The Dark Herald Recommends Moana 2
Moana 2, AKA Viana, 2 AKA Oceana 2 (depending on the market) was a crash project born from the ashes of last year’s disastrous animated film, Wish. That movie was the end product of Bob Iger’s disastrous DEI initiatives. Wish was to be the Walt Disney Company’s 100th Anniversary film and it seemed to show just how far the company had fallen in a century. This was Jennifer Lee’s big project. Here’s a quick refresher about her.
It was about this time that Bob Iger’s frantic hiring and promoting people with strong ties to the Democrats led him to promote an ideologically minded young writer with a very good track record for hits named, Jennifer Lee. She had been a major voice on Zootopia, Wreck-It-Ralph, and most importantly, Frozen. She was exactly the kind of person that Bob Iger wanted to get ahead at Disney. A woman who had the kind of political views that were very much in synch with Bob’s own.
After METOO pushed John Lasseter out of the company, (and I would really love to know if Jennifer Lee had anything to do with that), she began a campaign to have women gain equal representation in at every level of Disney Animation. A policy that Disney was only too happy to implement by 2019. As for their qualifications? Successfully being born with a vagina seemed to be about it. This was the start of the period where goal of Equity hiring shoved merit and qualifications completely off the roof.
2019 was the year that Strange World and Wish began planning. According to WDWPro, whose word I am willing to accept as the gold standard on this, before every meeting of the writer’s room, she would have a women’s only pre-meeting where the ideas for the movie would actually be decided. When it was time for the all-hands pitch meeting any MAN who didn’t go along with their ideas would find themselves on the receiving end of a struggle session, along with uncomfortable conversions with the diversity officers and then Human Resources.
It takes years to produce a skilled animator. Jennifer Lee was finding any excuse to get rid of male animators and replace them with women. Where did she find these skilled women animators? Tumblr. I wish I was joking.
After the twin disasters of Strange World and Wish Jennifer Lee was allowed to accept a demotion and went back into the strictly production side of things.
Moana 1 had proven to be the biggest attraction on Disney + (not including Bluey of course). The 2016 movie had made $686 million. So it wasn’t exactly a monster hit. There was certainly no talk about a sequel but it’s numbers on Disney + were strong enough to justify a limited run TV series.
The maxi-series had been scripted out. The original voice actress Auli’i Cravalho’s somewhat inexpensive services were secured. The very expensive Dwayne Johnson’s had not been at the time that Wish crashed as burned at the box office pulling in only $250 million against a budget of $250 million and god knows how much marketing costs because that one was expensive.
Moana 2 was quickly announced. Budgeting coughed up The Rock’s voice acting fee, so Maui would not need to be recast. However, what is most interesting is that Disney Animation in Burbank was NOT given this job. It was obvious to everyone that at this point they weren’t up to it. It was sent to Disney’s new animation studio in British Columbia. Aside from being remote enough to have avoided Jennifer Lee’s ideological plague. It was also going to lower the budget to about $150 million.
Much to my surprise they actually delivered the film in time to hit Disney’s traditional Thanksgiving launch date.
So is the movie itself any good?
W-e-e-l-l-l…
I’ve certainly seen worse from Disney. I can give it that much. Given how big of an emergency production this was it’s certainly better than it has any right to be. Which is not to say that this film is particularly memorable. The first Moana had four fairly memorable songs. Moana’s “How Far I’ll Go” Maui’s “You’re Welcome.” Tomatoa’s “Tomatoa.” And Cool Explorer Chief’s Song.” Four tunes that people remember is pretty good for any movie.
I just saw this yesterday and I don’t remember a single song. I’m pretty sure there were some but I can’t pull up single note, so either Lin-Manuel Miranda needs more time produce something exceptional or he’s run out juice. Don’t blame him if it’s the latter, Disney will suck the life out of everyone if given half a chance.
The plot I can remember for the most part.
Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) is screwing around on the ocean then lands her canoe. A little girl is delighted to see her and I was kind of shocked by the implication that Moana had had a daughter. The only other Disney princess to have ever had a kid was Ariel and that was only for straight to DVDs Turns out it’s her baby sister, Let’s be honest here there was no way in hell a 2020s Disney princess was going to take an interest in the opposite sex, let alone get married and have a kid. So we meet Moana’s new three-year-old kid sister Simea (and oh my crap this child actress is named Khaleesi. I knew it happened but that was kind of an “in theory” thing).
Moana has a vision during some ceremony or another. It’s the Cool Explorer Chief from the last movie, who now rates a name, TauTai Vasa (Tamura Morrison. I’m glad Disney isn’t too pissed at him for saying how dicked up The Book of Boba Fett was… Possibly Bob approved of his message. That is the kind passive aggressive shit he likes to do).
Tau-Tai gives her instructions to find an island that once she lands on it will reunite all of the sea peoples.
Bad News: An evil god put on the bottom of the ocean, to keep the sea peoples divided.
Good News: Moana is in tight with a guy whose specialty is lifting islands from the bottom of the sea.
Moana puts together a crew that is kind of pointless. There is Strong Guy who shrieks who draws and shrieks girlishly. Genius Shipwright Girl. And Old Ass Farmer Guy. I have no idea at all why she brought an old farmer along on SEA VOYAGE and truth be said, he was pretty confused about why he was there too.
They pick up on the coconut dudes from the last film. Turns out they just want to go home. I kind of preferred them being pointlessly evil but they their merch must have sold better than I thought.
Stuff happens for a while and then the climax happens so the good guys can win. At least Maui got to haul up the island, I was wondering for a while if Moana was going to do that too.
I’m afraid there was Marvel style end credits scene (as is the style at the time) featuring the evil god, an evil goddess who has a thing for Maui and Tomatoa the giant crab, who I was missing in this film.
This movie isn’t bad it’s just not all that good. They rewrote a TV script and shot it. That was the creative process behind this and it shows. Disney was desperate for an easy win, and given the world wide total is over $200 million this weekend, they’ve got it. It is about at the quality of one of Disney’s better straight to DVD movies from about 20 years ago and honestly that was about the most you could expect from it.
If you have kid caterwauling to go it, it’s girl-bossy but there’s nothing horrifying beyond that. Although, you’d probably have a better time at Wicked.
The Dark Herald Recommends with Reservations (2.8/5)
