‘Moana 2’ 4K UHD Digital (review)

Disney / Buena Vista

Long ago in the distant shores of Oceania, there was a movie called Moana about a girl who discovers the dangers of meeting your heroes. She has a simple job to do: her island’s food supply is dying because a demigod named Maui (Dwayne Johnson) stole an amulet from the earth-mother goddess Te Fiti, and in order to save her people Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) has to bring it back. She goes in search of Maui, discovers he’s feckless and vain, and ultimately realizes that the only way to find a hero is to become one herself. Her I-want song “How Far I’ll Go” (written by Lin-Manuel Miranda) becomes a triumphant I-am reprise where she rises to that challenge.

That was in 2016, back when movies weren’t expected to consciously self-reference themselves.

Its earnestness is why it works. Its heroine was adventurous and agile, but she was also quite literally out of her depth. Things like sailing and wayfinding didn’t come naturally to her: she became good at them because it was the only way to save her people.

This is the same model of heroism that fuels many of Disney and Pixar’s best animated classics: Mulan, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, even Hercules, are all about characters who force themselves to grow in order to save others. As storytelling tropes go, it’s a damned good one.

But that was Moana.

And now we have Moana 2, which struggles with the same creative problem that afflicts many sequels: how do you build onto a character arc that was basically completed in the first movie?

The unfortunate answer is: you don’t.

At least not in Moana 2, where the title character’s dilemma is virtually the same as in its predecessor, only more complicated and with less clearly defined stakes. Three years after the first movie, we discover that Moana has become an expert Tautai (navigator) seeking to reunite all the scattered peoples of Oceania. In a vision, she learns she can’t do this because an evil storm god named Nalo has sunk the central island of Motefutu that connects all the other islands. Moana gathers a crew—a craftswoman/geek girl named Loto, the tribe’s storyteller/fanboy Moni, a grumpy old farmer named Keke, and her rooster and pig—and sets sail out to find Maui again, since he’s the only semi-mortal being with the power to raise the island. He’s being held captive in a giant clam ruled over by one of Nalo’s hench-goddesses, Matangi.

Are we together so far?

The movie does a little lampshade-hanging by having Moana remind herself of her mission every few minutes, but it never seems to land clean. Partly its because we never actually meet Nalo in the flesh (at least not until his appearance in a mid-credits scene, of which more later), so there’s no one to confront in the boss battle. Mainly, though, it’s unclear what bad thing will happen if Moana fails in her mission. It came to her in a vision so she has to do it, never mind why.

This is by no means Moana 2’s biggest probem.

Its central flaw is the same one we encountered in Ralph Breaks the Internet: since all the internal conflicts were resolved in the first movie, the writers have to invent a new one. In Moana, Maui is charming but vain (the title of his song “You’re Welcome” says it all). Although he was born human, he places almost no value on human life: he’s willing to trap Moana in a cave and steal her boat if that’s what it takes to get off his island. Before she can get Maui to help, Moana first has to teach him to care.

Moana 2’s Maui is presumably past all of this, so his new challenge is 180 degrees from the old one: this time he’s too protective of humans, so he has to learn to let go and support Moana in taking risks. Before, he sang about what a cool guy he was. This time his duet with Moana is a workout song called “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” where they (somewhat callously) use octopi as workout ropes, Flintstones style.

But it’s a pointless song because Moana doesn’t need a motivation.

In fact, she doesn’t seem to need anyone or anything.

Moana 2 follows the live-action Mulan school of characters just naturally being good at things. Turns out that Moana isn’t just good at navigating, she’s a genius, to the extent that it’s not clear at first why her crew is even along for the ride (Sure, it’s good that she has a boat-builder on her boat, but why exactly does she need a farmer? Or a storyteller, for that matter? Is it because Jodie Foster said “Should have brought a poet” in Contact?). The answer comes later, when Moana nearly wrecks the ship by trying to do it all alone.

Message: trust your people, even the gardener who is on a boat and therefore has literally nowhere to garden. Trust Kotu the tiny coconut-person, one of the piratical Kakamora, because he will always show up with a paralyzer dart just when you need him. Team work makes the Dreamwork, erm, Disney.

Also trust Ocean.

You remember Ocean, right? This is the slightly anthropomorphized wave that looks like a giant transparent tongue, which always shows up to give Moana a shove in the right direction or redeposit Moana’s chicken Heihei on deck after he walks overboard. For a character who’s supposed to be entirely self-reliant, Moana sure does need a lot of ex machina assistance.

There’s a special kind of sadness you feel when you’re disappointed by the sequel to a movie you liked.

Like Frozen 2, Moana 2 indulges in self-reference and deliberate anachronisms, which leaches a lot of the first movie’s charm. Maui refers to a group of Moana’s fangirls as “Moannabes.” Later, he uses the phrase “butt dial” and suggests that it will make sense in the future. Is Maui Moana 2’s Genie of the Lamp? There are also apparently new rules concerning tattoos. When Maui loses his tats (even the Mini-Maui on his left pec), his powers seem to fade. Moana will also receive a glowing tattoo that gives her demigod power and—I guess—turns her oar into the equivalent of Maui’s magic fishhook. I really don’t know. None of this is ever explained.

Moana 2 isn’t a bad movie, it’s just not good enough to be worth a sequel. And we are definitely in for at least one more, if the mid-credits scene is to be believed. Considering that Moana 2 outgrossed its predecessor in a matter of weeks, I would say it’s a done deal.

With the newly demigodded Moana against Nalo, we appear to be fully committed to the Marvelizing of Disney films, in which every movie is a setup for the next. Next time it won’t just be one tribe but all of them whose lives are on the line. Theoretically that should make the stakes even higher, but I’m not feeling it.

Someone it all seemed more important when Moana was just a human trying to save her family without the benefit of magic. It’s meant to expand the world, and yet it left me feeling like the Moanaverse doesn’t actually have all that far to go.

Extras include sing-along watch mode, featurettes, deleted scenes and song selection.