Martina Rosazza
Story Analysis for Moana 2 by The Walt Disney Animation Studios
When I was little we watched the episodic show Dragon Ball and we had learned that they would show one episode that was moving forward the compelling main storyline and then one that would be a boring filler. One time we knew that we were about to see the juiciest fight between the main character Goku and the villain Vegeta and we had already sat through the boring filler the day before so we were excited. The title of the episode “Goku and Junior learn to drive” appaered and you heard a “Noo!”. They had tricked us again with yet another filler. The scenes in Moana 2 are inconsequential and that feels like the whole movie is a series of those filler episodes. If one had to summarize The Lion King in the briefest way possible, they would still have to say “A king Mufasa has a son Simba and the uncle, whose succession in line is now threatened, tries to kill him but Mufasa dies instead. Simba thinks it’s his fault and runs away ashamed but eventually his friend finds him to remind him of his responsibility and the consequences thay are facing because of his choice so he ultimately fights Scar and becomes king”. If you had to summarize Moana 2 you would just have to say “Moana embarks on a journey to break a course and bring the people of the ocean together and faces many challenges to do so”. The challenges are the whole movie but if I took out all of those, made them the opposite of what they are or added different ones, there would be no substantial difference. Moana could have not had a sister, have two of them or have one that wants her to go on the quest and this wouldn’t actually change anything. There’s a song in which Moana tries to inspire her unprepared crew but I could make this that the crew is prepared and they all sing a song about how great they are, and that wouldn’t change anything. It could’ve been a storm of angry birds instead of the sea monster. This is because there isn’t a chain of events, there’s a series of stand-alone events. This makes it so the whole movie feels like stand-alone fillers because the plot line is so short that if Moana faced the big final “Vegeta” monster right away, the movie would last 10 minutes. If in comparison you tried to take any of the events in The Lion King out, the whole movie would change, because they are a chain of events. This isn’t a problem of the plot not being logical, it’s a problem of the plot being boring because it’s just many variations of the word “challenges” in the extremely short plot line that’s at the base. It’s great to add scenes for the sake of comedy/entertainment but they can’t be the whole movie, they need to be in between the “juicy Goku-Vegeta fight storyline”.
If the story structure is so weak, why was this rated at a 63% on Rotten Tomatoes? The reason is that Disney Animation is a master at creating powerful feel-good moments. An example of this is a 15 second sequence of Moana on top of a cliff, shell/horn sound/music in the background, she looks fiercely in the camera while her hair blows in the wind, energetically taps her paddle on the rock and we hear a powerful drum sound. This is a 15 second sequence, completely unrelated to the actual plot of the movie, which will make the average person feel the feeling of “powerful” and “brave”, which to most humans is a feel-good experience. Disney’s ability to do this is outstanding, and this is great and they should be more recognized and praised for their great talent in doing this. However, when a solid story structure is missing this will create the following two problems:
1- The studio is going to have to rely very heavily on this. If they don’t add one of these feel-good moments every few minutes, the audience will realize that they are bored because the actual scenes related to the actual plot are inconsequential. I believe Moana’s sister only serves this purpose as all of her scenes are feel-good moments related to the positive feelings associated with cuteness and tight family bonds. I would dare you to count the amount of feel-good moments in Moana 2 (which include when she’s powerfully sailing, when she speaks to the ocean, every interaction with her sister, etc.) compared to Pocahontas and Mulan, who also have some of this but in a significantly smaller amount because they have a good story structure below them.
2- This will make it so a movie which would be rated below 50% for the story structure alone will be rated 60-70% by most of the audience BUT it will never be enough to be rated 95-100%. This strategy will not make a masterpiece.
These feel-good moments are wonderful and that’s why we love animation and why we love Disney but it would be wiser to treat them like icing on the cake. You need to figure out your cake before putting the icing on top. If you forget to make the cake entirely, you’re going to have to fill the whole pan with icing.
Because this movie isn’t available on streaming yet I couldn’t do an act by act, scene by scene analysis but I was able to make some general considerations.
1) Moana loves to explore. This was the whole theme and challenge of her first movie. We also first see her in Moana 2 exploring, in search of other people. Then she gets tasked with the challenge of exploring to find other people and she suddenly needs to sing a song to herself to find the courage and will to go. Exploring to find other people is exactly what she wanted to do before the story even started, but yet once presented with the exact opportunity she’s been looking for she’s now conflicted on whether she wants to go or not.
2) Finding the new people doesn’t lead to some existential answer because Motonui never felt like it was the only place people exist. That isolation never seemed like a problem other than Moana wanting to leave and expand and live adventurously - which is per se a good goal - and I don’t think the story ever considered that all other humans are locked away due to an ocean curse. While this would have made this sequel very similar to its first movie, I still think it would have been better to use Moana’s own desire for adventure and expansion as her main goal to move the plot forward (similar to Ariel wanting to go on land) than a generic “there’s a curse on people we don’t know that needs to be broken” because the audience not knowing anything about those people makes it very hard to feel emotionally invested in their freedom.
3)If you asked people who watched this movie a week ago the names of the other characters on Moana’s crew I think no one would remember them. Yet, everyone knows Timon and Pumba by their names, personality, song and function in the story. The helpers needed to have a bigger role and function in the story for them to be memorable.
