"Together still, just a little different."
Hello everyone!
I actually think that Moana back in 2016 might have been the last good thing, but I digress.
I'd been wanting to see the sequel to that specific movie since FOREVER, but truth be told I just don't have the time nor energy to go into cinemas and watch movies there.
It's just so much more comfortable to do it in your own home.
Which is why, once it hit Disney+, it was really only a matter of time when I was going to have a peek.
This past weekend, after having an extended period off from work due to holidays, I finally got round to it, and honestly ... I have mixed feelings. I'll explain as we go along.
But first, grab your boat snack and boat snack upgrade, and make sure you've got your vocal chords all warmed up, because we're sailing beyond the horizon in Moana 2.
Now if you remember, back in the first movie, Moana's chosen by the ocean itself to basically rescue her people from their narrow living quarters, so she joins forces with demigod Maui (Johnson), and restores some balance back into the world as well as her peoples' destiny as voyagers.
In the second movie, almost a decade later, Moana's doing something else with her life.
Namely, she's sailing around, looking not just for other islands, but for other PEOPLE, because what are the chances that her tribe are the only ones in the entire world?
It takes her a while, but she finally finds proof - a broken shard of pottery - that others DID exist, and the pottery shard also gives her an image of an island that she has no clue about.
Couple that with being zapped by lightning during her village's ceremony for her to become Tautai - wayfinder, officially titled that is - during which the one ancestor that we all remember singing that iconic song during the first movie when she discovers they were explorers tells her that her people are on the verge of extinction; if, that is, she does nothing.
But if she goes and finds this island called Motufetu, and manages to reunite the People of the Ocean again ... well, maybe then things won't look so bleak.
Despite the fact her baby sister doesn't want her to go, her parents are way more supportive this time around than they were in the first movie, so Moana gathers a crew to take with her, consisting of a boat builder, a farmer, and the local storyteller.
Together - and with more than just a few issues - they make it to a giant ass clam in the sea that makes you think Scylla and Charybdis, and then the coconuts from the first movie reappear.
Turns out, they've been cut off from their home island too, and they've been looking, but the clam is kind of in the way (nobody explains why you can't go around the clam in the first place, but I assume it's magic and through it is the ONLY way), so they hatch a plan: Moana and her crew will use the paralysing toxin from the coconuts to get rid of the clam, then the coconuts will let them go on.
All well and good, except the coconut sent along to ensure mission success figures out that Moana's boat is never making it out, so he sacrifices all of them, and they get swallowed.
The clam is home to Matangi, another divine being that crossed paths with the gods and didn't fare so well. She also happens to have Maui all trussed up and caught, but while he gets rescued by Moana's crew (and adorably realizes Moana has to be here, as well, something he categorically did NOT want because of the dangers imminent), Moana gets to meet Matangi, who explains to her (in a song, of course) that there's always another way, not just the one you see immediately.
Upon getting out of there, Maui tells Moana she's kind of on a no-hope journey: Motufetu was sunk by Nalo, the biggest idiot of a god I have ever heard of, because he wanted to make himself stronger, so he thought that cutting the People of the Ocean off from each other would be the way to do it (as opposed to the way the Greek gods did it wherein the more people prayed to them, the stronger they were). Sinking the island and unleashing the mother of all storms over it means that literally no one can get there anymore - and to break the curse on said island, a human has to stand on its soil.
Maui's like, sure, I can lift it from the ocean if need be, but one of YOU needs to stand on it.
After being shipwrecked, and finding her ancestor's canoe on the slip of land they get stuck on, Moana's spirits sink, but Maui, being Maui, figures out that it's his turn for motivational speeches, and her team fixes their canoe so they can go on.
They hatch this brilliant nugget of a plan: Maui will neutralize the lightning tornadoes leading to the storm's center, so Moana & Co can sail in, but it quickly becomes obvious there's one big flaw in said plan.
Nalo doesn't care about Maui, but he DOES care about the humans.
So they change tactics and have Moana and the others draw the god's attention while Maui goes to lift the island up, only this fails as well, because he gets zapped, and his powers stripped from him mid-way to pulling the rock off the bottom.
Thinking the way Matangi taught her, Moana dives down into the ocean and manages to touch Motufetu just as she gets zapped by lightning for a second time - except this time it's in the water so, you know, game over.
Diving in after her, Maui finds her, unfortunately not among the living anymore, and he sings one of the old songs to try and kickstart something. Which he does, when her ancestors show up to sing with him, forming the symbol of the ocean that we've known from the first movie, and Moana wakes up with a dang cool new tattoo down her arm, as well as an oar that's kinda shiny with symbols on it.
Because she touched the island, however, the curse IS broken, Motufetu is out above water once more, and the different currents can be seen winding towards it, which, after Moana blows her conch horn, already starts working as other horns answer.
With other boats finally finding their way to the crossroads that had always existed before Nalo messed with them, Moana returns home - bringing the others along, because why not?
The movie ends with her, her crew, and Maui heading out towards the horizon once more, seeking new adventures, only this time, when she dips her oar into the ocean, the viewer sees Moana's got some magic of her own after being brought back to life.
Which she may need, based on the scene afterwards that reveals Nalo's already plotting his next move and potential revenge, opening up the door for a third movie.
The end!
Okay, so. I LOVED the first Moana movie. Like, loved, loved. So I was excited to watch this one, but immediately something felt off. And no, it wasn't just that the hair looked different on Maui and Moana both (which, it does), or that she was called Vaiana for the entirety of the movie (because of the most ridiculous reason ever that made me cackle, and it involves an adult movie star), but that the entire animation looked ... weird, to me.
Something was off, and to top everything, the songs didn't have the oomph that the first movie delivered, no matter the singing talents behind them, nor was Lin-Manuel Miranda there to write them like he'd been for the first one, which struck me as INCREDIBLY odd.
Overall, the movie was good, but a lot of flash without a lot of substance, sort of carrying an empty feeling rather than anything satisfactory.
Then I learned that it was supposed to be a TV SHOW following the first movie, and things started making sense.
Why did the animation look weird? They only worked on it slightly from what they had for Disney+; the songs were less bombastic and not by Miranda because they'd been initially worked for the small screen, not the big one, and there's a bunch of other stuff that only makes sense if you know this was meant to be a show before they hammered it out into a movie sequel.
It's an okay movie, don't get me wrong, but it does NOT deliver the same way the first one does. Equally, it's also not really addressed what happens with Moana at the very end: everyone keeps saying oh hey, a new tattoo, you got an upgrade, a little different, blablabla. But unless you're paying close attention, nobody really mentions that MOANA IS NOW ACTUALLY A DEMIGOD HERSELF.
Because instead of going off to do demigod things, the way Maui does, and shedding her human life from her, nothing really changes for her other than she now has a magic oar: she's still her peoples' wayfinder, still apparently slated to be chief, and honestly her life is the same as before.
Don't get me wrong, I don't need it word for word, but it's so obscure and not made a big deal out of that SHE'S NOW LITERALLY PART DIVINE that a casual viewer could just go, eh, whatever, when it's a pretty big deal, if you think about it.
So I don't know. I mean, I liked it, but it was definitely like one of those crispy puffs that have nothing in them but air once you crunch on them. It's okay, but it's not great, sadly. Hopefully, if there IS a third one, it's better!
xx
*images and video not mine
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