The reviews are actually pretty good for it (95% on RT), but half of every review I’ve read so far is more about virtue signaling to the crew and cast that they’ve been basically a bunch of fricking racists for making this movie. So the concept of the movie is it’s set in a fictional world inspired by Southeast Asia, and it’s a mostly Asian cast, but that’s not good enough. In these people’s opinions, Awkwafina and Daniel Dae Kim are fricking racists since her ancestry is Chinese and his Korean and took roles from Southeast Asian actors. This is insane. From IGN

quote:
Of course, Raya and the Last Dragon is debuting to an audience with higher expectations around cultural representation than those who grew up with Mulan. At a moment where the number of Asian-centered films is steadily climbing, yet still limited — and where Southeast Asian actors are underrepresented in comparison to East Asian actors — this puts particular pressure on Disney’s first Southeast Asian princess.

Disney did a fair amount of research. Similar to Moana, Disney created what they call a “Story Trust” of artists, academics, and others, which they leaned on for issues of cultural accuracy. The team visited Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Screenwriters Adele Lim and Qui Nguyen are both Southeast Asian, as is Kelly Marie Tran who voices Raya. But there’s the fact that most of the other voice actors — a packed roster of talent that includes Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Awkwafina, and Sandra Oh — are East Asian. And because Kumandra is a “fantasy” world drawing from a number of different countries in a larger region, it risks blurring cultural references to the point where they become unrecognizable or incoherent to the people who expected to identify with the movie.

It’s a fine line to tread, and part of a larger conversation about the extent to which films featuring unrepresented ethnic groups are asked to carry the burden of “accurately portraying” that group. The idea that any one film, even if it meets the highest standards of research and casting, could capture “Southeast Asia” already falls apart. There is no single identity, as Southeast Asians aren’t a monolith. And like Mulan, this film mostly reads as distinctly American, with jokes about things like working on group projects at school that feel a bit out of place in a world that is supposedly fantastical.

And here’s Den of the Geek that calls it the best Disney film since Mulan but also puts this out:

quote:
Rigidly faithful live-action adaptations of the animated classics that millennials grew up with are now recognized for their narrow romantic messaging, and the often racist, colonialist world-building that’s used to prop up this type of storytelling. Meanwhile Walt Disney Animation Studios has attempted to complicate and modernize the Disney Princess template in interesting ways, but they’ve never quite nailed it narratively.

Frozen was a step in the right direction with its emphasis on sisterly love, but it couldn’t resist shoehorning a thematically superfluous romance into its plot with the Kristoff character. Moana, which features Disney’s first Polynesian heroine, makes great strides in giving viewers a more authentic representation of a non-European culture, but still makes some classic colonialist mistakes—blindspots that will always surface when the chief creative forces behind a film are appropriating a culture or cultures they are paid to understand—that keep its fresh setting from truly shining.

Disney is working to tell more modern stories not because it is good for our culture and world (though individuals involved in the production of Disney films might be motivated by this value), but because there is money to be made in telling new stories that give us fresh, feminist takes on the many cultures that influence the melting pot (or salad bowl) that is modern America and the territories of the larger global box office. Raya and the Last Dragon, which will be in theaters and available via Disney+ Premier Access on March 5, makes headway from both the thematic surplus of Frozen and the cultural appropriation of Moana. In doing so, it gives us the best, post-Renaissance “Disney Princess” story yet.

I mean seriously, what the frick is this shite? This isn’t a review. This is simply virtue signaling and blatant racism. What kind of a review is “Yeah it’s good, but frick Daniel Dae Kim and Awkwafina for basically being racists portraying an animated character on a fictional planet and culture”?

And Paramount relaunched the Avatar universe where the Earth Kingdom is based on China, the Fire Nation is based on Japan, the Air Nomads are based on Tibet, and the Water Tribe is based on the Inuits. They’re for sure going to shite all over every white person who ever voiced a character in the franchise, but are they going to shite all over Koreans and SE Asians for voicing characters as well? Then you got Tibet that has 3.1 million people genetically from that region. Going to find many skilled voice actors from there? And even worse is there are less than 150,000 people descended from Inuits worldwide, most of which can’t speak English. The 3 Inuit people in Hollywood have to portray everyone from their race now?

These reviews are insane and show where we are as a society. I’m willing to bet this movie is actually excellent given the reviews are disparaging and have to reluctantly admit the film is good, but not before lecturing the audience, the crew, and the cast on why these assholes sitting on their couches are better people than you.

This post was edited on 3/1/21 at 11:21 pm