“Moana 2” hit theaters this November, breaking the Thanksgiving box office record with a $225 million debut.
“Moana 2” was originally supposed to be a TV series for the streaming platform Disney+. However, Disney CEO Bob Iger said he decided to turn the series into a movie after he watched early footage and thought it deserved to be seen on the big screen.
The film has received mild reviews, saying it's enjoyable but does not live up to the original film.
“Moana 2” picks up three years after the original film, with Moana exploring the seas with hopes of finding other communities of people. However, it's revealed the island that once connected the people of the sea has been hidden by a power-hungry god. So, Moana goes on a quest with a newly formed crew to find this hidden island and connect her people with the rest of the world.
I went into this movie thinking I was going to hate it because of negative reviews I had seen online. The movie honestly was not as bad as I thought it would be. The storyline was interesting, the character arcs followed the first movie, the animation was stunning and overall, it was enjoyable to watch. With that being said, this film does have problems, and it in no way lives up to the original.
The first issue I have with this film is the pacing feels messy. Although it displays Moana’s thinking as an adult, I thought the beginning was slow. It felt like a rehashing of the beginning of the first movie, only longer. Since Moana had already gone through the same conflict of debating whether she should leave her island, this drawn out plot felt unnecessary.
While the middle stretch of the film was enjoyable, it was slightly all over the place. It seemed like the movie was starting to get into action and then suddenly it was at the climax without much buildup. The climax itself was good, and the final battle was probably my favorite part as some big and impactful things happen to the characters. However, one of my biggest issues with the movie is that these big, impactful events have no consequences. At the end of the film, both Maui and Moana go through important transformations that would have been interesting to explore in another film. However, this gets resolved in less than 10 minutes with barely any explanation. It felt like a cop-out for what could have been an intriguing future storyline.
Another problem with the movie was the songs. The songs for the first movie were written by “Hamilton’s” Lin-Manuel Miranda, but he did not come back for the sequel. Instead, the songwriting duo Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, who rose to fame after writing a fan musical for the Netflix show “Bridgerton,” were hired to write the songs for “Moana 2.” While the songs in the film were not bad (except for Maui’s song “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” — I hope I never have to listen to that song again), they were lackluster, which, compared to the groundbreaking songs in “Moana,” doesn’t give the movie the same magic.
I think a problem the writing duo faced was they tried to write in Miranda’s style. This resulted in the songs feeling like someone paraphrased the exact songs and moments in the first film and shoved them into this one.
The last issue I had with the film was its side characters. While these characters were fun and charming, they were barely in the movie. Even Maui, one of the most popular characters from the first film, didn’t join in on the main action until about halfway through. Similarly, Matangi, the character advertised as the villain of the movie, was barely in it. She wasn’t even the villain. I think the film would have been more engaging if they had kept her in longer and if she was a more morally grey character, as she brought an individuality and curiosity to the film that was much needed.
Films, especially animated ones, are rarely original anymore. Everything we see now is either a sequel or an adaptation. And yes, these movies can be good, but we’re going in the direction of lacking any originality. If big companies, like Disney, see they can only make significant money in the box office when they make sequels or adaptations, that is only going to push them to make more of these films.
Remember the time when we got an original Disney animated movie every year? Films like “Zootopia,” “Frozen,” “Tangled,” and “Big Hero 6”? These movies were amazing, and every time they brought something new and exciting to the table. You don’t see that anymore. Even the Chief Creative Officer of Pixar, Pete Docter, stated that after poorly performing autobiographical stories, Pixar is planning to stick to more sequels in the future.
While Disney claims it decided to make “Moana 2” a movie because executives thought it deserved to be seen on the big screen, the reality is that they probably realized how much money this movie would make and took the opportunity. Now that “Moana 2” has in fact performed extremely well in the box office, along with “Inside Out 2” earlier this year, it’s only going to further the notion that only sequels can be profitable. Soon enough, we’ll barely see any more originality from Disney films.
Another problem with this film has to do with its animators. Usually, when Disney makes an animated film, it's animated in California. Since this film was initially supposed to be a TV series, it was animated in Canada. The issue with this is the animators in California are part of a union, while those in Canada are not.
This means that while this “series” got turned into a very successful and profitable film, the animators are being paid significantly less than what they would have in the US. After seeing the success of this film, it could encourage Disney to have more films animated in Canada as it is cheaper, however this means that animators will be paid much less for difficult and grueling work.
