Alright kids, put down your TikToks and your Roblox and your [checks notes] Skibidi Toilets. It’s time for a history lesson, because “Moana 2” isn’t just a movie. It’s a throwback to a long-lost historical era when sequels usually sucked. Why we’d want to throw back to that I have no idea, but I guess everything old is new again and Disney is, if nothing else, a nostalgia factory.
There was a time when saying “sequels suck” wasn’t just pessimistic, it was stating a statistical average. There were always noteworthy exceptions but for most of the 20th century, follow-ups to great and/or popular movies were usually less great and less popular. Often they were just shameless excuses to crank a few extra dollars out of the audience, so they fell into obscurity quickly. “Three Men and a Little Lady” did not do justice to “Three Men and a Baby.” “The Legend of Zorro” is not mentioned with the same reverent tones as “The Mask of Zorro,” if it’s ever mentioned at all. And hey, remember “Splash, Too?” There was a “Splash, Too.”
There were always exceptions, but in the last couple decades attitudes towards sequels have changed, and films that might previously have been lazy cash-ins now have bigger ambitions. They cost more, not less. They expand on stories and characters instead of merely rehashing them. Recently we’ve been treated to great sequels like “Inside Out 2,” “Smile 2,” “Dune: Part 2,” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” Sequels aren’t just big business. These days they’re frequently as good as, and sometimes even better than, the original.
The discussion of great sequels brings us back to “Moana 2,” a film which does not qualify. The follow-up to one of Disney’s modern classics returns to ancient Polynesia a few years after our young hero, Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho), and the boastful demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) gave back a god’s missing heart, saving Moana’s people and redeeming Maui for his worst mistakes. Moana proved that her people’s isolationism was misguided and Maui became a better person. They earned the audience’s emotional investment and went through some danged good character development while singing super-catchy songs.
“Moana 2” goes in another direction, giving emotional investment, character development and catchy songs a miss in favor of… stuff. The characters have nowhere left to grow, so they just do stuff. Moana’s people are super happy. She’s searching the seas for different civilizations and she’s pretty happy. Maui spends the first chunk of the film kidnapped and getting puked on, so he’s not happy, but it’s not because he has to mature as an individual, it’s because he’s kidnapped and getting puked on. When Moana receives a vision telling her to follow a shooting star to a long-lost island which used to connect the many people and cultures of Polynesia, she does that thing. She’s good at it the whole time. Maui comes along and he also helps. Eventually the plot is resolved and everyone’s happy about it. Whee.
It’s tempting to say that the story of “Moana 2” is so perfunctory that it plays like a straight-to-video release, but even Disney’s old cast-offs had more oomph than this. “The Lion King 2” had serious interpersonal conflict. Heck, even “The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning” had some cogent social themes and halfway decent melodrama, and that was just because it knocked off “Footloose.” It’s more accurate to describe “Moana 2” like an episode of a mediocre “Moana” television series (which is what the sequel was originally supposed to be), where the characters remain relatively static and merely respond to whatever crisis emerges each week. All that matters is that they get out of the house, not what they actually do.
But since it’s in theaters, all that matters is if Disney gets the audience out of the house. And they probably will, because on the surface “Moana 2” ticks off a lot of boxes. It’s bright and colorful, even if the characters look more plasticky and doll-like than usual. It’s got a bunch of peppy songs, even though none of them are memorable whatsoever. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the musical numbers in the original “Moana” and his style is so distinct that all the sequel’s songwriters can’t quite recapture his vibe, let alone his catchiness and lyrical ingenuity.
There’s nothing particularly terrible about “Moana 2,” but the fact that it’s necessary to write “there’s nothing particularly terrible about ‘Moana 2’” means something still went wrong. The film throws in new supporting characters to jazz things up — played by Rose Mateo, David Fane and Hualālai Chung — and they’re reasonably fun and funny but they don’t make the film’s journey any more meaningful. They’re archetypes, not rich characters. One of them doesn’t even help with the plot, he’s just there to be a Grumpy Gus and justify one of the film’s (too many) songs about cheering each other up. They add a little novelty into the mix, but not much more.
One gets the sense that “Moana 2” is mostly a set-up for future films in the series. It’s an intellectual property exploitation starter kit, a humdrum act of corporate mandate instead of a story that needed to be told. Even the suggestion of what could come in “Moana 3” feels arbitrary, like they pulled a sequel tease out of a hat full of tattered old sequel teases. It’s a film that’s holding back.
Maybe a future installment can build on what “Moana 2” sets up, but this set up makes future installments a lot less appealing. It’s a generic, forgettable sequel wearing expensive blockbuster frippery.
What can we possibly say, except “No thank you?”
“Moana 2” opens exclusively in theaters on Nov. 27.
