The following contains spoilers for Moana 2.
In the modern media landscape where streaming has become a major part of every movie studio’s production, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what qualifies as a television show and what’s a movie. Streaming platforms provide both in equal measure. Some streaming movies may get released in theaters, while others do not. Often a brand new television show feels like little more than an extended movie that’s been chopped up into smaller segments. With that being the case it’s probably not that surprising that Disney+’s new Moana 2 actually began life as a television series before being repurposed and added to the list of upcoming Disney movies.
When Moana 2 was announced, it was promoted under the idea that the series was turning out so good that it needed a full theatrical experience. As somebody who has seen the film, I certainly can’t disagree that much. If nothing else Moana 2 is visually stunning. The animation is some of the most beautiful that we’ve seen from Disney or any other animation house. Seeing it on that giant screen is certainly more impressive than it would have been watching it at home. Having said that, I sort of wish we could go back in time and watch the Moana Disney Plus series because I think it might have turned out better.
Moana 2 Is Good, But It Never Reaches The Heights Of The Original
To be clear up front, Moana 2 is a good movie. It’s actually a really good movie. Critics are right that the Moana 2 music doesn’t reach the heights of the original film, but most of the movie still works. While Disney, a studio previously averse to making theatrical sequels to its feature animation, has been doing a lot more sequels of late, none of them have shown a character truly age and mature in the way that Moana does here.
Moana 2 has real heart, there are some strong emotions packed into the story. And yet, the movie feels incomplete. It’s hard not to feel like pieces are missing in Moana 2 that we would have gotten had it been a six, eight, or 10-episode Disney Plus series that obviously had to be trimmed to fit into a feature-length run time.
It Feels Like There’s An Interesting Story In Between The Edits
While we don’t really know exactly what the plan was for Moana the Disney Plus animated series, we can guess that the show would have been somewhere between six to 10 episodes with run times of approximately half an hour, if not more, per episode. Even at a conservative estimate, that gives us a full run time that’s about double the length of the 100-minute movie that was just released
Obviously, if this had been a Disney Plus series there would have been more in the story. At whatever point the transition was made to turn Moana the Disney Plus series into Moana 2 the movie, sacrifices had to be made and those sacrifices feel pretty obvious.
While Moana’s story feels pretty complete, Maui’s story does not. When we first meet him in the film he’s already off chasing Matangi, the film’s apparent big bad. The reason that Maui is chasing after her isn’t made clear, and later, when we learn Matangi’s true motives, it all becomes less clear. The film indicates that Matangi and Maui have a past, Dwayne Johnson said as much in interviews, but we never learn what that past entails or how it relates to the current conflict. Clearly this is cutting room floor material.
Mantanagi is teased as the major antagonist of the film. That turns out not to be the case, but because of that, she’s actually barely in the movie and seems to exist strictly as a device to move the characters from one place to the other. It’s not hard to imagine that in a longer version of the story we would have spent more time with her and we would have understood her motivations better. She would have been a character, not a tool.
Moana 2’s New Characters Get The Short End Of The Stick
Matangi is far from the only character who gets short-changed in this way. Moana has a crew working with her this time around. She brings three fellow villagers with her on her quest, Loto, an engineer, Kele, a farmer, and Moni, an emergency holographic Maui, who is strong, and knowledgeable when it comes to the stories of Moana’s people.
These are three fun and interesting characters and they have absolutely nothing to do in this movie. It’s difficult to find a single way the story would unfold differently if they were simply not there.
With the exception of the fact that Moana’s boat eventually needs to be repaired, none of the specialties of these crewmen come into play over the course of the story. They have no character arcs of their own. They just seem to be there for comic relief, but then, that’s what the pig and the rooster are for.
If I was staring at multiple scripts for a television series and was told that I needed to trim it down so that it would fit into the length of a feature film cutting out the back stories and the subplots involving side characters is exactly where I would start. It feels like that was what happened with Moana 2.
And I want these characters’ backstories. I want to know their conflicts I want to see them change and grow over the course of the story. They were fun and interesting. I was curious about them. The movie was not.
Maybe We’ll Get A Moana Series After All?
I’m still hopeful that maybe someday we’ll get the Moana series that Moana 2 was originally going to be. The movie does have a mid-credit sequence that teases a follow-up. Had this been the Moana Disney Plus series, then this clearly would have been a setup for a follow-up season of the show. With it occurring in a theatrical film, this could potentially set up an actual Moana Disney Plus series or possibly a third Moana theatrical release.
I’m good either way, I love the original Moana and I like Moana 2. If we get more with these characters, then maybe we’ll finally get the depth that Moana 2 was ultimately missing.