Moana's Live Action Remake??? My Thoughts

I wrote this Tuesday morning when I saw the news. 

I saw that the Rock announced on FB yesterday that they’re going to make a live-action version of Moana. Which is great! I love Moana and I think a live-action version could be a great way to once again highlight and celebrate Polynesian culture. I was born on Hawai’i and spent my first several years there, and I still have fond memories of the culture and am proud to see it anywhere. 

However, now that I’ve spent more than a second thinking about it, I have thoughts about how production could go. It’ll be uniquely challenging because live-action is harder to do, but also uniquely authentic because the natives and materials and places will be real, not just images in a computer. They’re probably gonna shoot a lot of it on indoor water sets, let’s be honest, but there’s still room for authenticity. 

They’ll probably shoot in California. It’d be nice if they could shoot in New Zealand, since that’s got a huge Maori population and has cutting edge studios from Weta, the Lord of the Rings studio, but since it’s a Disney product they’ll probably wanna keep things in-house. 

My first thought about this is that this is going to be a huge boon for the PCC - the Polynesian Cultural Center. Moana already has been, and this’ll give them a “Moana boost” again. But I also think the live-action production would benefit from consulting with them. I’m sure they already do or do a version of it to some extent. But if this is gonna be some iconic distillation of Polynesian - or Islander - culture, then they really ought to pull out all the stops. 

Production

One of my first thoughts - have seven tribes on the Island of Motonui for the seven nations - Fiji, Hawai’i, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, Rapa Nui. I couldn’t remember all the names and just looked some up just now, and apparently there are technically more than just seven and maybe the labelings change around, but that’s the basic version. I was just going off of remembering the PCC having seven different nations. I remember Fiji, Hawai’i, NZ, Tonga, and Samoa, and the other two I’m just going off of what the PCC website says. But apparently that’s what they’re repping currently. 

But anyway, at least seven tribes on the island for each nation. Maybe characterize the voyager flashback characters differently. In the movie the voyagers apparently sing in Tahitian. Tahitian is one of the smaller associated islands. I don’t know why they used it for the movie, maybe it rolled off the tongue best or the cultural consultants Lin Miranda was working with knew it best and were most comfortable adapting it to song. 

The problem with a live-action movie is that the animated is so good it’s kind of hard to adapt it in a way that isn’t just shot-for-shot. Like, the set pieces are really good, the sequences are really good, the mix of music and visuals are really good, the pacing and length are really good. It’s almost like the old adage about remakes, “If you’re not gonna remake it better, why remake it at all?” What unique things can we add to it to make it more interesting? Other Disney live-action remakes tend to expand the plot and add subplots to explore the subject matter - usually subplots with the prince or society they’re in to add some court politics and so on. The problem is the Moana film is pretty tight narratively; it stays on Moana and Maui for like 90% of the runtime. There aren’t a ton of characters to have multiple plot threads swirling around to extend the runtime. 

Hm, despite all that, the original's runtime is an hour and 53 minutes (subtract ~five minutes for credits), which is still pretty long! Maybe not so much of a problem! 

What Could Live-Action Add?

A book my mom used to read to us when I was a kid

But regardless, I’ve actually already thought of some things - 

Maui flashbacks - have more flashbacks of Maui doing his mighty feats instead of just showing it on his tattoos. Really use that budget. Big, "When Titans Clash" imagery. 

An extended prologue - maybe spend more time on the formation of the islands imagery and on sea monsters and on the gods. Really flesh it out and make it look cool. I think the imagery of the gods could really be cool. Like truly iconic. I think of how Taika Waititi included a Maori goddess in the pantheon scene in Thor: Love and Thunder. 

They could have a more elaborate framing device than the one we see in the original - a culture AFTER the end of the movie telling the tale of Moana. Would let us have more of the island characters and a more at-length depiction of them in addition to what's already in the film. Would probably add a solid five minutes. 

The thing is that Moana is very fast-paced, in a way that works very well for modern audiences. So I don’t necessarily WANT to extend the sequences or musical numbers. But I guess that doesn’t have to be the worst thing. Think about it like Lord of the Rings - extended sequences to relay comparatively simple points, but the delivery is always interesting and logical enough that it doesn’t feel like padding; more like giving us more time in this interesting world. 

They seem like they’d shoot in California, but maybe they’ll shoot in Hawai’i for the outdoor scenes, and then on set for some of the other scenes. A lot the film is like Life of Pi - people alone on a boat in the open ocean. But they actually filmed that on a big pool set and it looks great. 

Casting

The Rock’s gonna be Maui, and that works great. Casting Moana will be an event - I’d bet on that big-eyed girl from Mormon Messages right now - but there are many very talented young women who could play the part. This is really a sought-after role, I think there are a lot of girls now who could say they’re dying to play this part and that have the necessary qualities. 

Hopefully they can get Temuera Morrison to play the dad. But also once again there’s many good candidates. It’s just they already have him “in-house” doing the Boba Fett series. 

Oh, silly me. I just looked it up and he also already voiced the dad. I knew there was something familiar about the character, I just didn’t want to assume. So yeah, they get him. 

I’m looking at Moana’s voice actress, and she looks close enough to the part that maybe they could just reuse the whole animated cast. 

I think it would be fun to find more ways for contemporary islander actors to be in the film. I thought about this for a bit, and it would be nice if we could throw Jason Momoa and Manu Bennett in there somewhere. They don't HAVE to be, but maybe they'd find it fun. Off the top of my head, they could cast Momoa as the Voyager Chief in the flashbacks. 

When it comes to making some perfect distillation of islander culture, I don't know everything. These are just preliminary thoughts. So please don't think I think everything that encapsulates it is what's at the PCC and what actors are on TV. 

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I think my overall takeaway is that the original is already such a good production and the required elements for production already seem to be so well in place, the main question is are they going to mess it up at all? And there’s a good chance they won’t!