Raya and the Last Dragon 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Raya and the Last Dragon 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 18, 2021

Raya and the Last Dragon builds a tale of friendship and fate in a world in which fear reigns and hope seems futile. Directors Don Hall (Big Hero 6) and Carlos López Estrada (Blindspotting) craft this latest Disney digitally animated film with spirit and technical marvel but without a true sense of purpose or vision for originality. The film thrives on dizzying action and dazzling visuals but not dynamite characters or a deeply defined soul. There's a certain triteness and tiredness at work; Raya plays like a film assembled from standard off-the-shelf components, certainly assembled with care and into a fruitful finished product, but one that isn't infused with a greater purpose. It is sure to delight audiences looking for animated escape and a tender heart, but the film struggles to distinguish itself beyond the superficial.

Kumandra was once a thriving land where humans and dragons lived in harmony: a land of symbiotic peace between the species, thriving communities, and lush lands. Then, the Druun arrived, a plague that turned humans into stone. The dragons fought valiantly but it wasn't enough. When the last dragon, Sisu, gathered together the combined strength of her magical powers, she formed a powerful gem that banished the Druun and restored peace to the land. But without the dragons, man turned on itself. Humanity now lives in five separate and distinct tribes: Fang, Heart, Spine, Talon, and Tail. Raya (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran) and her father Chief Benja (voiced by Daniel Dae Kim) live in Heart and are the guardians of Sisu's gem. The other tribes believe the gem is bringing Heart the very peace and prosperity that alludes them and are in a constant state of conflict with Heart to seize the gem for themselves. Benja personally guards the gem and is training Raya to do the same. But peace must be restored to the land and fractured relationships healed, Benja and Raya believe. When they call together the other four tribes for a banquet and, they hope, a brokered peace, Raya befriends a young girl from Fang, Namaari (voiced by Gemma Chan). Raya and Namaari visit the secret and sacred site where the gem is located, but treachery is afoot. Namaari alerts her tribe to the gem's location. A battle involving all five tribes ensues, and Benja is not strong enough to fend off waves of attackers. The gem is shattered into five pieces in the process, the Druun reawaken, the tribes are scattered, and the world is quickly transformed into a desolate wasteland. Six years pass and Raya finds herself on a journey to find Sisu and restore peace, health, and relationships to a broken world.

"Typical" could be used to define most every component that makes the movie, for better or for worse. "Typical" Disney technical quality. "Typical" razzle dazzle. "Typical" themes. "Typical" strings of adventure and humor. The movie's successes, and failures, stem from its strict adherence to a Disney formula that here, admittedly, takes away the musical numbers so readily associated with the studio's animated films and replaces them with...more of the same of everything else. The film does take on a more muscular posture as a result yet finds no true identity beyond the superficial ebbs and flows that give the movie an exterior polish only to mask the almost startling lack of creativity on the inside. The film is a buddy adventure story, essentially, pairing a young, serious-headed warrior with a cute and cuddly and awkwardly smart-mouthed dragon. There's little emotional center and there are only cursory attempts at building one; it's certainly not Pete's Dragon and anyone looking for a movie to speak beyond its story will be left disappointed, especially anyone looking for the movie to speak in some original, profound way. This is stock modern moviemaking, and it's a fine exercise in movie building that yields an agreeable little picture, but one can imagine so much more depth and purpose and yearn for even the slightest creative spark beyond the reskin job up top.

But that top layer sure does look and sound great. It seems like every time a new digitally animated film is released it's always "the best looking one yet" and Raya is just that. It's uncannily photorealistic in many scenes, particularly considering objects and landscapes where the line between real and digital is as blurred as it's ever been. To be sure characters still have that "animated" look about them but it's startling to see just how far the medium has come since its breakthrough in the mid-1990s with Toy Story. Sisu is the latest digitally animated character with fur and flowing body structure that almost defy even modern expectations, and the character is voiced with gusto by Internet celeb Awkwafina who shares terrific vocal chemistry with co-star Kelly Marie Tran who voices fellow title character Raya. The action scenes are polished to perfection, the world is gorgeous, and the extremal goings-on are well versed in detail and definition. It's just a shame that there's so little meat on the bones.

Raya and the Last Dragon 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc.

