The title heroine is a self-confident doer – and not a princess.
Photo: Disney
“No, I’m still not a princess,” says the title heroine in the Disney animated film “Moana 2” to the demigod Maui, with whom she has to go on a whole series of adventures. The sequel to “Moana” (2016) is likely to be the most action-packed animated film that Disney has produced to date. At the center of the story is a young girl who races across the ocean standing on a catamaran, who doesn’t put up with anything and is not a princess.
Princesses just aren’t that popular in the Disney universe anymore. The proletarian Asha also recently shone in “Wish” (2023), who successfully fights against an authoritarian king. And “Everything’s Inside Out 2” (2024) also doesn’t have a princess. The Pixar film produced by Disney became the most successful animated film of all time within a few months, with sales of one and a half billion dollars. The cash register is currently ringing at Disney after “Lightyear” (2022) and “Strange World” (2022) also flopped at the box office due to corona.
Financial expectations are high for “Moana 2,” which opens in the USA on Thanksgiving weekend and attracts people to cinemas here in the run-up to Christmas. The fairytale-like material about the myths of Pacific Islanders, who are otherwise heavily underrepresented in film, as a study in the USA recently found, is so successful that Disney is now planning a live-action film.
The first part of “Moana,” which, like the sequel, does not have a love story, is considered Disney’s feminist flagship. The title heroine is a self-confident doer, and the figure of the male demigod Maui, who fights alongside her and has superpowers, is the subordinate sidekick. In the new adventure you go on a long journey across the sea to find out something about your own ancestors and to acquire your own history, which was forgotten and buried by the curse of an authoritarian god, as was the Pacific community of various islanders.
In addition, Moana becomes the leader of a small group of islanders whose composition wonderfully overturns conservative gender roles. In addition to the grunting pig and the cross-eyed chicken from Part 1 and an old, grumbling man who can’t even swim, another young woman with a queer hipster hairstyle is in the party and acts as a kind of carpentry chief technician on the large catamaran with which the group races across the sea towards their adventure. There is also a beefy, strong young man whose expertise lies in knowing the history of the islanders and making it visible in the form of artistic paintings.
Moana becomes the leader of a small group of islanders whose composition wonderfully overturns conservative gender roles.
As always, this is enriched with lots of music, which guarantees the Disney Group additional income and means that the soundtrack of the animated blockbusters constantly fills local children’s rooms with sound. With musical accompaniment, the troupe has to cope with a visually stunning and almost breathtakingly staged adventure with arrow-shooting coconut corsairs, a bat demigod and a huge sea monster until they finally find the mysterious sunken island in a huge storm. After a hard fight against the curse, it is made accessible again and develops into a hub for uniting with other islanders in a diverse collective and being able to access one’s own history again, beyond the alienation and isolation imposed by the curse.
Of course, this can be understood as an allegory for the often-cited division in society caused by right-wing mobilization and the hate speeches of Donald Trump. This interpretation may not be immediately apparent to young viewers. But it becomes clear that it is worth standing up for your friends and fighting against authoritarian constraints that seem inevitable.
But even though Disney’s productions clearly oppose all forms of discrimination and create a progressive and diverse narrative for children and young people, the company recently gave in to a right-wing shitstorm. The Star Wars series “Acolyte” (2024), produced by Disney and worth seeing, was canceled after just one season despite originally different plans, after the makers were hit by review bombing from right-wing trolls. The series not only had an extremely diverse cast, but also contradicted some of the basic rules of conservative Star Wars with a story about a queer witch matriarchy that extensively and without any political ulterior motive used the “power” otherwise reserved only for celibate Jedi Knights universe, which brought right-wing incels onto the scene.
It remains to be seen whether Disney’s political performance will also change with the change of power in the USA. Until then, Moana sails towards new adventures with her friends.
»Moana 2«, USA 2024. Director: David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller. Book: David Derrick Jr. 100 min. Now in the cinema.