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Disney's Moana, time for fish hooks

How Pacific Islanders Helped Disney's Moana Find Its Way, the studio created a scholarly and cultural trust to advise them on Moana

Article:
When John Musker and Ron Clements told Disney Animation chief John Lasseter that they were interested in creating a new story based on the Polynesian demi-god Maui, Lasseter had one response: "Go research."

Clements and Musker have an even longer history at Disney than Lasseter does; as the writer-director team behind The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, they essentially invented the modern Disney animated musical. But Lasseter was clear: the project would not go any further until Musker and Clements actually went to Polynesia, marking the beginning of a process that makes Moana one of Disney's most culturally authentic endeavors yet.

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Musker and Clements's 2011 trip to Polynesia, the first of many, led to the birth of what they would later name the Oceanic Trust. Consisting of a group of anthropologists, cultural practitioners, historians, linguists, and choreographers from islands including Samoa, Tahiti, Mo'orea, and Fiji, this group was integral in shaping some of the finest details of Moana, from character design to song lyrics—and they certainly understand the skeptics who raised eyebrows when the marketing materials for Moana were first released.


Changes they made included changing the outfits of the wayfarers in the song (originally they had them dressed in Papua New Guinea formal wear!), adjusted Maui's design especially giving him more hair (representing his mana), and also made the first Tahitian-language track for a hollywood film.
 
I appreciate the mad max but they along with the 'break up' scene before they come back together could probably have been cut into without losing too much.
 
Man this movie was amazing. Visuals, songs, potshots at other Disney movies and tropes; everything was good.

Tamatoa was my favorite part hands down.
 
Soverihn said:
Man this movie was amazing. Visuals, songs, potshots at other Disney movies and tropes; everything was good.

Tamatoa was my favorite part hands down.
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I wasn't immediately grabbed when he appeared on the screen or even when the song started, but by the end, what a *great* song!

Way more threatening than I first though.
 
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Q99 said:
I wasn't immediately grabbed when he appeared on the screen or even when the song started, but by the end, what a *great* song!
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That song stuck with me throughout the entire movie. And I've been listening it for almost an hour straight since I got home.

Help me.
 
So how big a heresy is shipping Maui and Te Fiti? Out of curiosity, for a friend. Not my own fleet.

...yet.
 
Dream Logic said:
I appreciate the mad max but they along with the 'break up' scene before they come back together could probably have been cut into without losing too much.
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Once again, it was important to show precisely what kind of people were after the heart. The Kakamoa were sufficiently threatening as starter villains to establish Moana's moxie and the fact Maui actually knows how he's doing. Without it, we'd just have Maui getting beaten up by Tamatoa and then giving up quickly first round against Te Ka.
 
maskedanddanger said:
Once again, it was important to show precisely what kind of people were after the heart. The Kakamoa were sufficiently threatening as starter villains to establish Moana's moxie and the fact Maui actually knows how he's doing. Without it, we'd just have Maui getting beaten up by Tamatoa and then giving up quickly first round against Te Ka.
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They also introduce the paralytic darts that force Maui to teach Moana how to sail
 
Other stuff!

Two living parents. Both good parents at that, if overprotective dad (who is meanwhile grooming her to be Chief!).

And like this review says:

"they didn't name it Finding the Way.

they named it Moana."

It would've been pretty easy to give it a snappy, gender-neutral name, but no, they highlighted the woman protagonist.


Dream Logic said:
So how big a heresy is shipping Maui and Te Fiti? Out of curiosity, for a friend. Not my own fleet.

...yet.
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Their history makes that.... complicated ^^;

I could see Moana and Te Fiti....
 
Article:
Critics Accuse Disney of 'Culture Theft' Ahead of 'Moana' Release

Ahead of its debut, "Moana" has become the subject of criticism from some who say it inaccurately depicts Polynesian culture and exploits it for profit.
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The film pulls cultural aspects from multiple ethnic groups in Polynesia and represents it as one culture, Diaz, who is Filipino Pohnpeian and was born in Guam, said. Though he hasn't yet seen "Moana" in its entirety, he observed in trailers the inclusion of Fijian music, Tahitian drumming, and Samoan tattoos.
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"For all the bling, all the eye popping visuals, the beautiful music, amazing colors, it's the same old story of the Pacific existing to entertain, to mesmerize, to make modern humans feel good about themselves."
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"All that glitters is not gold. It's highly seductive, but the more seductive something is, the more you better be vigilant about how its power operates. The trick is about demonstrating how this benevolent narrative and iconography of the Pacific is actually insidious in how it advances and perpetuates colonialism."


