Moana 2 is a significant box office hit, for better or worse. The sequel has now broken records such as the highest global opening weekend for an animated movie. With $439.7 million made against a $150 million budget, the film is projected to make more money than its predecessor. However, the production did not come without problems. Because it was initially developed as a TV series for the streaming service Disney+, Moana 2 was only transformed into a movie in February. This left the crunch time as the most significant factor impacting the movie’s success.
Despite the film’s potential as the sequel to a beloved original — a touching movie that showed promise for Disney Animation’s future — Moana 2 has now raised more concern than ever for that same department. The quality of the movie rests on positives such as the admittedly underrated songs and expansive representation of Polynesian culture and character, and the negatives, which include undeserved and poorly set up emotional beats as well as unnecessary side characters. Ultimately, the best way to describe the movie is rushed. Some elements make for a cohesive film, yet, from the clam’’ opening and the Kakamora’s entrance, to Maui’s story intersecting with Moana’s, to the final godly thunderstorm, it is undeniably easy to see where the projected TV show was supposed to be. This pacing flaw perfectly represents the stitched-together nature of Moana 2, encapsulating another problem with modern Disney animation.
Disney’s recent quality control, as a whole, has been questionable. From mediocre premises such as the live-action remakes to modern animated failures such as Strange World and Wish, Disney’s recent outputs have been quite mixed. Because follow-ups to films like Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph were critically received worse than the originals, Moana 2 following in these footsteps is not surprising, nor all too impactful.
The reason behind this disappointing newest entry into the Disney canon is the fact that it was not animated by the main Disney Burbank Studios but rather by Disney’s Vancouver studios. Animating internationally is almost always cheaper for a studio — especially when the animation is not for a significant part of the studio’s catalog, but for a TV series going straight to streaming. Because of this, Disney typically animates their lower-budget shows at the Vancouver studio. The animation in Moana 2 reflected this heavily, as facial expressions were stiffer and character movements were less dynamic. Even seemingly unrelated elements, such as the water character’s screen time, were impacted. This is partly due to how expensive it is to animate liquid objects and their consistent movements and clarity. In the sequel, the water character was written entirely out of the third act of the movie, and appearances were limited to simple acknowledgments and high fives — as is par for the course to save money. As seen above, the center points of concern for animation arrive from a continued pattern.
Moana 2’s production as a forcibly shoved-out and rushed movie will only lead to more stress put on animators. Upon seeing the success of the box office, Disney has likely realized two important truths. The first is that quality does not matter so long as they follow the Pixar trope of mass-produced sequels over original stories. The second, which is arguably worse for the industry’s health as a whole, is that putting stress on the animators while paying less will produce the same profit as nourishing and caring for the team behind the film. In animation today, it’s true that we’ve already seen animators have to juggle extra tasks as they are demanded to do more for less. With the advent of Moana 2’s success, however, there is only room for this issue to get worse.
The animators at Disney had less than a year to stitch the movie together. With no noticeable reports of pay increases or bonuses for the film’s animators, Moana 2 only continues to normalize this behavior. The suppression of artists’ rights and health in the industry has continued dwindling as products like these encourage crunch time and unhealthy production cycles. Overall, Moana 2’s incredible landing has only hurt the future of Disney’s mainline animation studio and has cemented the groundwork for the continued mistreatment of artists as a whole.
