It’s New Years Eve, 2016. Two months earlier, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. My fiance and I are interested in going to see a movie, but not much is out that both of us that interested in. We decide to go see the newest film from Walt Disney Animation Studios, Moana. What follows is one of the most profound theater going experiences of my life. A beautiful film, Moana washes over me, causing me to cry within five minutes. I am taken by its beautiful depiction of a mythical Pacific Islands adventure, but also by its message of bravery and pushing beyond the known horizon. It ended up being my favorite film of the year, and has since cemented itself as amongst my favorite Disney movies.
Flash forward to today. Donald Trump has just been elected president. I have married my fiance and we have two amazing kids. They have watched Moana times more times than I can count. And now a new adventure of Moana and the trickster demi-god Maui has come to theaters with Moana 2, and it is… okay. Good even. But there is just something missing.
Digging into the history of Moana 2 it’s not hard to see some of the seams. Originally planned as a series for Disney+, production was pivoted into having a handful of episodes to be combined to create a full feature film. This echoes the tradition of Disney’s parade of straight-to-video sequels from the mid-1990s, most notably Return of Jafar which was literally a pilot for a cartoon series, and by the metric Moana 2 is phenomenal. As stitched together episodes of a proposed television series, it is admirable how it captures the lush beauty of the original while injecting a greater sense of fun and broad slapstick. But as the official first follow-up of the original, it falls well short of the mark the series has set.
The story picks up three years after the original, with Moana (voiced again by Auliʻi Cravalho) now serving as a wayfinder for her island nation of Motunui. She has been searching for signs of other islands, as a way to build connections with other people. When she finds evidence of other people, she gets a vision from her ancestors about Motufetu, a famed island that was lost long ago. With a new adventure before her, and after building a quirky crew to travel with her, Moana sets off to create a new alliance with the other islands.
Along the way, Moana is of course reunited with Maui (Dwayne Johnson reprising perhaps the best role of his career), whose relationship is deepened on their journey. She also comes across the Kakamora, coconut-clad mute pirates. She has to descend into another black-light lit land of monsters, and then find a creative means of escape. In general, the film follows a structure that echoes many of the moment-to-moment action of the original.
And thus lays the problem with Moana 2. It is perhaps unfair if inevitable to compare a sequel to its direct predecessor, especially when its legacy is a modern-day masterpiece. But Moana 2 doesn’t do itself any favors by having so many points that you can compare directly to the original, and in every film-to-film comparison it falters. Which is unfortunate, because on its own Moana 2 is a fun adventure with charm and humor that consistently works. It is only when you have to do the work of comparing it to the original does disappointment creep in.
In an entertainment climate where it constantly feels like television series would be better served as tightening down to a movie, it is odd to long for the series version of Moana 2. But it is hard to get past the lingering feeling that by condensing, aspects of the film were lost. There is a new character introduced in the middle act of the film, one of the stronger original aspects of the movie, that disappears for the final act; this makes sense if you can see the stitch point where one episode ended and another began. In the context of a film, it feels incomplete and strange, as if there was a promise made to the audience that was never fulfilled.
Perhaps in the transition into a film, something was lost or condensed. But the end result feels like a shadow of what had come before, having the shape and general feel right, but never quite measures up to unreasonable expectations.
