Disney’s Moana 2 might be a pretty mid sequel, but it is an intelligent course correction to what nearly sank the House of Mouse in the early ‘20s. The pandemic had an obvious effect on most of the company’s operations, of course, but faced with the closure of their two most relevant revenue streams, then-CEO Bob Chapek followed the carrot-on-a-string of streaming, never mind that there was a box waiting for him at its end, propped up by a single stick. Who in the industry can forget that lengthy shareholders-meeting stream in the late fall of 2020, where one could only describe the presentation as a show of algorithmic-outsourced content force? A live-action Pinocchio remake, a Hocus Pocus sequel, and a hundred other minor movies (and major Pixar releases) were all planned for the platform.
The gambit worked at the time: The stock price didn’t fall, and subscribers, flush with stimulus money, didn’t cancel their memberships en masse. Yet it eventually became apparent that the acute phase of the pandemic would end, thanks to vaccines at first and eventually (and ironically for Disney) Spider-Man: No Way Home. That isn’t just a joke: Sony’s Omicron-era success was a resounding statement that audiences, provided they felt safe enough and that the attractions were enticing, would gladly return to theaters, provided there was no other same-day option. So, the Mouse was left holding the bag for the first time in a while.
Chapek may have been unfairly scapegoated for a black swan event and, less obviously, his predecessor’s bad decisions coming back to bite the company, but the facts were undeniable. Like a ten-team parlay six hits deep, they didn’t hedge or cash out: they promised their subscribers a bill of goods, and god damn it, they would deliver. I don’t think Bob Iger’s return would have changed the decision to alter Moana 2 from a long-form limited series to a theatrically released movie. The writing was on the wall: Precious money would be left all over the table. Still, it did help to massage the fact that this was a double-dip pivot (one helpfully hidden from announcements until the choice was made), and Disney+ subscribers would have to pay for content that would have been theirs exclusively had the plan held.
As expected, no one cared about that: The idea that a property this big would have been shunted off to the forgettable corners of the streaming world was one born when their service was pulling in crazy new subscriber and retention numbers, and customers were unironically asked to buy a bundle of three streaming services instead of uniting the architecture under a single app. Much like the elbow bump, it was an understandable choice at the time, quickly rendered irrelevant by post-pandemic financials. If paid streaming continues its decline as a first-run release forum outside of Netflix, Moana 2 is a pivotal moment: a wholesale rejection ballpark-in-the-cornfield method of at-home distribution: If you build it, will anyone care?
The answer is yes, as long as it’s presented with the prestige the audience is accustomed to. I sincerely doubt that most people in the audience will notice the stitching that holds this 100-minute movie together (it could be neatly chopped up into six 25-minute episodes without a second thought) unless they knew everything I just told you before going in. Even then, they’d have to squint to see it and, essentially, care about that fact. They will notice the sequelitis – the retread of previous plots, the comparative lack of energy, the crammed ensemble – though the enduring charms of the first installment mask it to an extent. More so than Frozen, the first Moana represented the CG-Disney animation era at its best: a fun cast, decent songs, splendid animated musical sequences, and a compelling setting for a retread of the Princess narrative that the company sees, rightfully, as the secret to its modern-day success. It’s peak 2015-era family cinema, the last gasp of Obama-era chill before we started litigating every piece of pop culture ephemera in the dumbest possible version of a perpetual Scopes trial. I don’t think Moana 2’s lack of ambition is necessarily bad – it’s better to follow meekly in the first’s footsteps than to do outright harm to it – but it is somewhat of a bummer.
Ironically, the stakes are somewhat higher than in the first: This time, Moana (Auli’I Cravalho) is venturing away from her island home to try and make first contact with the other island nations around them. See, humanity was divided into separate realms by an evil god who feared humanity’s potential more than the strength of his peers, and as such, few traces of the long-whispered others remain. After finding an artifact with a significant clue as to their location drawn onto it, Moana has a vision of one of her ancestors attempting to do the same thing, whose voyage ended in tragedy. Yet she’s the Wayfinder – if anyone can do it, she can – and so she assembles a motley crew of fellow Islanders to help her find the mythical island, now resting at the bottom of the ocean. Turns out she’ll need some help to raise it, too, which is where the demi-god Maui (The Rock) comes in. It’s another affable team-up that still lacks a real villain beyond a stage boss (who, despite her batty ways, isn’t even a bad guy in the first place) but can coast on the solid vibes between Cravalho and Rock for the runtime. They’re a fun pairing, and their banter is crucial to the Moana secret sauce.
No, it’s not ketchup and mayo (with a bit of relish tossed in there for good measure); it’s humor, which directors David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller preserve in the sequel. Even with multiple comedic relief characters, Frozen is a melodrama much like the most iconic of its cel-animated predecessors. Moana tends to be closer to something like Hercules, which is an approach that I prefer in pretty much all things, as one doesn’t have to sacrifice entertainment at the altar of cinematic magic and vice-versa. Johnson is a strong comedian who’s been given a self-effacing role that goes directly against his persona; the conceptual artists and animators are allowed to run wild (who have added one of the best modern creations in the Disney stable in the form of the Argonuts, a group of seafaring warrior-pirate sentient coconuts, with little purple arms and legs and a shockingly-drawn out culture); and there’s an emphasis on slapstick silliness as much as the first time around.
True, there’s no replacing Jemaine Clement’s rapping, blinged-out giant hermit crab, but it’s hard to beat perfection. The animation is similarly lovely, with enough neon bioluminescence to make James Cameron jealous, and the songs are well-performed, if somewhat disappointing compared to the first (the team from the Unauthorized Bridgerton Musical is picking up the slack for Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is presumably off sweeping chimneys in Victorian Britain). It lacks drama – the intense conflict and stakes of the first are missing – but it’s a Disney sequel: how often do those raise the stakes?
Knowing its origins, it’s hard to see Moana 2 as disappointing. Sure, some folks will walk out of the theater this weekend wondering why Disney can’t make satisfying sequels anymore or why they didn’t just wait for it to hit Disney+ in a few months. Still, many others will be entertained by a non-Wicked option for a family outing to the cinema and satisfied with what they got. Once again, there’s no denying that it is a mid sequel, content to follow where its predecessor led, but I don’t think that’s enough to write off the entertaining or awe-inspiring parts as junk. In truth, it rejects the notion of “content.” The word “slop” is thrown around a lot when describing mass-market entertainment (a better term is, in fact, “content”).
I’d argue that the benefit of slop, as served to hogs in troughs, is that they don’t have to go anywhere, the algorithmic hand acting as the farmer dumping a mix of their compost and feed into the pen. Slop renders things the same, much like a streaming service often does with its library: It immerses endeavor and artistry in a vulgar, unintelligible mush, with new ingredients added and blended in daily. Anything that requires artistry to create and for you to make an active choice to view it, such as leaving the house, doesn’t meet the “content” or “slop” standard for me anymore – the effortless AI slop clogging up the internet’s tubes is far more pernicious than a studio trying to satisfy audience demand by making a sequel to a massive hit.
Whatever Moana 2 is, it’s not passionless content – it’s just not as revelatory as it was the first time. It’s better to rule in theaters for a weekend than spend a lifetime buried beneath a Brink! legacyquel on the Disney+ menu.