A young girl rides atop her trusted animal companion through the apocalyptic desert of her shattered world. What happened to this world? Will she be the one to save it?
When I first saw the early trailer for Avatar: Seven Havens, in which Pavi rides her cat-monkey Geet through the Harshlands, I was immediately reminded of Raya and the Last Dragon. (That’s due in part to the fact that my eldest daughter has watched the Disney movie dozens of times over the last year or so.) The opening images are strikingly similar, right down to how they’re framed: Both heroes cross the desert from left to right in a wide shot. Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) rides Tuk Tuk (Alan Tudyk), a cheerful, bear-sized creature with a hard shell that can curl into a rideable ball. The visual and cinematic similarities are only the beginning.
If Seven Havens has you eager for more animated epics about young heroes traveling through a broken world, Raya and the Last Dragon is a great movie to watch, and it’s easy to steam on Disney Plus. Long ago, the people of Kumandra lived in harmony with dragons. Then the Druun arrived: mindless storm spirits that turn every living thing in their path to stone.
The dragons sacrificed themselves to stop the invasion, leaving behind a magical gem that saved humanity. The survivors’ fight over the gem split Kumandra into five lands: Heart, Fang, Spine, Talon, and Tail. Five hundred years later, the gem is under the protection of the Heart tribe.
Raya is the young daughter of Heart’s chief, Benja (Daniel Dae Kim). She’s trained her life to protect the gem and is essentially a warrior princess. Banja calls a meeting among the leadership of the various tribes in the hopes that they can restore peace to Kumandra.
Raya is betrayed by Namaari (Gemma Chan), the warrior princess of Fang. A fight breaks out over the gem among the five tribes, and it shatters into five pieces, ushering in the return of the Druun — hence the apocalypse we saw in the opening scene, which occurs six years later. Raya is on a quest to find Sisu (Awkwafina), the last dragon, and recover the pieces of the gem in the hopes that she can drive away the Druun once again.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
