Entertainment Weekly has shared a new look at Moana 2.
What’s Happening:
- In preparation for Moana 2’s November release, Entertainment Weekly has published their virtual cover story highlighting the upcoming film.
- Moana is now 16 in this new film, following a similar path that voice Auli’i Cravalho has taken in her own life. Once new to the world of voyaging/acting, both Moana and Auli’i have grown into strong and vulnerable figures, Cravalho mentions.
- Cravalho was able to take a larger leadership role during the production of this film, speaking up with notes for line readings, song lyrics, and overall questions about Moana as a character.
- In Moana 2, as a leader of the people of Motunui, a call from the ancestors sends her back to the sea with a large crew in the hopes to find other islands and communities to band together with in the hopes to keep themselves strong and lively.
- Cravalho states that the new movie is “far more forward-looking,” allowing Moana to look not just at her people’s history, but a larger look at that of the Pacific Islands.
- While many people have been skeptical of the move from Disney+ (originally set to be a Disney+ original series) to theaters, Jennifer Lee says that the story “creatively evolved and it felt like an organic thing” to make the jump to the big screen.
- However, with the jump from episodic storytelling to a feature length film, some of the new characters’ arcs had to be slimmed and their musical moments had to be cut. This includes new characters voiced by Khalessi Lambert-Tsuda, Hualālai Chung, David Fane, and Rose Matafeo. Yet, co-director Dana Ledoux Miller stresses that all the time they worked on the characters for the show allows for them to feel immediately richer in the film.
- Dwayne Johnson shared that Maui’s ability to ask for help, a key point in Moana 2 after Maui runs into Matangi, a character with a shady past, is part of the character’s superpowers and masculinity.
- With Moana and Maui now on “more equal footing,” they’ll have to band together against Nalo, the god of storms, who is working to keep humans isolated.
- The new musical duo on the film, Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, worked on pushing Cravalho to showcase her vocal evolution as an artist and as a character, introducing more adult melodies and notes to showcase Moana’s leadership role.
- Moana’s big solo in the new film, “Beyond”, is described as “a little darker” and “more vulnerable” since the stakes have grown exponentially for the character.
- The first new song from the film, “We’re Back”, debuted at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event with a live performance by Auli’i Cravalho.
- You can read the full cover story from Entertainment Weekly here.
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