First Teaser For Disney's 'Raya And The Last Dragon' Arrives

Had this year gone as it was supposed to, we would have been mere weeks from the release of Walt Disney Animation Studio's newest feature Raya and The Last Dragon. However, this is 2020, and we all know how that's been going. Disney were forced to shuffle all their releases for the next several years and Raya was moved to next March, with Pixar's Soul taking Raya's Holiday season release date. Soul has now moved again, this time to Disney Plus, but Disney is still hoping that by next March, it'll be safe to release a blockbuster in cinemas again. And we all have our fingers crossed that's the case.

In the meantime, this week we get our first proper look at the film, first with the poster, and now the first teaser. This first preview introduces us to the titular character, and it's clear that she is not going to be your typical Disney Princess. We first see her tackling some kind of booby-trap laden temple in a Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones inspired sequence. She makes quick work of it, with the help of her animal sidekick, which seems to be some kind of giant woodlouse-like critter (but much cuter than that sounds).

But to get to the object she seeks, she first must best a mysterious warrior in combat- and we get a burst of full-on martial-arts action. Raya is Disney's take on East-Asian culture: set in a fictional realm that seems to be an amalgam of different far-eastern cultures (similar to Avatar The Last Airbender in that respect). The lead Raya is a warrior (voiced by Kellie Marie Tran) who goes on a quest to find the legendary Last Dragon to save her realm.

This is a very exciting teaser. It has a mood unlike anything else WDAS has ever done and promises some very exciting stuff (Disney does wu-shu? yes please!). It's inevitable that the finished film will end up being a lot lighter overall- there's no hint of the fact that this is a musical for instance- but this is enough to see us very excited to check this one out.

Raya And The Last Dragon is directed by Don Hall (Big Hero 6) and Carlos Lopez Estrada (an animation newcomer whose credits include various music videos and the acclaimed live-action feature Blindspotting) and is written by Adele Lim (Crazy Rich Asians) and Qui Nguyen (Peg+ Cat). The film is set for release in United States cinemas on March 12, 2021- although obviously, that may change as the situation develops. Check out the trailer, below.