This movie is okay they had the potential to be good, but just got halfway there. It was close to being good and it had a good message but the execution of the movie overall was missed.
Visuals 9/10
Story 6/10
Characters 5/10
Culture 7/10
The overall movie is generic first I'm going to give my compliments. The visuals are outstanding and the buildings and drawings are absolutely beautiful. Each new location was really detailed and each culture was well defined. Overall the visuals were well made and probably the strongest suit of this movie.
Now the story was set up well in the begging. The reason why this is low is because of the payout. The message of the movie being trusting is okay but they really tried to hammer it in commenting it without actually showing its actions. Then they have the story which is fine about collecting pieces to feel like a dragon. So they travel across the lands picking up pieces of an orb in like a day even though these are like the last dragon magic or something. Then they have all the dragons come back from the orb being reformed and also like the dragon died or something because of trust??? Overall the story was set up well, but there wasn't enough time and it felt really rushed allowing some plot holes.
The characters were bland. They all had the potential to be fun, but the movie only gave them like 3 minutes to explain their motivation and stuff. Let's start with the main characters. Raya is an okay character she has some fun interactions, but overall I found her like a bland character who was kinda one dimensional and they never really explored her mindset that hourly. The antagonist of the story like Naomi or something feels like a crybaby and I really don't like her in the story. They never really dived into her motivations and all of her actions felt sort of unreasonable because of this. She then went on to blame Raya for the death of the dragon si su and that just felt petty and really annoying because she literally was the one who brought a crossbow. Then we have the side characters. The only one I found enjoyable was shrimp boy and he had a really fun personality. I would rather they have only him and discard the rest of the side characters, but instead they just had a large cast without actually exploring each character. The baby was kinda annoying it just felt like a boss baby sort of character and felt just unnecessary. Then you have the big guy. He really wasn't fleshed out and was kinda like oh my village was wiped out and I'm sad now. Like he could have been really enjoyable but instead, he was kind of a background character. Then we have si su and she iI found was really annoying and was only there to fill the role of cute pet role. Si su I never once laughed at her jokes most felt like modern era online teen vibes. She made a lot of cringy jokes and honestly, her design just felt like an Elsa pony really. Like why is she blue yeah I understand marketing but arent you guys focused on culture. Overall the only enjoyable characters here are shrimp boy and Raya. The rest are all potentials of good characters, but a too large of a cast prevented them from fully developing. Most of the characters I can't even remember their name that's really how fast they just skimmed over these characters.
okay to watch if your bored. It uses female power and asian culture as a shield against people who criticize it. Movies like this are dropping disney's crediblity.