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Disney's Moana, time for fish hooks

I think this is the best of Disney's musicals that they've done since the 90s. While I don't think any of the songs individually hit the showstopper level of Let It Go, there were no dud songs. While I don't feel that it is as good as Zootopia, Moana is still an amazing production. The visuals are breath taking, the score is amazing, and it feels epic in scope. While I do find it kind of annoying that we haven't had a truly great Disney villain since Doctor Facilier (Tomatoa is well done, but he's only in the one scene), the kind of road trip feel does kind of negate that problem. The only other problem is that it has a bit of a slow start, but their is enough character work that it mostly evens out. Overall I would give it a 49 out 53.
 
Just got back, echoing everybody else, very, very good - not quite the perfect Disney movie (that's their '90s oevre), but close.

Between this and Frozen, though, I am now more convinced than ever that Disney is now actively taking "working film into Kingdom Hearts" into consideration when writing. First Frozen has Anna and Elsa perfectly mirroring Sora and Riku such that when that world happens it can be used for KH-original character development and reflection, and now they literally have a monster created by removing somebody's heart.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Between this and Frozen, though, I am now more convinced than ever that Disney is now actively taking "working film into Kingdom Hearts" into consideration when writing. First Frozen has Anna and Elsa perfectly mirroring Sora and Riku such that when that world happens it can be used for KH-original character development and reflection, and now they literally have a monster created by removing somebody's heart.
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Te Ka would be a heck of a boss right, right?
 
Nashk said:
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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I knew it wasn't Curry on the grounds that Curry's not Polynesian. But yea, there's definite similarities of style!
 
DracoDracul said:
I think this is the best of Disney's musicals that they've done since the 90s. While I don't think any of the songs individually hit the showstopper level of Let It Go, there were no dud songs. While I don't feel that it is as good as Zootopia, Moana is still an amazing production. The visuals are breath taking, the score is amazing, and it feels epic in scope. While I do find it kind of annoying that we haven't had a truly great Disney villain since Doctor Facilier (Tomatoa is well done, but he's only in the one scene), the kind of road trip feel does kind of negate that problem. The only other problem is that it has a bit of a slow start, but their is enough character work that it mostly evens out. Overall I would give it a 49 out 53.
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I wonder if its the Pixar rubbing off on them. Pixar rarely has memorable villains, or even singular antagonists at all. And as was noted earlier, Disney recovered from their most recent dark age by injecting lots of Pixar into their work. Its probably not a coincidence that Princess and the Frog was both the last hand-drawn Disney movie and the last one to have a memorable villain.
 
firefossil said:
I wonder if its the Pixar rubbing off on them. Pixar rarely has memorable villains, or even singular antagonists at all. And as was noted earlier, Disney recovered from their most recent dark age by injecting lots of Pixar into their work. Its probably not a coincidence that Princess and the Frog was both the last hand-drawn Disney movie and the last one to have a memorable villain.
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Of course it has. John Lassiter took over as head of Disney Animation Studios and brought a lot of people with him. Oddly if anything the Pixar influence has never been higher than it was with Bolt which feels almost entirely like a Pixar movie.
 
DracoDracul said:
Of course it has. John Lassiter took over as head of Disney Animation Studios and brought a lot of people with him.
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Yeah, at this point, it's almost Disney Animation Studios just being the offices where the Pixar guys relocate to when they're working on Disney as opposed to Pixar movies, and the reason why they even do that is because Disney's obsessed with the appearance of keeping separate studios.
 
ussnimitz1968 said:
Yeah, at this point, it's almost Disney Animation Studios just being the offices where the Pixar guys relocate to when they're working on Disney as opposed to Pixar movies, and the reason why they even do that is because Disney's obsessed with the appearance of keeping separate studios.
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There's a lot of overlap but still some stylistic difference. Multiple studios allows more output too.
 
And allows for legal distinction if they ever want to spin off or sell Pixar to another studio, as sometimes happens with subsidiaries over the course of decades.
 
