In keeping with Asian folklore, these dragons are not enemies but guardians of humanity, aligned less with fire than with the life-giving elements of water and air. Your dragon, in this case, is voiced by Awkwafina, as delightful and irrepressible a comic force here as she was in the live-action “Crazy Rich Asians.” (Adele Lim, one of that movie’s co-writers, also scripted this one, with Qui Nguyen.) Sisu hails from a lineage of glorious, multihued dragons who roamed Kumandra centuries earlier, and who inspired the names of its five kingdoms: Heart, Fang, Spine, Talon and Tail. Armed with a powerful sword, an ancient scroll and a giant armadillo-like sidekick named Tuk Tuk (he’s her pet and her roly-poly mode of of transport), she travels the fantastical realm of Kumandra in search of answers, carrying nothing less than the weight of humanity on her red-caped shoulders. The Druun has devastated her homeland, but Raya, voiced with pluck and determination by Kelly Marie Tran (“Star Wars: The Last Jedi”), refuses to accept defeat. Women rule, literally and figuratively, in “Raya and the Last Dragon,” starting with Raya, an intrepid warrior princess whom we first see riding through the desert like a bamboo-hatted Mad Max. One character calls it “a plague born from human discord,” which is to say it’s yet one more crushing reminder that we have met the enemy and he is us. No, the Druun isn’t the coronavirus, even if it does leave broken societies, devastated families and tribalist impulses in its wake. It’s an archetypal formless villain, a distant cousin of supernatural scourges like the Nothing from “The Neverending Story,” but it also carries a whiff of real-world metaphor. The chief antagonist in “Raya and the Last Dragon,” an enjoyable new adventure from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is something called the Druun, a shrieking, sludgy purple monster that turns people to stone. Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials.
The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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