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Our favorite wayfinder is back! Moana 2 hit theaters on November 27, 2024 and has already smashed box office records over Thanksgiving weekend, becoming the biggest 5-day debut of all time, the biggest Thanksgiving weekend opening, and the highest opening for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film. Beyond making box office history, the new sequel also released the film in Te Reo, a Māori-language version, making it the first animated feature to premiere in an Indigenous language version alongside the English language release, according to NBC News.
Starring Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Moana 2 takes place 3 years after Moana restored the heart of Te Fiti with the help of demigod Maui. Now, she’s on a new adventure, answering an unexpected call from her ancestors to embark on a new adventure. With the help of a motley crew joining her at sea, Moana must break a curse caused by the movie's new villain Nalo and reconnect the people of the ocean.
To some, Moana 2 may be seen as just another silly animated movie musical in the Disney universe. But for the Pasifika community, it’s much, much deeper than that — it’s our story, our culture, our traditions, our mana. The film dives deeper into Polynesian culture, from the traditional ‘ava ceremony to the characters themselves – Moni, voiced by Hualalai Chung, is the keeper of Motunui’s stories while Rose Matafeo’s Loto pays tribute to the genius engineering of the ships our ancestors used to sail across the sea, which makes it so much more authentic to who we are.
Not only do we get to see ourselves represented on screen, but we are represented behind the scenes as well. From Pasifika animators to choreographers and writers, the love, respect and care for the community can be felt on screen, through so many little details that we recognize and appreciate wholeheartedly.
“It changes the way you make choices I think as a storyteller, there's so much more support for the creative choices that you're making, but also I think we all felt a very strong sense of responsibility and to get it right,” Dana Ledoux Miller, who co-wrote and directed Moana 2 (and is also the first Samoan woman to direct a major studio feature), shared with Teen Vogue. “But when you're not the only voice in the room advocating for an entire cultural community, it helps because so often I think, as Islanders, we are the only voice advocating for ourselves in any project.”
Below, Ledoux Miller chats with Teen Vogue about the new film, representation, the live-action Moana, and the future of Moana’s story.
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Dana Ledoux Miller: I was watching daily the numbers going up and none of that really clicked. I think there's this disconnect. I'm just living my life and meanwhile there's millions of people out in the world going to see this movie. It doesn't feel like the same world.
But seeing the pride in the crew and how excited they were that people were seeing their work, I was like, yes, this was a thing that we made and we did, and it all just started to make sense. I think when I was just at home looking at the internet, it felt like a different reality, but then being with the community that made it and seeing their joy and pride, it kind of brought it all into perspective.
DLM: I will say I never in my life could have imagined this kind of an experience on this scale. The idea of making a studio film on this scale with so many Pacific Islanders, I couldn't have imagined that three years ago, let alone it happening to me.
We did have an incredible team. Our Oceanic Cultural Trust was, I don't know, 12 people or so, and Islanders from across the Pacific, not just from Polynesia, we had people from Melanesia and Micronesia. It was really incredible. It changes the way you make choices as a storyteller. There's so much more support for the creative choices that you're making, but also I think we all felt a very strong sense of responsibility and to get it right. But when you're not the only voice in the room advocating for an entire cultural community, it helps because so often I think, as Islanders, we are the only voice advocating for ourselves in any project. So we could lean on each other in a new way and I think inspire each other in different ways and hold each other accountable when we're like, ‘That's not exactly right,’ or, ‘That might be your perspective, but there's also these perspectives over here because we're not any of us the keepers of an entire ocean culture.’
DLM: It's exhausting. It makes it so challenging to be creative, to do your actual job, when you're also trying to track and manage and protect these things that are so important to you fundamentally as a human being. So you're doing double, triple duty sometimes and it wears on you.
DLM: Yeah, I'm sure not only are there so many stories to be told, and this is what it was like for me, is that so many of the times when we want to tell stories about Pacific Islanders or what it means to be from the Pacific in pitching, it's not that's just that you're pitching a story that's a good story. It's that you're also having to prove your value and you're worth in the story. People don't intrinsically see why our stories are important because there's just such a bias against the lens.
But I think what a film like Moana and now Moana 2 does is it expands people's understanding of who we are in a way that even superficially means that we don't have to explain ourselves as much. For the people who just need some sort of touch point that we're valuable, they could be like, ‘Moana, oh yeah, that made a billion dollars, so you must be worth something.’ To me it's like, okay, use that skewed lens to open the door and then do what you need to do.
DLM: 🎵We can go beyond what we ever thought possible.🎵
DLM: Is that going viral? I didn't even see that.
