In past November 27th, Disney premiered Moana 2. This sequel of the acclaimed 2016 box-office hit had a big bar the reach. When critics and regular audiences finally saw the movie, they all agreed it was not even close to recapture the magic and charm of the first one. Despite that, the last report of says it has become another box-office success with $710 million worldwide. Of course everybody would wonder how is this possible. Anyhow, it all doesn’t matter once we realise how this could effect the animation at the company and the ramifications that could bring for the rest of the industry.
After receiving a new call from her ancestors, Moana ships to a new adventure with a new crew.
First, let's talk about the movie. It's been three years since the first adventure and Moana has brought prosperity for her people. She also ships to explore the ocean and looks for traces of her ancestors. The first minutes of the movie work pretty well. Shows the world before the conflict and presents her as a good leader and an adventurer. Besides, it still shows respect to the oceanic cultures, as the first film. Even the scene when she gets the call from her ancestors is well directed. That would be only good part.
The movie introduces new supporting characters who are boring tropes with no personality at all. They just learn to teamwork from one scene to another. It's ok to have a comic relief, but three of them is annoying. Not even their designs are barely original; most of them are generic standards for any Disney film/series. From the moment Moana and her crew set sail, you see how poorly written the story is and clumsy rhythm it has. It passes from one irrelevant encounter to a different one too fast. Not even the “villain” showed on the trailers is relevant or the main one. Also, Maui is totally irrelevant. It all ends with the characters finally having a decent final fight with the actual villain, who is not even shown. It feels like this script needed to go through some drafts more. The animation doesn’t actually looks bad, just limited. Doesn’t feel like a downgrade, but it hasn't improved either. Although, what actually suffered a massive downgrade were the songs. There’s not a single good or, at least, memorable song, which is unforgivable for any musical. Most of the time, they just reprise the “We know the Way”'s leit-motive from the first film. Considering that songs like “How Far I'll Go” or “You’re Welcome” have become classics among the Disney songs repertoire and some of the favourites for younger generations, this is definitely one of the film's mayor deficiencies. This proves that, despite any complain about him, Lin-Manuel Miranda is not a talent to take for granted.
To understand why this film exists we need to go back in time. Terrible sequels are not new for Disney or any studio. Disney's first sequel was “The Return of Jafar” (1994), which had a really low budget and was released directly on VHS. This film was actually a pilot for an already forgotten short-running Aladdín series. The point was to exploit the popularity of their latest massive hit with a low-budget and short-term strategy; that’s why non of those bad sequels were produced by Walt Disney Animation or are part of the Disney Animated Canon.
Many people remembers or knows that Disney had to exploit that strategy at the 2000's because most of their new films were box-office flops, such as Atlantis: The Lost Empire or Treasure Planet (both are cult classics now). They made sequels of Tarzan, Mulan, The Jungle Book and Atlantis, too. This last one (Atlantis: Milo's Return) is important; it was first planned to be a series but was turned into a movie after the flop of the first one.
Eventually, this strategy became unnecessary after they entered into a new era of hits. They found a new formula to make beloved and popular animations, Pixar also delivered many hits, they owned the most successful franchises in history and Star Wars, too. Even Walt Disney Animation produced two sequels: Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) and Frozen II (2019), which belong to the Disney Animated Canon, although their quality is not the best. And finally, in 2019, the company bought 20th Century Fox (now disolved) and expanded to the streaming business with Disney+. Unfortunately, that era ended.
The 2023 might be remembered by Disney and the whole world as the company's worst year. Marvel delivered two of their worst films, which were huge box-office bombs, and its worst series. Other failures like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Haunted Mansion and poorly received live action adaptations just damaged Disney's reputation. Star Wars hasn’t gone back to the theatres after The Rise of Skywalker and has been exploited on Dinsey+ series with unpredictable results. However, non of that tells more than Wish, one of their worst films ever and the most disappointing way to celebrate the 100 years of the company.
The 2024 has smiled at Disney. Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine are the two highest grossing film of the year (among the top 20 hight grossing films on history), Marvel seems to be getting back on track and most of the company’s newest productions have received nice reviews. Nevertheless, that’s not enough to recover from last year. That's where Moana 2 enters. This title was announced in 2020 as a Disney+ series, alongside others that haven’t get any update from. Things changed after they saw the reports of the platform and realised Moana has been the most streamed title in the platform since it came out. In February 2024, announced that the series, so far, had a huge potencial and decided to turn it into a movie and it would came on November and a live-action adaptation, too. Now, with a budget of $150 millions (25 millions less than the first film), that old strategy used only for crises retuned and resulted in one of the most profitable ideas in the past years. All the failures in the film meant nothing, because the most streamed title in one of the most popular platforms was back on theatres and a lot of families were are happy to take their children to the movies for Thanksgiving, which is an crucial date for box-office.
Disney won, of course. We could easily say we are the ones who lost, but that's not true. The one who will suffer more are the animators. Las year, guilds of entertainment went on strike and achieved a tiny victory, but the one who is still fighting, is the Animation Guild. Disney has always had bad history with their animators, and animators have always had disagreements with their studios and companies. Now the guild is struggling to get better salaries and regulate the use of AI for animation projects. With the numbers of Moana 2, animators lost a huge battle. This film was produced (financially) by Walt Disney Animation, but animated in their recently opened animation studio for streaming series in Vancouver (Canada). Considering the usual budgets for TV productions, the fact that canadian animators and companies are not tied up the the Animation Guild and the time between February and November; there's a high possibility that many of this workers have been exploited during the production. With Moana 2, Disney has a proof to refute the Guild in almost any of their demands.
We'll never know how that series might have been. This movie made us realised that a Disney movie sequel is not a good sign, most of the time. This doesn’t mean we have to boicot every sequel they make or every other project they deliver. This kind of strategies have been part of the business for ages; just like Great Depression indirectly impulsed the birth of B movies, in order to save the industry. Now, the industry is obviously facing many important changes, but animators and filmmakers, in general, shouldn’t be the ones the make the sacrifices, not anymore.
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