Trust and Conflict (and Dragons)
*last updated on January 5, 2026
Image credit: Disney. Caption by Nicholas Brooks.
I watched Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon not long after it came out in 2021, and I remember being surprised by how directly it spoke to a problem that usually gets flattened in mainstream storytelling: polarization. The film’s premise is blunt and timely—Kumandra is a land broken into five rival groups, and the fracture is sustained as much by fear and suspicion as by anything material.
The first time I saw it, I was genuinely moved by the climactic moment when Raya finally understands that repair and connection won’t happen unless someone risks being the first to step forward. The emotional logic was simple but powerful: if everyone waits for proof of safety before reaching out, the stalemate never ends. I liked that the film insisted, in a very Disney way, that repair begins with an inner movement—a loosening of the grip of certainty, a willingness to risk being wrong, and a refusal to reduce the other side to a permanent enemy.
Even then, I felt a hesitation. The ending arrived with dragons, reunification, and a kind of visual fireworks: reconciliation as spectacle. That kind of closure can be beautiful, but it also implies that unity will look beautiful—obvious, luminous, unmistakable. In real life, when people overcome hatred or rebuild relationships, it often looks… ordinary. It can look awkward. It can look like small adjustments, uncomfortable conversations, and cautious experiments with closeness.
But I still liked the movie overall.
When I rewatched the film recently, what stood out was the film’s near-constant insistence on one particular remedy: trust. I realized that treating trust as the central solution for conflict made the message feel less convincing to me, even though I was still touched by the film’s intent to tackle polarization.
The “trust” refrain—and why it started to trouble me
In the rewatch, I couldn’t stop hearing how often the film returns to the same instruction: trust. Trust is presented not merely as one value among others, but as the key that unlocks everything. Sisu, the last dragon, repeatedly tries to teach Raya that distrust is the real disease, and that healing begins when someone chooses trust anyway. The film even frames that choice as the essential first move: take the first step.
And yet, the story is also built on betrayal.
The central rupture begins when Raya trusts Namaari and is betrayed—a betrayal that sparks the confrontation in which the Dragon Gem is broken, and the Druun (the spirits that petrify life) return. Betrayal isn’t a minor complication in this film; it’s a primary engine of the plot. Suspicion isn’t irrational within the story-world—it’s learned, reinforced, and repeatedly validated by experience.
So the film ends up sending two messages at once:
A story can hold a paradox like that, of course. But Raya doesn’t really slow down enough to explore the tension; it keeps returning to “trust” as if it were a straightforward moral lesson. That’s where, for me, the message starts to wobble.
Because for a lot of viewers, I suspect the takeaway will be something like: Yes, yes—trust. Beautiful idea. But in real life, people betray you. So this is just a fairy tale.
The danger isn’t that the film is “wrong” to value trust. The danger is that it treats trust in a conflict situation as simple.
Why trust is trickier than compassion or connection
Part of my discomfort may be personal vocabulary. I write a lot about connection, compassion, and the possibility of understanding across difference. I also write about how people can inhabit different truths and still find ways to live together. But I don’t often write about trust as a blanket good, and rewatching this film clarified why. It reminded me that trust is not a single act. It’s how you negotiate vulnerability over time: how much you share, what you risk, and what boundaries you keep.
You can move toward someone compassionately while still being clear-eyed. You can offer a second chance without offering total access. You can try to rebuild connection while also insisting on boundaries, accountability, and time.
In other words:
That’s not cynicism. That’s a mature form of hope.
“Take the first step” works better than “just trust”
Here’s where I still feel Raya has something valuable to offer, even as I critique it.
The film’s best insight is not “trust everyone.” It’s closer to: someone has to interrupt the spiral. Someone has to stop mirroring threat with threat long enough for a different pattern to appear.
The problem is that the movie often portrays “taking the first step” as something high-stakes and dramatic—almost synonymous with placing yourself fully in the hands of someone who has already hurt you. In that framing, the first step looks like a leap: a big, exposed gesture that invites the same wound all over again. And when “trust” is depicted as that kind of vulnerability, it becomes easy for viewers to dismiss the message entirely: If that’s what it takes, I’m not doing it. The film’s moral urgency can backfire into a practical conclusion: the whole idea is beautiful, but only possible in a fairy tale.
But interrupting the spiral doesn’t have to mean making yourself helpless. “Taking the first step” can be smaller, more bounded, and more realistic—especially when betrayal or ongoing conflict is part of the history.
Sometimes the first step is simply refusing to escalate. If the other person calls you a name, the first step might be: I won’t call them a name back. That doesn’t mean you accept the insult; it means you refuse to multiply it. If someone is yelling, the first step might be speaking firmly without matching their volume--Stop. I don’t want to be yelled at—and stepping away if they continue. In situations involving physical aggression, self-protection matters; stopping someone from hurting you is not the same as returning harm for its own sake. The “first step” here can mean drawing a boundary without adding extra violence.
