Moana (2026)

[Jon Dent]

Someone had to do it....

The Disney remake machine officially shifts into a new gear: remaking a property that is not only recent, but was fully CGI to begin with. So how did they do?

As a piece of cinema, it's decent. It looks nice, with some lovely tropical footage. The VFX are mostly fine. The music is good, the sound mix is good. The lead actress is appealing and spunky. There are a lot of jokes.

But...

There isn't an original bone in this body, and it's impossible to separate it from it's animated source. Maybe it's to the film's credit that it doesn't even try. Everything this remake does (even does well), the original did better, and given that the original was an animated cartoon, everything felt much better integrated. When you have real humans on screen, Hei Hei the chicken doesn't work, the Kakamora REALLY don't work, and even Tamatoa the crab just feels wrong (despite Jemaine Clement pumping out a MUCH better rendition of 'Shiny'). These overly cartoon elements don't mesh with the live action, and no amount of CGI can overcome that.

And then there's Dwayne... He was great as the voice of Maui, his personal charm amplified to 11 by the over the top character design of the original movie. Here he's just plain old Dwayne, and he doesn't measure up. He looks tired, bored, out of place, and not having any fun. The fully animated Maui was larger than life, whereas Dwayne Johnson is just a guy in his 50's trying to roll with the kids.

The success of Moana 2 just a year and a half ago showed that audiences liked the animated incarnation of this world just fine, so why was this remake even made? I can understand how "How to Train Your Dragon" found an audience, as the original animated version had largely fallen out of the public eye over the years, but the original Moana and it's sequel are still VERY much in the forefront, so who did Disney think was going to show up to this 'reimagining'? Especially when it is a straight regurgitation that does NOTHING different. Every joke is here, with the same timing and delivery, yet only half the impact. It's lazy and completely unnecessary, and it doesn't feel like it was made for anybody other than the bean counters as Disney. They'll probably end up disappointed too given the limp box office.

[Mike Blakesley]

It's truly the movie nobody asked for.

On top of that they released it stupidly. One week after Minions, and only three weeks after their own Toy Story movie which was a big hit. So they are literally caniballizing themselves. Summer has three months in it...I don't get why these three movies couldn't have come out a month apart, instead of all in one month's time. They should have saved this one for August, 2029 or so.

The media is making things worse. Okay, so the opening weekend boxoffice was lower than expected. Here's a news flash: The tracking is almost ALWAYS off. Either things do better than expected, or worse than expected. So now here comes the media (not to mention "influencers"), plastering BOMB, FACE PLANT, DISASTER, FLOP, COULD LOSE $125 MILLION, etc. all over the damn place, even while most AUDIENCES ARE LIKING IT. So the news media is doing its damndest to turn people off to the movie, and undermining any chance it has to grow via word of mouth.

We have it coming in this weekend and people are excited, from what I can tell.

[Jon Dent]

Our turnout has been pretty modest. Not bad by any means but nobody is acting like it's a must see, and the Minions movie nearly beat it over the weekend.

As far as the media, what else is new, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't secretly hoping this movie's performance might turn Disney off on live action remakes for a while. I'm not optimistic that it will and I'm just dreading the live action "Hercules" that has to be rattling around somewhere in The House of Mouse's halls.

[Mike Blakesley]

It's kind of humorous to me. The bloom is off the Marvel rose (well, except for Deadpool), the shine has worn off of Star Wars, and now the remake goldmine is drying up. All of Disney's recent strategies have played out.

Hmm, maybe some original ideas would be good? Or maybe they can do edgy R-rated remakes of some of those Dean Jones comedies from the '60s.

At least the trailers for the upcoming "Hexed" and "Gatto" don't look bad.

Come on, Disney. Get your mojo back. You can do this.

[Steve Guttag]

This YouTube review by Snarky Jay is tough to top:

https://youtu.be/5uQ6qL-lyqA?si=nFwtLScaiK0lUfbL

Here is her opening line:

If you dream of giving your children a worse version of something they love, then go watch the new liveaction Moana movie, cuz that's all it is.

[Mike Blakesley]

Audience reviews are pretty glowing. The movie has an A- Cinemascore. The only ones doing all the griping and anti-promoting are the critics and "influencers."

Haters gonna hate.

[Steve Guttag]

I think what you have are those that did go to see it were predisposed to like it. We'll see if it has Lilo and Stitch like numbers (also one where the influencers panned it but it did $1B...a qualified success). I'll be honest, that one surprised me. I'm predisposed to not like live-action remakes (or remakes in general) but the change in story and meaning of Ohana...that was significant.

