Don Hall, Carlos Lopez Estrada & Qui Nguyen Interview: Raya and the Last Dragon
Raya and the Last Dragon is a visual feast, which is a testament to the creators at Disney and their ability to work in a pandemic. The mythical land of Kumandra and its warrior princess Raya come to life thanks to the hard work of not only animators, but also the writers and directors who originally envisioned the story.
Don Hall, Carlos Lopez Estrada and Qui Nguyen spoke to Screen Rant about their inspirations for the tale, the Southeast Asian influences in the work, and the powerful female characters contained in it.
I know this is a completely original story, but were there any specific stories or concepts that you drew inspiration from or that were touchstones for creating Raya and the Last Dragon?
Don Hall: Well, I brought up Raiders of the Lost Ark a lot. It's my favorite movie of all time. Probably to a fault and to the annoyance of everybody, I kept bringing up Raiders. Sorry, guys.
Qui Nguyen: He would just talk about it as if we had never seen it before. We're aware of this movie.
Carlos Lopez Estrada: We had this little internal game where, if a meeting ended and Don hadn't referenced the movie, something had to be wrong.
Qui Nguyen: We had to check in on him. Like, "You feeling okay, Don? You feeling alright?"
Carlos Lopez Estrada: I will say that another really important place where we pulled from is the mythology of the Naga, because that is really what inspired the character of Sisu. The relationship that humans have with the dragon, their relationship with the dragon and water, and treating our dragon rather than as an intimidating creature - as we're very used to seeing in Western cinema - as this incredible character of inspiration.
I think that relationship of humans with the water dragon became really, really key in the building of the story.
As a Vietnamese screenwriter on the film, were there any particular or specific Vietnamese cultural references that you brought to the script?
Qui Nguyen: I think it's a lot of different frames. I mean, that's actually more the vis dev artists and story artists. Particularly, the thing that I kept pitching and was very happy to see in the movie was this one move that Namaari does to Raya, which is a double leg scissor takedown. It looks like Luchador wrestling, but it's actually traditional Vietnamese wrestling.
As a martial artist, it was so fun to see that because it was so prototypical to the martial arts from my region. And it was just really satisfying to see that.
Don and Carlos, can you talk to me about what led to Kelly Marie Tran coming on? And specifically, what did she add to the character of Raya when you're bringing it all together?
Don Hall: I think there's a version of Raya, this kind of lone warrior archetype, that can be kind of stoic and silent and brooding. We definitely didn't want to go in that direction, and we wanted the character to have some buoyancy and some swagger, to be perfectly honest. We wanted her to be cocky.
Kelly is such an amazingly skilled actor that has just appeal to her as a human being, let alone her immense talents as an actor in terms of comedy and drama. She was, in our opinion, the only Raya for us.
You have such a strong female protagonist and antagonist in this film, and they're created brilliantly. Was this done intentionally from the beginning, or is this something that you discovered along the way?
Carlos Lopez Estrada: No, it was intentional. As we may have mentioned earlier, this project has been alive for quite some time. It was never like the project was specifically going to focus on the gender conversation or is specifically going to try to disprove something. But of course, we knew that we had three incredible, complex, rich characters, and they're all female.
We were reminding ourselves throughout the moviemaking process that this doesn't happen often, which is really complicated to understand and hopefully, this just continues to move the conversation in a positive direction. Because I remember Awkwafina, there's that scene with her and Namaari and Raya, she just said, "It just clicked for me that I'm in this incredible fight action sequence with two other females, and it just feels so good and it feels so different."
So, I think we're just very much excited to be able to bring these characters to life in a way that feels authentic and nuanced. They're great characters and great actors playing them. Like they've really, really been fantastic.
It must be crazy, finishing this movie in a pandemic, mainly because of how technically beautiful this movie is. What were some of the ways you had to adjust to the process using that environment? Did that experience teach you anything?
Don Hall: There were two challenges early on, when we were told we were going on lockdown. First one was just technical: as you can imagine, trying to get 450 people up and running without missing any significant time. In fact, I think they did it over a weekend, which is a testament to our amazing technical support team. They are the superheroes of this film.
The second part was probably a little more difficult, which is more of a cultural Disney component where we're so used to collaborating very closely in rooms together, outside of rooms together, and hallway conversations at our coffee area. And that all just went away. Every piece of communication had to be very deliberate, because there's no bumping into people on Zoom. We had to take advantage of this new format.
We were a little concerned at the beginning, but I have to say, it really is a testament to everybody on the crew because they loved this movie. I've never seen a crew so dialed in to wanting to tell a story. It really is a testament to everybody on the crew that the hurdles that we had, were surmounted easily.
Carlos Lopez Estrada: It really brought us together in a way that was really powerful. We were concerned about how our community was going to feel, and it just felt like the closest and most profound connection. Every person who got off the project would just tell us, "This is my favorite thing that I have ever done at Disney. I feel so included," and that was really touching to us.