In longer conflicts, the spiral can be quieter: the small retaliations, the mirroring, the passive-aggressive payback that feels justified because “they started it.” The first step might be choosing not to mirror the behavior that’s bothering you. It might be naming the pattern--We keep doing this thing where we provoke each other—without turning that naming into a prosecution. It might be a limited invitation: I’m willing to talk for ten minutes, if we can do it without insults. Or a careful experiment with trust: not “I trust you now,” but “I’m willing to try one small step and see what happens.”
This is why “take the first step” works better than “just trust.” Trust, taken literally, can sound like an all-or-nothing demand. A first step can be calibrated. It can include boundaries. It can respect memory. It can be a way to create a pause—a wedge in the momentum—so that connection becomes possible without pretending the risks aren’t real.
In that sense, the film’s emotional lever is real, but incomplete. It’s not wrong to say that repair requires someone to move first. What matters is clarifying that “first” doesn’t have to mean “unprotected,” and that connection is often rebuilt less through grand gestures than through small interruptions repeated over time.
A media literacy lens: what the story can’t afford to show
As someone with a media literacy background, I don’t approach stories as either “good messages” or “bad messages.” I ask: What does this narrative train us to expect? What is it not saying?
Blockbuster films, especially those aimed at wide audiences, tend to do a few predictable things:
Trust matters. But trust by itself is not a method.
What I want to keep—and what I want to complicate
I still value what moved me in 2021: the insistence that someone must risk being first, that hatred can become a habit, that a divided world doesn’t heal by accident.
What I want to complicate now is the implied equation: "If we trust, we heal." A more durable equation might be: If we choose a first step, we create a possibility—then we negotiate the real work of repair.
That “real work” includes discernment, boundaries, accountability, and the slow process of proving—over time—that trust is warranted. A film like Raya can hint at those complexities, but it can’t linger in them without losing the clean arc that mainstream storytelling demands.
So I’m left with a double response that feels honest: I can appreciate the film’s aspiration while also resisting its oversimplification. The ending is moving—but it can’t teach us how repair happens. What it can do is remind us that someone has to interrupt the spiral. It’s up to us to remember that the rest is slower, less spectacular work: testing trust in small increments, naming harm with compassion, and rebuilding connections over time.
About this project: Start page
The first time I saw it, I was genuinely moved by the climactic moment when Raya finally understands that repair and connection won’t happen unless someone risks being the first to step forward. The emotional logic was simple but powerful: if everyone waits for proof of safety before reaching out, the stalemate never ends. I liked that the film insisted, in a very Disney way, that repair begins with an inner movement—a loosening of the grip of certainty, a willingness to risk being wrong, and a refusal to reduce the other side to a permanent enemy.
Even then, I felt a hesitation. The ending arrived with dragons, reunification, and a kind of visual fireworks: reconciliation as spectacle. That kind of closure can be beautiful, but it also implies that unity will look beautiful—obvious, luminous, unmistakable. In real life, when people overcome hatred or rebuild relationships, it often looks… ordinary. It can look awkward. It can look like small adjustments, uncomfortable conversations, and cautious experiments with closeness.
But I still liked the movie overall.
When I rewatched the film recently, what stood out was the film’s near-constant insistence on one particular remedy: trust. I realized that treating trust as the central solution for conflict made the message feel less convincing to me, even though I was still touched by the film’s intent to tackle polarization.
The “trust” refrain—and why it started to trouble me
In the rewatch, I couldn’t stop hearing how often the film returns to the same instruction: trust. Trust is presented not merely as one value among others, but as the key that unlocks everything. Sisu, the last dragon, repeatedly tries to teach Raya that distrust is the real disease, and that healing begins when someone chooses trust anyway. The film even frames that choice as the essential first move: take the first step.
And yet, the story is also built on betrayal.
The central rupture begins when Raya trusts Namaari and is betrayed—a betrayal that sparks the confrontation in which the Dragon Gem is broken, and the Druun (the spirits that petrify life) return. Betrayal isn’t a minor complication in this film; it’s a primary engine of the plot. Suspicion isn’t irrational within the story-world—it’s learned, reinforced, and repeatedly validated by experience.
So the film ends up sending two messages at once:
- Trust is necessary to heal a divided world.
- The world punishes you for trusting.
A story can hold a paradox like that, of course. But Raya doesn’t really slow down enough to explore the tension; it keeps returning to “trust” as if it were a straightforward moral lesson. That’s where, for me, the message starts to wobble.
Because for a lot of viewers, I suspect the takeaway will be something like: Yes, yes—trust. Beautiful idea. But in real life, people betray you. So this is just a fairy tale.
The danger isn’t that the film is “wrong” to value trust. The danger is that it treats trust in a conflict situation as simple.