Raya and the Last Dragon's 2K upscaled 2160p/HDR UHD presentation bests the companion Blu-ray primarily by way of the superior HDR color renderings. The palette here enjoys a deeper, most substantial output, boosting brilliance and tonal definition while still retaining the essential depressed look that defines much of the movie's arid, dystopian backdrop. Even the various browns and beiges within environmental backgrounds enjoy boosts to color sensitivity, accuracy, and nuance but it is clearly the more resplendent tones -- blues in particular -- where this image shines brightest. Sisu's magical gem, which is both savior to the land and curse upon it, presents with a clear upturn to luminance. Bolder blues and powerful whites leap off the screen in every shot in which it appears at full power. Sisu's blue-purple fur is likewise a standout for the jump in color intensity that allows the audience to view an amplified representation of the essential colors seen on the Blu-ray.

From a textural perspective, there's only minor amplification here to the content seen on the Blu-ray. One might even be hard pressed to spot noticeable improvements on a scene-by-scene basis. The upscaled 2K resolution and the source content don't take the image to a leap beyond 1080p here, offering perhaps minute improvements to hair sharpness or intimate clothing or facial definitions, but there are no obvious, vast improvements. That's not a bad thing because the core image looks fantastic at either resolution, here certainly revealing exceptional clarity and fine point attention to detail on essentially every surface, no matter how complex or how simple. As with the Blu-ray there's a fine "grain" effect at work. Also as with the Blu-ray there are no source or encode issues of note. It's pretty much HDR all the way with this one as far as gains over the Blu-ray go, and it's enough to warrant choosing this one over the 1080p counterpart.

Raya and the Last Dragon 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The UHD's Dolby Atmos soundtrack is likewise fairly similar to the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack. That's both good and bad. The good is that it's home to that same feel for fluid surround integration. The track is never wanting for more graceful sound movement and spacing, both in action and in atmospheric definition alike. Listeners are regularly treated to fine-tuned audio engineering that brings the world to life with uncanny spatial realism and detail. Additionally, dialogue never falters, always holding firmly to a front-center position and maintaining fine prioritization and lifelike detail for the duration. The downside is that there's a clear lack of both raw volume at calibrated reference listening levels and an obvious failure to engage the low end in any meaningful way, whether as a critical component in defining the film's most prodigious action elements or simply adding vital body to general score and basic sound effects. The major difference here is the addition of the overhead channels which mostly play a support role, folding in essential sound elements without radically redefining the audio landscape as heard in the traditional 7.1 configuration. However, there are a couple of examples when the overheads engage with plainly discrete usage, notably when rain falls into the listening area from the top end at the 63-minute mark. These brief moments of track superiority make this the winner of the two main format audio options.

Raya and the Last Dragon 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Raya and the Last Dragon's UHD disc includes no extras, but the bundled Blu-ray houses the following. A Movies Anywhere digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Us Again - Theatrical Short Film (1080p, 6:49): A story about aging and feeling young again, told through dance. Also included is an introduction to the short film with Writer/Director Zach Parrish (1080p, 1:21).
• Taste of Raya (1080p, 22:09): A virtual roundtable dinner discussion with cast and crew covering the movie and the moviemaking process within a global pandemic.
• Raya: Bringing it Home (1080p, 14:35): Building a movie from the ground up -- from home.
• Martial Artists (1080p, 5:49): Choreographing and crafting the film's various fight sequences, both the technical execution and the thematic currents that course through them.
• We Are Kumandra (1080p, 9:09): Respectfully folding in the cultures of Southeast Asia into the film.
• Outtakes (1080p, 2:23): A look at some of the funnier moments from the voice recording sessions -- from home.
• Fun Facts & Easter Eggs (1080p, 4:16): Exploring some of the movie's hidden secrets.
• The Story Behind the Storyboard with John Ripa (1080p, 5:02): An interesting look at the purpose and process of storyboarding.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 19:00 total runtime): Following Introductions by Fawn Veerasunthorn and John Ripa are the following scenes: The Bridge, Escaping Namaari, Dragon Blade, Meet Boun, and The Heart of the Dragon.

Raya and the Last Dragon 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Where Disney falls short with a movie like Raya and the Last Dragon is where Pixar almost always shines: in the heart. Raya is a perfectly capable entertainer with delightful superficialities propelling it forward but it's also an exercise in empty moviemaking, lacking a tangible soul and purpose and any real creative genius under the hood. The themes are fine but they're also tired and presented in a way that only reinforces the lack. That's not to say families can't have a lot of fun with the movie, but anyone looking for something more profoundly satisfying will want to look elsewhere. Disney's UHD delivers satisfying 2160p/HDR video, suboptimal but workable Atmos audio, and a handful of extras. Recommended.