Disney – Absolution's Archive

Note: This review was submitted and written by another person, so credit goes to them for their time and energy for creating this review. This review may contain some spoilers.

All art is a product of its time, but it’s a rare thing to see a story come along that so perfectly resonates with the emotional needs of its audience as Raya and the Last Dragon. It’s early March, 2021. We, the audience, have been cooped up inside for a year now with precious little contact with the outside world. Raya went through production and post-production during 2020, so all of the voice capture and animation was done from home. The makers of this movie, all of them, have been going through the same troubles we have. They know the story we need to hear right now.
Raya is a heroic fantasy story from Walt Disney Animation Studios, set in the fictional land of Kumandra. It draws inspiration from Southeast Asian cultures and myth to create its world, and worldbuilding is one of this movie’s greatest strengths. Spoilers follow, but I’ll try not to spoil any details that aren’t established within the first half-hour.

The World

The land of Kumandra surrounds a large inland sea that is shaped like a dragon. Its people are divided into five tribes, each one named after a part of the dragon: Fang, Heart, Spine, Talon, and Tail. The tribes used to be unified as a single nation, but this nation fractured after the arrival of malevolent spirits called the Druun.
The Druun are introduced to us early in the story. They appear as amorphous clouds of
smoke that seem to glow from a sourceless purple light. They’re completely mindless; they never speak or show any signs of intelligence. If a Druun touches a human, it will petrify them and then replicate itself, and each copy will continue to hunt for more humans.
In other words, they’re virulent.
The Druun can’t be fought, but they can be repelled by pieces of a gem that was forged by dragons. Upon learning this, the chiefs of the five tribes scramble to horde these gems, and sequester themselves in isolation.
Does that sound familiar to anyone?

The Characters

Our protagonist is a young swordswoman named Raya, of the Heart tribe. For reasons I
won’t spoil here, she blames herself for the world’s current state, and she sees it as her
responsibility to set it right. But living in this world has taken its toll on her, and she has some serious trust issues. You could call her paranoid.
Raya possesses one of the five gem pieces, and she believes that if she can collect the other four, the Druun will be vanquished. So her goal is to travel to all five tribes and steal their gems either through guile or force, because she can’t trust anyone else to do the right thing. The question the movie asks is simple: Can Raya learn to trust again?

Joining Raya on her quest is Sisu, the last dragon. In many ways, she is Raya’s complete
opposite; she’s ditzy, upbeat, naive, and very gullible. She’s like your frazzled aunt who never figured out what to do with her life after college.
Opposing Raya is Namaari, princess of the Fang tribe. She’s kind of a fascinating character because we can always see her struggling internally between what her conscience tells her to do, and what her duty to Fang demands of her.

Along the way, Raya also crosses paths with survivors of the other three tribes. In Tail she meets Boun, an orphan boy who runs a fishing boat. In Talon she meets Noi, an orphan girl with three pet monkeys. And in Spine she meets Tong, a lonely warrior. In meeting these characters, we begin to realize something: In this world, everyone has lost someone. Everyone feels isolated and alone.
Now, if what I’ve just described sounds like a downer, fear not; Raya is also filled with levity to balance out its weighty themes. Sisu in particular is a giant doe-eyed goofball. And don’t worry, it’s a Disney movie; it has a happy ending.

The Flaws

As much as I appreciate Raya, it’s not perfect. If I were to summarize its flaws into one
word, this movie is stuf ed. The film is two hours long, but every scene feels just a little bit rushed because there is so much story to tell. It feels like the story would have been better served if it had been presented as a show, since it already divides itself up into six episodes.
The movie is also stuffed with elements that have clearly been borrowed from other
franchises. Sisu looks like she jumped out of an episode of My Little Pony. Noi is a
hypercompetent toddler straight out of Boss Baby. And there are two sequences toward the end of the movie that were pulled straight from The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. The parts of this movie that are original work very well. The parts that have been borrowed from other movies are obvious, obnoxious, and out of place.
And as a minor quibble, the movie has to break one of the rules established as part of its worldbuilding in order to earn that happy ending.

The Virtues

Aside from the simple virtues of knowing its theme and executing it well, the movie is
visually stunning. The main characters are expertly animated and the acting is emotionally moving. The fight choreography is stellar as well; I just wish we got to see a bit more of it.
Overall, I believe Raya’s virtues outweigh its flaws. This movie matters to the emotional
state of the world today. It deserves to be seen and enjoyed by those little ones in your life. I encourage you to go out and see it. Just please remember to be safe and wear a mask.

