Raya and the Last Dragon is an RPG put to the big screen

There's something about the lone rider on a quest through a beautiful apocalyptic wasteland that just screams video game RPG to me, and also immediately grabs my attention. Raya and the Last Dragon - Disney's latest work of art - opens with just such a scene before expositing on how its titular character got to that point. It even calls out that lone rider motif in its opening narrative commentary, deliberately drawing attention to it. And it planted a seed in my head that would be watered throughout the entire movie, Raya's narrative is written like an RPG game, in some ways that I don't think are necessarily the case in other animated films. 

As in any good RPG, our lone rider quickly picks up companions and the scope of her quest radically expands. At first she only has her animal steed - an armadillo-like creature named Tuk Tuk - and a single magical shard from a broken dragon orb. But soon she discovers another creature, a water dragon named Sisu, last of her kind. Together they travel the land, adding a little boy, a baby and some new creatures, a warrior, and eventually an adversary to their party, determined to save the land from evil shadowy monsters known only as Druun, and explained only as evil entities feeding off the malign parts of the human spirit. 

As our warrior princess Raya explored her broken world, collecting shards in order to save it, I couldn't help but think about how video-gamey the entire plot was. Sisu gains a distinct power from each new shard collected, each useful in its own way over the course of the story. Companions play a variety of roles, from brute force to trickery, and provide both plenty of comic relief and also plenty of tragic exposition on the state of the world. Each separate tribe lives in a different biome, each shaped by its environment, strongly reminding me of games like Horizon Zero Dawn. Lore is told by main characters both in the form of flashbacks and sometimes merely implied by various off-handed comments sprinkled throughout the dialogue. 

The parallels kept building on each other right up until the end of the movie, leaving me somewhat taken aback. It doesn't seem like the traditional storytelling style for this sort of film, and while a lot of the major points were still rather predictable, I was surprised by the lack of certain staples of the genre, such as a midway point in which the hero totally loses their way (this plot conceit is certainly hinted at about 3/4 through the movie, but the couple times it comes up it was quickly resolved in a refreshing manner). 

Combined with more quintessentially Disney adventure elements, such as the plot structure of our main characters facing a number of mishaps and small encounters with the adversaries before one big final event (a plot structure shared by numerous genres and mediums), it continues to strike me how Raya and the Last Dragon is about two side quests and a few collection items away from a full fledged RPG.  One that, if we're being perfectly honest, I'd definitely play obsessively to completion. 

To be clear, I don't think Disney intentionally structured their story this way, I think it's more of an interesting parallel than an actual reference. But that doesn't change the way it feels. It helps that Raya is, on its own merits, an excellent movie. Stock full of gorgeous animation and scenery, compelling voice acting, a wide range of characters, an often soaring soundtrack, and a fascinating world, I wouldn't hesitate to watch this movie again, and I'd recommend that anyone who hasn't do so as soon as they get the chance. It's worth every penny, whether you're renting it from Disney Plus or (safely) seeing it in an open movie theater. The film is captivating and emotionally resonant, and I'm glad Disney is still putting out original animated films of this caliber.

I guess what I'm saying is, let the reign of Disney continue.