Moana 2 | Review
© Disney
Disney’s recent original films have had trouble taking off. Following a culturally dominant 2010s, Disney Animation Studios 2020s releases like Wish underwhelmed critics and barely recouped the almost $400m the historic animation house spent on them. Their upcoming slate sees them return to familiarity with sequels to Frozen and Zootopia following this year’s Moana 2, a continuation of Musker & Clements’ 2016 gem.
The new team of directors, David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller, had the unique task of steering this project through its initial days as a TV series before it was reworked into a feature. It’s easy to see that going wrong, and the film definitely bears the scars of that transition. However, Moana 2 still provides an entertaining cinematic spectacle as Moana, having brought peace to her own island in the first film, looks to unite all the Polynesian islands in an attempt to avoid a dark fate at the hands of the god Nalo.
As much as Moana 2 is a play for familiarity, the company has employed a new pipeline to bring it to the world. This is the first Disney feature to be produced at both the Burbank and Vancouver locations, leading to fears from some of a dip in animation quality. Moana 2 instantly quiets them all. This film is absolutely gorgeous. The backgrounds are just as lush as you remember them being in the first with pink-tinted skies playing off the greenest grass and bluest ocean you’ll ever see.
Some of the imagery in this movie is worthy of the world’s greatest art galleries. Scenes of shooting stars streaking across the night sky and hulking enemies dominating the frame do such a great job of exhibiting the godly scale this movie takes place on. Moana 2 is at its absolute best when it lets go of the handbrake and becomes a full on action adventure romp. It’s pure cinematic spectacle on a level we haven’t seen from animation in 2024. The creature and location design helps elevate that monster hunter-y feel, even if a fair chunk is repeated from the first movie and the big bad ends up being represented as a massive cloud.
The character animation is dialed all the way up to 11 here to the point where it won’t work for everyone. The animators make full use of these rubbery, expressive characters to the point where everyone is always moving all the time in extremely exaggerated ways. It’s impressive in one sense, and fits with the bigness that the movie is shooting for, but a crumb of stillness would have been nice.
While the animation remains as quality as ever, Moana 2’s story is where the small to big screen transition is most apparent. Moana constructs a crew of an engineer, a storyteller and a farmer to accompany her on the mission, and it’s extremely clear that they would have had more to do and would have been proper characters had they had a few episodes to grow. There are also some antagonists that swim in and out of the story without too much consequence.
© Disney
Additionally, the film takes way too long to get to the good stuff. The throat clearing at the start of the film to introduce the new characters and the new lore just takes away from the time we get to spend with Moana on the ocean out on an adventure. The film sings when Maui and Moana are sparking off each other in the midst of battle, but they’re separated for so much of the movie for no good reason. Dwayne Johnson is as good as he’s been in at least half a decade here, and we’re robbed of his presence because of a plot contrivance that makes barely any sense.
Issues also arise in the emotional journeys of the characters. Moana is really the only character with a main goal to complete and her journey simply doesn’t hit as hard as it does in the first film. The action and spectacle would be a perfectly capable stand-in for that (not every animated film has to make you cry) but there isn’t enough of it for the film to feel wholly satisfying. Instead, we get the most manipulative character of the year in Moana’s baby sister who has an adorable overbite and everything. She feels designed in a lab to inject the film with some sort of emotion in place of a real arc.
© Disney
Whenever we get a sequel like this people ask “Was this necessary?” and the answer is always “yes.” It’s always a good thing when art is made, but what we should be questioning is if the art in question is the best version of itself. Any idea can be turned into a good one and the best version of Moana 2 was probably on the small screen. Big set pieces are definitely worthy of the cinema, but they come too few and far between and there are too many new characters for this to work as a feature.
Hollywood took a massive bet on streaming being the future and Moana 2 is a casualty of this. When a mandate comes from on-high that you should pool resources into making content for Disney+, filmmakers are going to tailor their work to that medium. It sucks that Disney couldn’t commit to the best version of Moana 2, giving us a sequel that’s a bit of a mess rather than a smooth-sailing continuation of one of Disney’s best modern tales.