To those who have seen the movie, how could it have been improved to not elicit such reaction? Or was it an impossible task for Disney to accomplish?
 
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The trick is about demonstrating how this benevolent narrative and iconography of the Pacific is actually insidious in how it advances and perpetuates colonialism."
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- We have studied the culture of Oceania to create an epic and unique adventure and give a new role model for people of color...
- GET BACK TO YOUR METROPOLY, FILTHY WHITE PIG
- But I'm a mouse...
- GET OUT
 
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Funny, I spent the whole film thinking how it was funny/sad that they were still going to be colonized.

Also I guess moana's tribe is a mix of everyone(movie would suggest they and other groups certainly could be have been cross populating)

Then again if Europe has frozen and tangled then who knows how the Disney world would go forward. I mean, it's pretty hard to invade when the ocean is sapient and hates your guts.
 
Q99 said:
"they didn't name it Finding the Way.

they named it Moana."
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I get what they're getting at and Disney will be more than happy to play up their suggestion but I think they're seeing the trees when for once they need to be looking at the whole forest (or whatever, that whole saying is somewhat linguistically ambiguous). "Finding the Way" is pretty meaningless and forgettable - but Moana, now that's snappy and memorable. I think even boys, with all the stereotypes foisted upon them, would rather see a movie that's marketed memorably (down to its title) with a clear girl protagonist than watch a movie whose marketing department goes out of its way to make it as gender-neutral as possible and consequently muddle up what the movie is about in the first place. Especially given the reputation Pixar and now Disney CGI movies have.

The reason why Tangled and Frozen were named Tangled/Frozen instead of Rapunzel/The Snow Queen (both were in development under those titles, notably The Snow Queen since the 1950s under Walt himself) was because at that time it was believed that fairy tale titles were essentially burned and that distancing them from the Renaissance Era (1989 or so starting with The Little Mermaid and ending in the early-mid 2000s) would be best from a marketing standpoint given diminishing returns from DIsney's animated and non-Pixar CGI movies at that point. It worked, but for those specific cases. Since Moana is not based on a fairy tale familiar to traditional Western audiences familiar with the Disney Animated Canon, that problem didn't exist with her/the film, and it works well. I for one hope it encourages Disney to explore female protagonists away from what had been the standard/tradition from this point (as Princess and the Frog and especially Brave seem to have had encouraged as well with their successes).

Khaos said:
Critics Accuse Disney of 'Culture Theft' Ahead of 'Moana' Release
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Khaos said:
To those who have seen the movie, how could it have been improved to not elicit such reaction?
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Given that openly shooting for ur-Polynesian (aka the people who colonized the Pacific from New Zealand to Hawaii) and extensively consulting with the various Pacific peoples managed to elicit this reaction from someone who did not bother to see the movie... not much, if anything.
 
ussnimitz1968 said:
The reason why Tangled and Frozen were named Tangled/Frozen instead of Rapunzel/The Snow Queen (both were in development under those titles, notably The Snow Queen since the 1950s under Walt himself) was because at that time it was believed that fairy tale titles were essentially burned and that distancing them from the Renaissance Era
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Also because Frozen is more Anna's adventure than Elsa's, and The Snow Queen's Sister would have been an utterly terrible name. :V
 
ussnimitz1968 said:
I get what they're getting at and Disney will be more than happy to play up their suggestion but I think they're seeing the trees when for once they need to be looking at the whole forest (or whatever, that whole saying is somewhat linguistically ambiguous). "Finding the Way" is pretty meaningless and forgettable - but Moana, now that's snappy and memorable.
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Or, say, "Ocean." "Waves". One-word non-name title. I'm sure they could've come up with something gender-neutral (or Maui-focused!)... and fortunately didn't.

They made a good choice regardless.

I think even boys, with all the stereotypes foisted upon them, would rather see a movie that's marketed memorably (down to its title) with a clear girl protagonist than watch a movie whose marketing department goes out of its way to make it as gender-neutral as possible and consequently muddle up what the movie is about in the first place. Especially given the reputation Pixar and now Disney CGI movies have.
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Yep, and I think people are waking up to that.


Khaos said:
To those who have seen the movie, how could it have been improved to not elicit such reaction?
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The only room for improvement would be having Polynesians in charge, probably. It's still two white guys directing. And by a big US megacorp with a rather mixed history using stuff from cultures that aren't theirs. But, with a ton of respect and a ton of involvement and engagement and hiring of Polynesians in tons of other roles, from the voices to the music, this time around.


