After being delayed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Raya and the Last Dragon is finally now streaming on Disney+ Premier Access and ahead of its release, I was granted an exclusive opportunity to sit down with the filmmakers of the latest instant Disney classic.
While the past few years have seen the releases of the blockbuster sequels Ralph Breaks the Internet and Frozen II, the critically-acclaimed Raya and the Last Dragon is Disney Animation's first original film in nearly five years, since fellow critical darling Moana. Speaking with Academy Award-nominated producer Osnat Shurer, she shared why she chose Raya as the studio's next big project.
"There was so much about it that I fell in love with. I finished Moana and there was this project kicking around, first of all with a wonderful team, about a young female warrior and this divided land that’s around the dragon river. Then, the dragon itself was the Asian dragon, the nāga of Southeast Asia and India, and is a water elemental and it’s all about water and life. The that we could then think about what it takes for these different lands to come together.
So, there’s a reason we named them after the parts of the dragon. You need it all to be together. What is that? The more I thought about it and the other filmmakers thought about it, it felt like the most important thing we can talk about right now. How to overcome divisiveness, how to embrace our differences and all come together in a world for the greater good. So, I was all in."
One thing fans will quickly notice when they start watching is the film's massive scope as it explores five very unique different regions, which altogether make up the world of Kumandra. Co-screenwriter Adele Lim detailed her approach as she was writing the film and what she ultimately hoped to achieve with this story, this world, and these lovable characters.
"Well, Kumandra and the story of Raya and the Last Dragon are completely original and with Southeast Asia, it was not inspired by one specific mythology that we found. Rather, it was a larger inspiration and I think a deeper inspiration, first of all was that spirit of community, but also in trying to - the filmmakers were all inspired to talk about, the journey of pulling a divided land together and if you look at the different countries of Southeast Asia. Even in the country I grew up in, Malaysia, we have so many different races, cultures, religions, it is very, very easy to look at these differences as things that drive us apart or making one group of people view the other group as the enemy.
Truly, when you look at what is wonderful and magical and transcendent about our culture and particularly our food, some of the best street food in the world. It is because of all these different influences that help you create something wonderful and transcendent. Being able to ground our fictional world in those real-world issues and solutions was especially rewarding.
To bring it back to your point, before the pandemic, when we created the Drunn, this was way before anyone heard of the word COVID and I remember one of our cultural anthropologists bringing up the point that a mark of these great Southeast Asian civilizations wasn’t in how huge their monuments were or how much money they had. It really was in looking at how the entire society dealt with massive natural disasters or man-made disasters, whether it was floods or famine or war, if the civilization could survive it, it meant that it was functioning, that they cared for each other, that they pulled together to see themselves through because that’s the only way they were going to make it.
Similarly, with Raya, on her journey, again, fictional world, fictional land, but the way she pulls the land together is very realistic. It is not some outside magical solution with this dragon, it is the really hard work of trying to pull people together and making repeated efforts towards that, even though you’re disillusioned, even though your heart is broken, even though everything you hold near and dear is taken away from you, that we keep reaching out because it is the only way that we’re going to survive something like this and pull together."
As for whether we could ever return to the mystical world of Kumandra, both Shurer and Lim didn't comment on a potential sequel and just expressed how happy they were that the world will finally get to see this wonderful film.
"The world is vast, there’s so much more you can do in that world, and in all of those five lands that we were able to show you. That said, I’ve been on this film for four years, we’ve all been working on this for a long time, so for us, there’s this excitement of completion of a full story and we’re Disney and we know and hope that our characters live on, so we’ll see. For now, we just want to share this world with everyone. We can’t wait for people to see it."
Check out our full video interview with producer Osnat Shurer & screenwriter Adele Lim below and don't forget to like and subscribe!
Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Raya and the Last Dragon” travels to the fantasy world of Kumandra, where humans and dragons lived together long ago in harmony. But when an evil force threatened the land, the dragons sacrificed themselves to save humanity. Now, 500 years later, that same evil has returned and it’s up to a lone warrior, Raya, to track down the legendary last dragon to restore the fractured land and its divided people. However, along her journey, she’ll learn that it’ll take more than a dragon to save the world—it’s going to take trust and teamwork as well.