CW: Spoilers for Moana 2, brief spoilers for Evbo’s Parkour Civilization

The movie poster for Moana 2

I’ve lost the text itself, but I remember writing something for a project that included a prediction that Moana 2 gets released in 2025. Given the success of this movie from a revenue standpoint, I’m not surprised I was off the mark by a year, but as someone who was dragged out of the house to watch it, I don’t see why this is even deserved.

Moana 2 is the first time in my memory that I’m going to be outright negative about a piece of media in my “media thread”, but I think it’s warranted, as I feel like this movie failed to live up to what it could’ve been in pretty notable fashion that puts even other Disney sequels to shame. With such a declarative title, this feels like something that should’ve served to break negativity when it came to Disney’s ssequels, while instead having the opposite effect; from what I’ve been told, this was intended to be a TV series initially, and it’s clear the end product suffers from that, as all of the best moments of the movie suffered from poor pacing.

A lot happened in Moana 2 incredibly quickly. Much of the movie built on what the first movie set down, which is good, but it does so to an extreme extent to where I feel like I get blindsided around every corner as someone who had not watched it recently, which I almost feel was deliberate to get people to watch the first movie again. The pacing of the movie was rapid, and I think that left out a lot of context; namely, I think Maui was misrepresented heavily by a lot of the lost context, and many of the crew dynamics felt half-baked. There were too many instances in the movie where I had to piece together context that could’ve been put together, and it’s clear that there were a lot of plot threads that were supposed to be important, but got gutted. A very big example of this in my mind is the use of Kele’s coconut floats, where I feel like he should’ve dived and struggled; for all the complaining he did, he never really went through a trial, and there was no reason he’d be so comfortable in the water without that context. When it came to Maui, as well, his actions seemed very selfish, like he wanted to take the glory that Moana eventually would, with his intentions not clear; similarly, in Matangi’s case, I had no clue how to feel about her the entire time she was on screen until the portal opened, as it was so incredibly unclear whether she was a villain or not, only for Moana to suddenly trust her and everything to work out.

Speaking of the scene where Matangi was present: How does Moana know how to open up the portal, and how is she able to do it in the first place? What’s the purpose of the orb? Why does Maui think Moana isn’t trapped, and if he knew what the orb did, why didn’t he try to go into the orb himself? There’s a lot of unanswered questions about everything that happened that feels like they should’ve been explored. I think it’s also worth mentioning that the only time we meet Nalo is in the after credits scene for about three lines of dialogue when he deserved a lot more screen time, or even a direct confrontation; disappointingly, this does not do anything to set up the threequel I know Disney will be fishing for.

To the points above, much of what happened in the story felt incredibly unearned. Given the amount of help Moana got when things went bad, even though she is a skilled wayfinder in her own right, simply diving down to touch Motofetu was the only thing she did that was wholly earned, as many of her actions didn’t really account to much and, given the presence of Maui, her role as a leader was severely diminished; at the end of the day, it’s very understandable that she did become a demigod, but for one, it felt like Motofetu shouldn’t have been where she earned her stripes as much as saving Te Fiti, as that was a full summation of the fruits of her efforts, and Maui was a much less cooperative figure at the time, and for another… that entire exchange just reminded me of the ending of Parkour Civilation season 2. Sure, Moana did drown deep in the sea, but at the same time, a lot of the effort that got her there wasn’t her own, and the setup was just so weak. On the topic of Maui, him getting his tattoos back as soon as he grabs his hook again is a copout of tremendous proportions; if he was going to have them all burned away for using practically all of his power to no end, I think some of them should’ve burned away for good, showing that he still has room to grow and fill those spots back up with new memories founded in his cooperation with Moana and others instead of the self-centered acts that defined him before. Those tattoos burned away for a reason, and even a divine weapon shouldn’t be enough to cheat his way out of that.

After exiting the theater, my father proclaimed that this is the first Disney movie in a while where “they didn’t have an agenda” or “go woke”, which he proclaimed as a positive; in reality, however, I think it was one of the movie’s major flaws. Even explicit queerness notwithstanding, I think it’s this lack of personality beyond the surface level a lot of these under-baked characters have that directly contributes to why character dialogue is so uninteresting, to the point where I think a little bit of freedom of expression would solve a lot of the movie feeling dry; for the most part, everyone on Moana’s ship, besides Maui and herself, felt like they were just here to serve a purpose, and though Loto and Moni are passably engaging, even they don’t really serve that purpose well. Beyond that, the character designs felt incredibly stale, even though they didn’t have to to be convincing; every male character in the movie, besides Kele, either had no speaking lines or Maui’s body shape, and at the end of the day, that led to key characters like Moni feeling incredibly uninspired. It’s not my place to speak on things I haven’t experienced myself, so take this with as much salt as necessary, but I think of the māhū, a third gender in some Polynesian cultures that would’ve fit very nicely into the setting while serving as the “forced” representation that right-wing Disney adults love to hate. Disney speaks about inclusion, but when it actually counts, they stay silent; this isn’t something that should surprise anyone at this point, but I want to call this out anyways.

The movie was aesthetically incredible, sure, but with all of these plot issues even down to the main theme of this movie practically mirroring the exact themes that the main theme of Frozen 2 touched on, there was really no reason for me to care past that. I feel like people will want me to lay off of a Disney movie here, but it’s because it’s a Disney movie that I’m digging into it so hard, because the biggest entertainment giant in the world has no reason to pump out storyless slop like this when they’ve got this much time and enough market presence to outsell the first movie in the first few days besides profit margin. Disney movies are made with the whole family in mind, and the whole family was not entertained here; even then, children deserve a good story, too, and from what it sounds like, they’re getting it with things like Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, though I haven’t seen that. I wouldn’t know for sure, but I’m guessing it’s things like this that are chipping away at the reputation of animation as a medium for anyone who isn’t a child, because some of the most prominent, highest quality animations in the current year are empty in the sort of way that people have just come to expect now. There is nothing worth your time here.