Disney's next big animated film, Moana, will be hitting screens this holiday season. We've seen how beautiful, and humorous, it looks, but now we finally get an idea about the story it will tell. The film has released a new TV spot as part of the Olympics and it shows us our first major interaction between Moana and Maui, and tells us a bit about the adventure that they're going on. Check it out.
While the previous trailers for Moana have introduced us to the characters of Moana and Maui, they haven't really shown us much about the story itself. While we don't get all the answers here, we do get Moana talking Maui into helping her save the world. We also get to see how she convinces Maui to join her by appealing to his ego. We have seen that Maui is a bit full of himself, there's a reason they hired The Rock, after all.
We know from the San Diego Comic-Con panel on Moana that the purpose of this quest is find, and return, the "heart of Te Fiki" a jewel that was taken, and lost, by Maui from the island at the heart of creation. Moana has been chosen by the ocean to go on this quest, we see this at the end of the trailer when Maui tries to throw Moana overboard, and the water brings her right back to the boat. The international trailer has also shown us that Moana has something of a unique relationship with the water.
Our favorite bit of this ad spot is seeing more of the character known as "mini-Maui." He's the tattoo of Maui that the demi-god has on his chest. All of Maui's great adventures exist as tattoo's on his body. Mini-Maui is the two-dimensional representation of Maui, who acts as his conscience. We see quite a bit from him here, which tells us that he's actually going play a pretty big role. This is probably good, as the way it stands, it looks like the bulk of the movie is going to be a two character show with Moana and Maui. Two of the characters in the film are animals, and as this will be one of the Disney movies where animals don't talk, we don't expect them to be taking very central roles. Moana and Maui will be spending most of the film on their own. It's rare for an animated film to have so few characters. It will mean that Dwayne Johnson and Auli'i Cravalho have a lot of work to do.
What do you think of Moana so far? Will this be yet another hit during a massive year for Disney? Let us know in the comments.
