“Raya and the Last Dragon” opens on a world that has already lost. Kumandra was a prosperous Southeast Asian land where humans and dragons lived together, until the Druun — mindless spirits that petrify every living being in their path — tore it apart. Sisu, the last surviving dragon, poured her magic into a gem and vanquished them, reviving the people but not the dragons. A power struggle over that gem split Kumandra into five chiefdoms: Fang, Heart, Spine, Talon, and Tail, named for their places along a gigantic dragon-shaped river.
That is the setup. What follows is a quest film with a clear engine and a clean emotional debt, and it mostly pays both off.
Trailer, via Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Raya and the Gem Chamber
Five hundred years later, Chief Benja of the Heart tribe holds the gem and trains his daughter Raya, a warrior princess, to protect it. Benja believes Kumandra can be reunited, so he holds a feast for all five tribes. Raya befriends Namaari, princess of Fang, who gives her a dragon pendant. Raya trusts her and shows her the gem’s chamber. Namaari betrays her — it is a plot to help Fang steal the gem.
The theft goes wrong in the worst way. Benja and the other tribes arrive, a fight breaks out over the gem, and it breaks into five pieces. A fissure opens and releases the Druun, who overrun the Land of Heart. Each tribe leader steals a piece and flees. Benja notices water repels the Druun and throws Raya into a river before he is petrified. The film is careful here: the stone takes him, and the movie lets that stand.
Six years later, Raya treks across Kumandra with her steed and friend Tuk Tuk to find Sisu, hoping the dragon can make another gem. In Tail, she summons her. Sisu reveals she did not create the gem. She wielded it on behalf of her four siblings, all of whom contributed their magic to it. Raya and Sisu, the dragon disguised as a human, set out to reclaim the four pieces.
That is a good quest structure because it is a scavenger hunt with a real cost attached to every stop. Each chiefdom has its own grievance, and the gem pieces sit inside those grievances.
Sisu Is the Best Thing in the Movie
Awkwafina voices Sisu, and the performance is the film’s strongest asset. The dragon is not a solemn ancient. She is loose, funny, and a little out of her depth, and that mismatch between legend and actual personality is where the movie finds its tone. Kelly Marie Tran plays Raya straight — a warrior who has spent six years being right about people — and the pairing works because Tran does not play the comedy. She plays the suspicion.
Raya and Sisu, who disguises herself as a human, resolve to reclaim the four pieces of the gem
The supporting cast is deep and specific. Izaac Wang is Boun, Benedict Wong is Tong, Daniel Dae Kim is Benja, Thalia Tran is Little Noi, Sandra Oh is Virana, Gemma Chan is Namaari, Alan Tudyk is Tuk Tuk, Dichen Lachman is General Atitaya, Patti Harrison is the Tail Chief, and Lucille Soong is Dang Hu. That is an unusual amount of voice talent for a film that could have gotten by with four names, and it shows in the smaller roles.
Five Chiefdoms, One Long River
The world-building is the film’s second real strength. Kumandra is drawn as five distinct regions strung along a single river that reads as a dragon’s body, and the design team did not treat them as palette swaps. Tail is dry and hard. Spine is cold and fortified. Talon is water and market. Fang is the one with the walls and the army. Heart is the one that lost.
That geography matters because the film is about a fractured land, and a fractured land needs to look fractured. It does.
The directors are Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada. The screenplay is credited to Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, with additional writing by López Estrada, Kiel Murray, Hall, Paul Briggs, Dean Wellins, and John Ripa. James Newton Howard composed the score. The film runs 107 minutes.
What the Pandemic Delays Cost
“Raya and the Last Dragon” was released in theaters in the United States on March 5, 2021, and simultaneously on Disney+ for customers with Premier Access. It was twice delayed from a November 2020 release date because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It grossed $130.4 million worldwide and became the third-most-streamed film of 2021.
Those numbers describe a business story more than an artistic one, but they are worth naming because they explain the film’s shape. A movie built for a global theatrical run and then asked to perform on a streaming service at a premium price has to be legible fast. “Raya and the Last Dragon” is legible fast.
Development began in October 2018, and the project was officially announced in August 2019, when the title and voice cast were revealed. During production, Disney replaced several cast and crew members, including the initially announced lead, Cassie Steele, who was replaced with Tran to conform with changes in character and plot. The film is inspired by traditional Southeast Asian cultures, and the filmmakers focused on diverse environments and characters while maintaining authentic cultural representation.
That last point is where the film earns its keep and where it invites the most scrutiny. The inspiration is real and visible in the architecture, clothing, and geography. Whether the execution clears the bar is a fair argument, and the film’s own production history — the recasting, the rewrites — suggests the studio knew the stakes.
The Part That Actually Matters
Here is the case for the movie. It has a real thesis: trust is a risk, and the only way to fix a broken thing is to extend it anyway. The Druun are not defeated by force. They are defeated by people deciding to stop hoarding what they have. That is a clean idea, and the film commits to it without winking.
Here is the case against it. The quest structure is episodic in a way that flattens tension. Raya and Sisu move from chiefdom to chiefdom, gather a piece, and move on, and the middle stretch starts to feel like a checklist. Namaari is the most interesting character in the film and gets the least room. The betrayal in the gem chamber is the emotional hinge of the whole movie, and the film returns to it less than it should.
The animation is excellent throughout. The water, the stone, the way the Druun move — all of it is handled with real craft. But craft is the floor here, not the ceiling, and the film’s best moments are the quiet ones between Raya and Sisu, not the set pieces.
Where That Leaves the Score
So where does that leave it? “Raya and the Last Dragon” is a good film with a great central pairing and a structural problem it never solves. It is not the best thing Walt Disney Animation Studios released in this era, and it is not trying to be. It is trying to be a quest movie about trust, and it is that.
The ranking that matters, in order:
- Sisu and Awkwafina’s performance — the film’s engine and its best joke.
- The Raya-Sisu relationship — the emotional core, underused in the back half.
- The world design of the five chiefdoms — specific, varied, and load-bearing.
- James Newton Howard’s score — strong, but doing more work than the script in places.
- The Namaari storyline — the most interesting thread, the thinnest treatment.
- The episodic middle — the film’s real weakness.
The score is 7.4 of 10. That feels right. “Raya and the Last Dragon” is a film worth watching for the dragon and the design, and worth arguing about for everything it leaves on the table. The gem breaks into five pieces. The movie only really cares about two of them.
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