Why trust is trickier than compassion or connection
Part of my discomfort may be personal vocabulary. I write a lot about connection, compassion, and the possibility of understanding across difference. I also write about how people can inhabit different truths and still find ways to live together. But I don’t often write about trust as a blanket good, and rewatching this film clarified why. It reminded me that trust is not a single act. It’s how you negotiate vulnerability over time: how much you share, what you risk, and what boundaries you keep.
You can move toward someone compassionately while still being clear-eyed. You can offer a second chance without offering total access. You can try to rebuild connection while also insisting on boundaries, accountability, and time.
In other words:
- Compassion can be extended even when trust is not yet earned.
- Connection can be rebuilt in stages, without pretending the past didn’t happen.
- Understanding different truths does not require treating every version of reality as equally reliable or equally safe.
That’s not cynicism. That’s a mature form of hope.
“Take the first step” works better than “just trust”
Here’s where I still feel Raya has something valuable to offer, even as I critique it.
The film’s best insight is not “trust everyone.” It’s closer to: someone has to interrupt the spiral. Someone has to stop mirroring threat with threat long enough for a different pattern to appear.
The problem is that the movie often portrays “taking the first step” as something high-stakes and dramatic—almost synonymous with placing yourself fully in the hands of someone who has already hurt you. In that framing, the first step looks like a leap: a big, exposed gesture that invites the same wound all over again. And when “trust” is depicted as that kind of vulnerability, it becomes easy for viewers to dismiss the message entirely: If that’s what it takes, I’m not doing it. The film’s moral urgency can backfire into a practical conclusion: the whole idea is beautiful, but only possible in a fairy tale.
But interrupting the spiral doesn’t have to mean making yourself helpless. “Taking the first step” can be smaller, more bounded, and more realistic—especially when betrayal or ongoing conflict is part of the history.
Sometimes the first step is simply refusing to escalate. If the other person calls you a name, the first step might be: I won’t call them a name back. That doesn’t mean you accept the insult; it means you refuse to multiply it. If someone is yelling, the first step might be speaking firmly without matching their volume--Stop. I don’t want to be yelled at—and stepping away if they continue. In situations involving physical aggression, self-protection matters; stopping someone from hurting you is not the same as returning harm for its own sake. The “first step” here can mean drawing a boundary without adding extra violence.
In longer conflicts, the spiral can be quieter: the small retaliations, the mirroring, the passive-aggressive payback that feels justified because “they started it.” The first step might be choosing not to mirror the behavior that’s bothering you. It might be naming the pattern--We keep doing this thing where we provoke each other—without turning that naming into a prosecution. It might be a limited invitation: I’m willing to talk for ten minutes, if we can do it without insults. Or a careful experiment with trust: not “I trust you now,” but “I’m willing to try one small step and see what happens.”
This is why “take the first step” works better than “just trust.” Trust, taken literally, can sound like an all-or-nothing demand. A first step can be calibrated. It can include boundaries. It can respect memory. It can be a way to create a pause—a wedge in the momentum—so that connection becomes possible without pretending the risks aren’t real.
In that sense, the film’s emotional lever is real, but incomplete. It’s not wrong to say that repair requires someone to move first. What matters is clarifying that “first” doesn’t have to mean “unprotected,” and that connection is often rebuilt less through grand gestures than through small interruptions repeated over time.
A media literacy lens: what the story can’t afford to show
As someone with a media literacy background, I don’t approach stories as either “good messages” or “bad messages.” I ask: What does this narrative train us to expect? What is it not saying?
Blockbuster films, especially those aimed at wide audiences, tend to do a few predictable things:
- They simplify moral psychology so the lesson can be carried out of the theater in one sentence.
- They compress time so transformation happens in leaps rather than in long, uneven cycles.
- They aestheticize repair because the medium rewards visible closure.
Trust matters. But trust by itself is not a method.
What I want to keep—and what I want to complicate
I still value what moved me in 2021: the insistence that someone must risk being first, that hatred can become a habit, that a divided world doesn’t heal by accident.
What I want to complicate now is the implied equation: "If we trust, we heal." A more durable equation might be: If we choose a first step, we create a possibility—then we negotiate the real work of repair.
That “real work” includes discernment, boundaries, accountability, and the slow process of proving—over time—that trust is warranted. A film like Raya can hint at those complexities, but it can’t linger in them without losing the clean arc that mainstream storytelling demands.
So I’m left with a double response that feels honest: I can appreciate the film’s aspiration while also resisting its oversimplification. The ending is moving—but it can’t teach us how repair happens. What it can do is remind us that someone has to interrupt the spiral. It’s up to us to remember that the rest is slower, less spectacular work: testing trust in small increments, naming harm with compassion, and rebuilding connections over time.
About this project: Start page
