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Go behind the scenes of the live-action Moana with Catherine Laga'aia and Dwayne Johnson
Featurette: Walt Disney Pictures

Moana (2026)
Directed by Thomas Kail
Rated PG
Sailed 10 July 2026
#Moana

It’s too soon, but you’re welcome.

Warrior Face

It’s only been 10 years since Moana was introduced to the world. It’s a beautifully animated feature that still looks fresh. Everything about it – including Lyn-Manuel Miranda’s wonderful songs – still holds up now.

So, the big challenge this live action version of Moana must overcome is a sense of it being totally unnecessary. The result is a good movie that cost somewhere around $250 million. It’s good. It works. But $250 million should buy a great remake, not just a good one.

The new Moana, 19-year-old Catherine Laga’aia, makes an impressive feature debut. She’s supremely likable and enchanting in her own way; there are no complaints about her. Hopefully this will serve as the launching pad to a terrific career in show business. Dwayne Johnson reprises his role as the egotistical demigod Maui and, sure, he’s good, but he’s looking a little old. (Ah. The wondrous never-aging lifespan of an animated character.)

But did this new version accomplish its mission? Did it overcome that challenge of relevance?

No. It plays out as virtually a frame-by-frame remake that still somehow lacks the energy of those original frames. It lacks a reason to be. It’s unnecessary. And that’s a natural result of remaking a movie that has virtually nothing in need of fixing or refreshing.

Even rather obvious possible changes (purely for the sake of mischievous tinkering) are skipped, such as Maui’s unfortunate (and humorous) appearance as half-shark/half-man. Why not switch it up? Make him half-squid simply to try to give this version its own identity and move it out from under the huge shadow of its flawless progenitor.

Miranda wrote a song called Warrior Face for the original feature that was storyboarded but never completed. Why not go back and reimagine it for this version?

Nope.

But they did add Along the Way, a new duet composed by Miranda specifically for this movie. It has a cool factor: it features both the original Moana (Auli’I Cravalho) and the new Moana. Alas, it’s not imaginatively integrated into the movie’s action (think about all the tie-ins to the story’s themes of ancestry and heritage). Instead, it simply accompanies the end credits.

The Hook

This new Moana needed a new hook – not just Maui’s shapeshifter magical fishhook – but it didn’t get one.

That lack of playful inspiration is problematic not just for this movie, but for Disney as a whole. Of late, the Mouse House has struggled to make grand “event” movies that demand to be seen in the theatre. There’s an indifference to narrative ambition that no amount of exceptional technical finesse can overcome. Sure, Pixar’s Toy Story 5 is a huge commercial success and it tells a great, timely story. But much like the ultra-expensive Avatar movies, this Moana is a see it, enjoy it experience. Then move on.

It’s the same ho-hum response as Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu . None of these Disney mainstays should ever engender such tepid reactions. And now they struggle in the wake of Disney’s conflicting and confused Disney+ course and all its corrections. After all, Grogu first appeared on a streaming series as part of the launch of Disney+. Then came a course correction in which Disney tried to make his season 4 a theatrical movie to woo audiences back into theatres (before inevitably cashing in on streaming a few months later). On the flip side, the original Moana was a theatrical hit, but it gained greater and greater appreciation and enlarged its following thanks to streaming. Moana 2 was originally going to be a direct-to-stream feature before it was polished up for a surprisingly successful theatrical run.

Overall, it’s a devaluation of these treasured worlds that also desecrates the big-screen experience.

Ancestry

As it stands, this live-action Moana is technically fine. But even visually there isn’t much that’s added or meaningfully refined in comparison to the original, which used the latest and greatest in computer-generated animation software. Catherine Laga’aia and Dwayne Johnson are real-life humans, but virtually everything around them was built – get this – using the latest and greatest in computer-generated animation software. The crab. The lava monster. The Kakamora. The list goes on. And on.

This is director Thomas Kail’s theatrical feature debut, but he’s no stranger to musicals and music production, including the filmed version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton Broadway show for Disney+, as well as the TV limited-run events Fosse/Verdon and Grease Live! He has talent, but he needed to bring a fresh vision to this production instead of following 10-year-old blueprints.

Take it as a compliment the best fight the trolls residing in the internet’s underbelly could pick was about Johnson’s wig. He’s famously bald. Maui is equally famously not. There are no politics bashing this one against the shores. There are no controversial cast members. No alarming character revisions, such as the dwarves in the live-action Snow White that some found so disturbing.

All that said, the live-action Moana still tells the same story and it’s a worthy one.

At its core, this is still all about an ambitious girl wanting to make a difference in her world, one that positively extends out to the broader world around her. Much like the unfairly maligned Supergirl, released only a couple weeks ago, it’s a hero’s journey that transcends the physical actions. During the course of the movie’s action, Moana seeks to restore two things vital to her world: the heart of Te Fiti and the culture of exploration.

There’s a great line in here, to the effect of, “Who we wish we were and who we need to be don’t always match up.” That’s not a timely thought. It’s timeless. In this hero’s journey, Moana learns about who she is meant to be and she courageously rises to the challenge.

If this live-action version serves as the introduction for some into this world of Polynesian lore, storytelling and uplifting music, then more power to it.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.