PLEASE rant about that dragon design. as someone who does dragon creature design stuff it would be appreciated from both a design standpoint AND a culturally sensitive one
OMFG OK SO
first of all to preface, were already hitting massive issues with the fact that disney is mishmashing from several different, highly varied cultures.
The film is set in a fictional fantasy land called Kumandra, inspired by Southeast Asian cultures from Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. To conduct research, the filmmakers and the production team traveled to all of the abovementioned countries, except Myanmar and Malaysia.
thailand cambodia and vietnam have more in common with each other than they do with indonesia, malaysia, and the philippines, and vice versa. the former r all attached to mainland asia while the latter r mostly maritime island nations. the mainland nations generally have much in common with north asia too.
NOW FOR THE FUCKING DESIGN ITSELF... first of all lemme show tihs fucking tweet
its literaly just elsa. its fucking elsa dragon. obviously we were never gonna get anything thats actually accurate 2 the general creature design conventions/art style of se asia coz its “scary” n not marketable 2 families in the us LMFAO
they were actually kinda on the mark with this little in universe illustration, it actually resembles se asian creatures with those exaggerated tusks and the wide eyes. its still kinda shit coz they gotta make it recognizable with the marketed 3d character design but this one doesnt piss me off as bad
the horns were clearly inspired by either thai depictions of the naga, visayan depictions of the bakunawa, or both, but it DOESNT FUCKING COMMIT TO EITHER COZ DISNEY IS TRYING TO GET THE WIDEST POSSIBLE AUDIENCE APPEAL
(depiction of bakunawa on the hilt of a tenegre from panay)
(depiction of the naga on a temple roof from northern thailand)
it just doesnt fit with the fucking designs of se asia at ALL. look up the barong, the se asian depictions of the garuda, the bakunawa, the kinnara, the chinthe, the babi ngepet. they all look fucking nothing like sisu does.
and finally.. the issue of having a dragon as the central Thing: in southeast asia dragons rnt.. rlly that common AJSDHKJDHSJDHS off my head i can think of the naga from thailand and the bakunawa from here (the philippines). vietnam has a dragon that bears more similarity with the chinese dragon than the other asean nations. dragons arent rlly a fucking universal se asian thing?? in fact we share more monsters than we do dragons! they were clearly aiming 2 make something thatd be General enough to appeal 2 All of southeast asia for maximum profit, but if they rlly wanted 2 aim for all of us they shouldve gone with monsters/spirits coz we have so many shared ones LMFAO (see: manananggal and penanggalan who r definitely related, the tiyanak and pontianak who r probably related) this is a really good thread on the similarities of monsters and spirits in se asia. this place is haunted as SHIT
anyway im mad as shit and this is long enough LKASDLHSDJDHS thanks 4 givig me the opportunity 2 rant <3