Written by TheChoujinVirus

Note: this review may contain spoilers to the series, so do not read if you don’t want to be spoiled

The 90s were an impressive time of sitcoms that folks liked watching, from 3^rd Rock to Seinfeld to Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. However, things changed when The Simpsons came around and changed sitcoms as we know it. Though a new show was brainstormed as far back as 1988 by the late Jim Henson. It wasn’t until the 1990s when Micheal Jacobs and Brian Henson with the Walt Disney Company. This show aired on April 26th, 1991, through October 19^th, 1994, and has been a part of ya boy’s nostalgia when he was a kid. That show was called Dinosaurs.

Summary of the show

Dinosaurs take place in a fictional depiction of the supercontinent Pangea, portrayed as a 90s America but with dinosaurs instead of people. The focus of the show is on the Sinclair Family, a family of dinosaurs living in Pangea. You have Earl, the dimwitted but lovable dad, Fran the housewife and mother, Robbie the intellectual rebel, Charline the materialistic middle child, Ethyl the mother-in-law, and of course the baby called Baby. You also have several side characters like Earl’s friend Roy Hess, Monica Devertibrae, and Earl’s boss B.P. Richfield. Throughout each episode, it themes around one or more of the Sinclair family, most of the time focusing around Earl, in this bizarre world of Pangea. Sometimes focusing on a significant problem that got them into a mess either leaves them learning a lesson or introducing a new concept to dinosaur society, such as refunds or freedom of speech.

Dino-Mite!: What makes it great!

There are plenty of good examples that make the show good; one prominent example that I like is the practical effects of the suit puppets. You can thank the Jim Henson Creature Workshop‘s work for the impressive detail (they used the same technology once seen in the TMNT movies). You also have voice talents like Stuart Pankin (Who’s the Boss?, Arachnophobia), Jessica Walter (Archer), Sally Struthers (Tailspin), and Kevin Clash (Sesame Street). Each of them lends their talent to the series. Even the guest voices are impressive such as Micheal Dorn (Star Trek: TNG), Dan Castanella (The Simpsons), and even Jason Alexander (Seinfeld) as well as Tim Curry. It shows that the people they brought on to voice the various talking dinosaurs weren’t just a list of nobodies. The second thing that makes the series great is that each episode focuses on topical issues of the 90s. Sure, many sitcoms concentrate on this, it would focus around a story, and that’s it. Each episode in Dinosaurs had a theme that focused on topical issues. Examples like Drug Abuse (A New Leaf, Steroids to Heaven), Sexual Harassment (What “Sexual” Harris Meant), Freedom of Speech and Censorship (Baby Talk, Charlene’s Flat World), and even down to things like racism (Nuts to War, Green Card) where you have a bit of issue between “two-legged dinosaurs” and “four-legged dinosaurs.” The episodes also have a bit of a moral lesson at the end of the story, so you at least get a good part afterward (even the characters learn that lesson as well.) Finally, the series has many catchy sayings, like Baby’s “Not the Mama” quip (even the song that the baby sings in Little Boy Boo). The show also has moments where they take jabs at television (especially ABC at the time) or shows and tropes found in other shows. You can say that it was meta for an early 90s show.

Not the mama! What the show lacks

Though the show was impressive and had plenty of good things, there are some problems the show has. One such is that though that some of the suits and puppets are reused as other characters. It’s not uncommon to see one puppet being the school science teacher in one scene than in a different episode. It reminds you that though impressive, it does have to cut corners around some of it. Another is that though the episodes do become good, some of the first season’s earlier episodes didn’t have much of any significant story to set up the characters. Some episodes like Little Boy Boo is just a Halloween episode. The obvious The Clip Show and The Clip Show II are clips from previous episodes just repeated (another trope, but that’ll be another story). Lastly, the finale of the show was BLEAK! The final episode Changing Nature, in which the whole episode involves environmentalism, climate change and leads up to the climax with the extinction of all life on the earth. Not in a “ha-ha” comedic death thing but more of a grim version of them, inevitably knowing they’ll all die. It can be a bit of a major downer for such a comedic series. Lastly, suppose you’re expecting a 90s show about it being scientifically accurate. In that case, you’re going to be disappointed. However, some inaccuracies are used in the messages, such as Cavemen being a stand-in for indigenous people and animal rights in some episodes(The Discovery, Charlene and her Amazing Humans) so that’s not a total loss.

Finale

Though the series does show its age, Dinosaurs is a series that I’m sure the late Jim Henson himself would be proud of if he was still around. If you want to watch the series, it’s currently on Disney+ for the time being, so it would be best to take a look. Oh, and before I leave, here’s some behind-the-scenes describing more about the show and some funny stuff here.

References

Youtube clips recorded by the following youtubers

Information about the show and episodes provided by The Disney Wiki

Tag: Disney

Thursday Media Review: Raya and the Last Dragon.

Written by Joenn