As to Moana...I couldn't tell you as I never saw the animated version. But, when I caught Snarky Jay's review...it seemed to be a theme of other reviews (shot-for-shot remake of an animated feature that wasn't very old and in most every way was worse than original in color and how what works with animated characters don't work with live ones).

I have no skin in the game beyond wanting cinemas to do well. So, if it does well...GREAT. I never root against movies (including ones I don't like). The only thing I root against are getting caught in some cycle of doing "more of the same" due to lack of creativity whereby we keep getting progressively inferior junk that leads to lack ot patrons. I want more patrons.

[Jose Gonzalez]

Ok... Who here knows something about who created the characters you see on the screen?

[Mike Blakesley]

^ ^ ^ That is a very generic question. If you want answers, be more specific. But keep in mind, our group here is mostly movie "exhibitors," not movie "makers."

You can probably find all you'd want to know about the filmmakers by looking up the movie on imdb.com.

Back on topic.

I can see why the critics are so irritated with this movie, considering it really offers nothing new from the 10-years-ago original.

What I find kind of odd is the fact they're making such a big deal about it being "live action," when it strikes me that at least half of not more of it isn't live action at all. Beyond people's faces and bodies, what else do you have? All the animals, probably most of the water, Maui's magical tattoos, and easily some of the scenery... all CGI. They should have said "live ACTORS."

[Jose Gonzalez]

There's a kind of charm in animated films that is difficult to obtain with "live action", beyond live actors.

An older but instructive book on the kind of artistic input for such is "The Art of Ratatouille".

[Leo Enticknap]

I'm a bit surprised that Moana (2026) hasn't triggered at least a moderate, in the arthouses resurgence of interest in Moana (1926), especially as it was some ways quite historically significant (primarily as the first Hollywood-produced feature to be shot entirely on panchromatic stock). I'm not a huge Flaherty fan - he did have an annoying habit of trying to make the exotic places he went fit stereotypes that were in his head before he even got on the boat, as was later, and hilariously, satirized in The Isle of Pingo Pongo - but the much earlier Moana is worth another look.

[Jon Dent]

Ok... Who here knows something about who created the characters you see on the screen?

If you're talking about the original animated movie, it was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, who were also behind the original animated Aladdin. Those guys are about as close to (still living) animation royalty as you can get.

For this "live actors" version, it's credited to Thomas Kail. He has an extensive theater history, including several Lin-Manuel Miranda plays, but based on just this movie it's hard to form an opinion of his cinematic directorial skills outside of mimicry.

[Jose Gonzalez]

Maybe someone can start a thread about the 'true' meaning of the commonly used terms of "animation" vs "live action" (or as some here want to use, "live actors".

This kind of distinction has been around since the beginning of civilizations, and later became known as such things as "caricature" vs "portraits", and things in-between (like "impressionism", etc), regardless of the tools used for rendering.

[Mike Blakesley]

This is supposed to be a live action movie but I'll bet about 40 to 60% of what you're looking at in any given scene is still animated (not counting the scenery, but a lot of that is probably animated too).

People here are universally loving this movie. As opposed to the critics, who really enjoy dumping on Disney whenever they get a chance and have done everything in their diminishing power to chop this movie off at the knees.

I haven't watched all of it yet, but I can say the songs are uniformly catchy. One of the songs is new, and I'm not sure which one it is, but they're all pretty good earworms.

The big cringe moment of the movie, for me, is near the end when the heroine is belting out the standard Disney Dramatic Affirming Song that all their movies have now, where the lead character asserts herself (it's always a "her") and proclaims once and for all that, by golly, she's going to prevail, conquer, defeat or whatever it is she needs to do, because she's the heroine of this movie and that's all you need to know. It ends with her bellering "I AM MO-AHH-NAAAA!!" with all the dramatic epicness she can conjure up.

It's like the Disney pendulum has swung too far the other way. We used to have the princess being a damsel in distress and it was up to the handsome prince to save her, but now the princess is a warrior who will kick anyone's ass who stands in her way, and will do it while belting a show tune at the top of her lungs.

I think Walt would say "Come on, guys. Let's find a balance here."

Oh well. I'm not complaining. It's bringing in good crowds and they're liking it, so I'm happy. Cringing, but happy.

[Steve Guttag]

Moana hasn't crossed the $200M worldwide yet. It had a 58% drop in its second week and isn't looking like it will make back its production cost, let alone promotion/distribution. It, clearly, isn't going to have a Lilo and Stitch like success or anywhere near it.

Conversely, Minions is heading to $400M and has already made its production/distribution money back (not that Hollywood math would ever allow that to happen).