DLM: Yeah, the first film, it's a Polynesian story. That is what's set up. When we came into talking about making this second film, there were a lot of ideas that we really wanted to play with, but one of them was really thinking about this idea that I think is probably familiar to most Pacific Islanders, but that the ocean is what connects us, it's not what divides us. So I love this idea, we all love this idea, that Moana in the first film brings her people back to the ocean, but they've been cut off for 1000 years. They haven't been out on the ocean. They haven't been navigating and traveling, and so they're so isolated in this space. But the history of our people is that we traveled across the ocean and met each other and in meeting each other exchanged ideas and plants and all kinds of things.
So we thought it would be important that Moana, now that she's back on the ocean, start expanding her world. We just kept saying she wants to give her sister the whole ocean. That's what the future of her life as a leader would look like. But in doing that, I think we are very conscientious of the fact that the ocean includes so much more than just Polynesia. That in the Pacific we are, like you said, we are not a monolith, but that we are so many different people. We look different. We have different histories, we have different cultural practices and protocols. So we wanted Moana to open up the ocean to everyone and to, like you said, expand beyond Polynesia. I'm so excited that people are responding to that and recognizing that because our production designers and our artists spent a lot of time talking to our consultants about the nuance of what those canoes look like and what the clothing would look like, and it's all very specific so that people would see themselves in those designs.
DLM: I'm glad you think the island humor was there. That was very important to me. I'm like, we are not very serious people. We like to have a lot of fun. I would say all of those different characters were intentional in being added to the story, specifically to push Moana forward in her story because her name's in the title, she's the heroine, and everything needs to serve her personal growth, but it's multifold. I would say this is a story about continued growth and evolution and Moana learning that she has so much more to learn about herself than she realized at the end of the first film. But she also has to decide what kind of leader she's going to be moving forward. So part of that is embodied in each of these characters, I would say Simea specifically.
She's three years older, she's grown up a little, and now she has a little sister, which is such a special bond for her that it changes the way she understands the world. She knows the right thing to do to answer this call from her ancestors to go out to seek a better future for her people. [...] So it created a different emotional stake for her, but also at the same time pushes her towards the adventure even more because she's like, I don't want to leave you. I love you. It's so hard to say goodbye. But if I don't go, what kind of future will you have? So it was really a way to embody her call to adventure in that she has to leave because she wants to give her sister the whole ocean. She could stay, but that wouldn't mean creating the best possible future for the little kid that she loves the most.
Then with Matangi [played by Awhimai Fraser], I love Matangi. She's just such a strange mercurial character, but she kind of embodies a couple of things for us. In a movie about trying to connect to a bigger world and trying to understand that connection makes us stronger and is better for us as a community, we love the idea that we would have a character that was just isolated and she's been alone for a little bit too long. This is what isolation breeds. I don't know what's going on with her. But she is also someone that gives Moana a new perspective.
Then, yeah, the crew, we'd never seen Moana lead a crew before. She was on her own with Maui. That crew represents so much of us as Islanders. We did bring plants, we did create canoes. We're constantly evolving our technology. Moni I love because he's the keeper of our stories before the colonizers came and made us write everything down. So this idea that every one of them represents a bit of our indigenous genius was exciting to us. But also they're fun and they're also a constant reminder to Moana of what the stakes are because it's not just her life on the line, it's her crew, it's Heihei, it's Pua, who we really care about.
DLM: I have not heard anything, but I think Matangi has more to say. I think we just cracked the surface of her. There's nothing I can say for a plan for the future, but I love the way we ended the film in that Moana is a demigod now. We don't know what that means exactly. Nalo obviously has a vendetta against them for solving this…Who knows what’s possible?
DLM: I hope a lot. I would love for people outside of our community, outside of the Pacific, to see us in our fullness and that we contain multitudes and that we are not any one thing. Because I think when you open yourself up to understanding a new culture in a new way, you create empathy that wasn't there before. But also, I hope kids, not just kids, but kids come out of it excited about or understanding that you never stop. Grandma Tala says you never stop choosing who you are, that it's okay to keep discovering new things about yourself and growing and that your understanding of the world can change. Because I think when you're open to that, it creates, again, more empathy and the kind of person you are. Yeah, it's okay to grow.
DLM: Well, we just wrapped filming, so that's exciting. I am so excited for everyone to see the dynamic between Katie [Catherine Laga'aia], who plays Moana and Dwayne [Johnson], who's Maui again. I just think she's such an incredible talent and I'm excited to see that the world of Moana is expanding, not just in the sequel, but that there's space for all new interpretations and growth. I just think Tommy Kail is doing a beautiful job creating new emotional nuance and resonance. Look, more Moana.
DLM: Powerhouse. But also I've now seen Motunui and what they've done with that and just the level of detail in everything, but especially the costumes, unreal. Liz [McGregor], the costume designer on the live action, has taken such incredible care, and she's Tongan. She's taken such incredible care and crafting truly authentic, beautiful pieces that are also film costumes and can withstand the rigors of making a film. I'll say it right now, if she doesn't win an Oscar for those costumes, my mind will be blown. Truly spectacular.