Here's the thing about the 'critics' there- it's not, like, critical consensus that there's 'cultural theft'. It's some critics. And meanwhile, there's a ton of other critics, including lots of Polynesians or at least others invested in diversity, who absolutely love it and praise the respect that it's done with.

One thing that bugs me is when people go (and I see this in a few places, not aimed at anyone specific), "You can't win on these issues!" and it's like, one is never gonna get zero criticism on any issue whatsoever because that's not what criticism or creation is about. The piece of mass media that is immune to criticism even in areas it's very good in does not exist. And just as one doesn't throw one's hands up on music or plot structures, similarly I think people shouldn't see no-criticism on culture issues as a realistic goal. The goal is to make

"Most critics praise the use of Polynesian culture, though a few still have issues," is much more accurate a description here.
 
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Q99 said:
Or, say, "Ocean." "Waves". One-word non-name title. I'm sure they could've come up with something gender-neutral (or Maui-focused!)... and fortunately didn't.
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Fortunately indeed because both of those titles are horrible :p

If I'm arguing anything it's the notion that Disney prefers non-name or gender-neutral titles (though at one point they did, I'll get to that). The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Mulan - those are very much not gender-neutral titles and they're very memorable with a large multi-gender fanbase, though in at least some of those cases maybe only after the fact after those movies had become solid successes.

What happened was that there ended up being a string of forgettable failures after the turn of the millennium and Disney panicked and was willing to scrap anything and everything. They couldn't for the lives of themselves figure out why their films were suddenly bombing - yes at that time there was fierce competition from Dreamworks Animated and other studios including Disney's own Pixar (which was still at least a semi-independent company at that time) and animated movies were experiencing a slump overall (eventually taking out 20th Century Fox's traditional animation studio) but for whatever reason or another that probably amounts to pride in one way or another, they couldn't admit to themselves it's because their animated films had become shopworn and filled to the brim with cheesy, predictable tropes and even Flanderized elements across the studio and genre despite being distinct separate works at the expense of plot or character, or that on that note they were severely lacking in strong, memorable female protagonists (or characters in general) that had been traditionally and strongly associated with the Renaissance Era.

So because Disney "couldn't identify what the problem was" they were pretty much ready to burn the whole thing down and start anew (including a proposal to just shutter the whole animation department down and effectively permanently "internally outsource" to Pixar), and the end result was a few films for the most part being disastrous but at the last hour hitting mega-success with Tangled. That "permanently internally outsource to Pixar" proposal ended up being half-implemented by placing former Pixar head John Lassiter as head of Disney's animation at large and giving him huge influence over the entire corporation at large, something that eventually included fellow Pixar director Andrew Scanton being allowed to do John Carter for over in that other thread and Lassiter and other Pixar influence even filtering down to Disney Channel and Disney Channel Junior. And while Lassiter certainly wasn't against 2D or "traditional" animation (hence Princess and the Frog - see, another non-gender neutral title! - though it should be noted that Tangled, again when it was originally known as Rapunzel, was going to be 2D animated with some of the released concept art actually being very gorgeous but Lassiter insisted it was going to be a Pixar-style 3D movie) it's certainly resulted in an overwhelming preference for CGI/3D animation.

But again, at that time the thinking was that there was something wrong with the "old formula" period and not that audiences had just become sick and tired of lame stories that were increasingly getting away from memorable and strong female protagonists and characters in general so at that time they did want to move away from anything that resembled the old formula - including adopting a one-word gender-neutral title for Tangled. The influence of at that time Pixar's one Disney Princess Canon-like movie, Brave, probably had a lot to do with it too. Knowing what they were going through and understanding the context they were thinking through, it's easy to see why they went that direction, but after the fact of Tangled and Frozen it's easy to see why that temporary diversion away from titles strongly identified with the female lead had served it's purpose and now that they fixed what was truly wrong they can go back with Moana.

I think the actual title "Frozen" being one of the few points of the movie people most criticize has something to do with it too.
 
Did anyone else think Tamatoa was voiced by Tim Curry for a second? I swear a few moments during the song I thought I was getting an homage to fern gulley's "Toxic Love." I was so excited because I thought Tim had recovered enough to start acting again.

I think Mr. Clements could be able to fill Tim's niche if he ever wanted.
 
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