We all know Moana as the adventurous teenage girl who sails across the ocean with demigod Maui on a daring journey to save her island. However, how many of us have heard of the lesser-known Moana 2? Aside from one or two trailers and the occasional TikTok, I certainly didn’t hear a lot of buzz about it. Turns out, this lack of media coverage happened for a good reason.
I stepped into Theater 13 expecting a movie with the same catchy songs that I could hum all day and a seat-gripping story that left me yearning for more, but I left with a wasted hour and 40 minutes and strained eyes.
It was underwhelming, to say the least, but one of the biggest problems for me was the characters. Aside from Moana and Maui, the crew adds three more characters to help man the ship. However, the added crewmates only play one role: comedic relief. And in a 100-minute film, there’s not a lot of time to flesh out three whole new characters to make them memorable. In fact, I couldn’t even name one of them right now if you asked me.
The plot was also disappointing. Moana’s call to adventure was seemingly directionless and missing the usual magic that is present in most Disney movies. While past movies like Frozen and the original Moana embody the classic Disney magic and childhood nostalgia, Moana 2 is lacking in almost every aspect. Not to mention, I walked out of the theater not remembering a single song. Aren’t songs one of the main selling points of Disney movies? Maybe it’s the absence of songwriter Lin Manuel Miranda that contributed to the lackluster songs, but I think it may reflect a bigger issue with Disney movies as a whole.
Nowadays, Disney movies are only a shell of their former glory. The live-action remakes of their classic animated films are only subpar retellings of the original story hidden under the guise of better and more realistic visuals. Instead of creating more creative and original stories, Disney has resorted to shabby remakes, which is a disappointment to say the least.
This reliance on past legacies continues. With movies such as Toy Story and Zootopia getting a fifth and second part respectively. Even Snow White and Lilo & Stitch are getting live-action renditions with seemingly no other point than to simply release something. With all these remakes, it really seems like Disney has finally lost their magic touch.