DracoDracul said:
Also I don't think their has been any cross over of directors.
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Technically they do if only because John Lassiter has sole or primary director's credit for the vast majority of the Pixar Canon, at least according to Wikipedia and IMDb. He seems to prefer being executive producer for the Disney Animation Studios projects, and for all I know that might end up being the primary difference (he still exercises a lot of creative and directorial control over said projects).
 
Q99 said:
I think same for writers too, or at least primary writers.
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Dan Gerson is credited as a writer for Big Hero 6 as well as both Pixar's Monsters movies and he's been tapped/has written for Cars 3. Though he may not necessarily be a primary writer, Wikipedia and IMDb are ambiguous on that but I'm willing to assume so since both credit him (apparently both Pixar and Disney animated movies tend to have a lot of writers). While not the same, Jared Bush, one of the co-writers of Moana, is also the co-creator of Disney XD's Penn Zero: Part Time Hero (which is quite shocking because quite honestly Penn Zero is pretty wretched, IMHO).

DracoDracul said:
I meant in a directing role.
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I said technically :p It's also a bit of a statistical outlier if you're trying to compare crossover directors, or if not statistically speaking, just really hard to do from an empirical standpoint because Lassiter is credited as the sole director for practically all but the now most obscure Pixar-specific films (this goes all the way back to Luxo Jr., Pixar's demo reel when they were still with Skywalker Ranch - yes, there's a George Lucas connection!) It'd be like trying to compare crossover commands with Starfleet captains who commanded USS Enterprise NCC-1701 and Starfleet admirals who encounter Kahn Singh.
 
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ussnimitz1968 said:
Dan Gerson is credited as a writer for Big Hero 6 as well as both Pixar's Monsters movies and he's been tapped/has written for Cars 3. Though he may not necessarily be a primary writer, Wikipedia and IMDb are ambiguous on that but I'm willing to assume so since both credit him (apparently both Pixar and Disney animated movies tend to have a lot of writers). While not the same, Jared Bush, one of the co-writers of Moana, is also the co-creator of Disney XD's Penn Zero: Part Time Hero (which is quite shocking because quite honestly Penn Zero is pretty wretched, IMHO).
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So, one notable overlap. Still pretty different bunches.

And yea, it's interesting how one sometimes sees good people working on not-so-great shows or, in some cases, people I know are pretty crap elsewhere having major roles on good shows.
 
Q99 said:
So, one notable overlap. Still pretty different bunches.
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But again, it's hard to just quantify in such a straight-up, one-for-one manner because John Lassiter is listed as director for Toy Story. 2. And 3. And Cars. 2. And A Bug's Life. And Monsters Inc. And Monsters University. And so on.

It's like asking if there's any overlap between all Starfleet admirals from the 23rd century and all Starfleet captains that were in command of ships named Enterprise and named James T. Kirk. It's very one-sided because one single person dominates that one side so overwhelmingly.
 
That's true, I don't know how many repeat writers are responsible for Pixar or other movies, I can look that up later.
 
DracoDracul said:
While I do find it kind of annoying that we haven't had a truly great Disney villain since Doctor Facilier (Tomatoa is well done, but he's only in the one scene), the kind of road trip feel does kind of negate that problem. The only other problem is that it has a bit of a slow start, but their is enough character work that it mostly evens out. Overall I would give it a 49 out 53.
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Just remembered- Kabuki in Big Hero 6 was pretty solid.
 
Wreck It Ralph's villain got pretty creepy too!

I agree that recent Disney animation hasn't been quite as focused as Reniassance Disney, but they are a lot more villain oriented than Pixar.


Also, side comment, after Moana I've been researching books of Polynesian myth a bit. Land of the Long Cloud is a really nice one with great water-color art, covering a number of Maori myths.
 
Q99 said:
I agree that recent Disney animation hasn't been quite as focused as Reniassance Disney, but they are a lot more villain oriented than Pixar.
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I do like stories that are highly focused (which is a little ironic since I can't seem to be capable of the same :p) and the Pixar approach of tending to shy away from a central villain is refreshing.
 
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