Now, I'm sure such a long set up, including some things I didn't mention, would take a good 30 minuets to...wait...you mean it only took ten or fifteen minutes in the film from all that?! The film is a total of an hour and 54 minutes, with at least fifteen or twenty being the credits of other languages.
So yes, the intro is rushed, but otherwise I did not notice rushed or prolong padding for most of the film. aside from a few pointless 'look at how pretty the animation is!' scenes that are ironically the least good looking in the film.
Now, as I said, the film is beyond gorgeous, there is in particular one scene where Raya is saved by the Last Dragon from the villain, and that scene is...wow. I mean, I cannot describe it, but I want that entire 30 second scene framed. I don't know how you would frame 30 seconds of animation, but man, I want it.
Unfortunately, the plot is rather thin, the dialogue rather stilted and bad, and some characters act like set pieces instead of living breathing people. While watching it with my mother, there were several times I almost left because the writing was so poor, but I was already hooked by the visuals.
That being said, I am a fan of apocalypses, and having most people be turned to stone definitely counts as one, so I loved the setting and world. Also the theme of the film is something I truly, really do believe in, and unfortunately can't say because it's kind of a spoiler.
Also if you've seen the film, the last scene before the proper ending of the film really got to me because of the visuals and the message it was sending. So I admit I cried. Admittedly it doesn't take much to make me cry anymore.
I give this film, a 3.5 stars out of 5. Why? Well, it earns 3 for visuals alone. An extra 0.5 stars for the theme, which I'll admit is a personal thing.
Anyway, see you all next review!
