(RNS) — In the stormy skies above Oceania, an evil god and his demon minions battle a well-muscled, shape-shifting demi-god, while down below a plucky, bronze young woman rides the waves, cheering her sidekick on to help save her people, with clever lyrics, exuberant singing — and some not incidental theological insight.
“Moana 2,” which helped Hollywood set a new record for Thanksgiving weekend box office receipts, is another step for Disney in broadening its faith palette, probing deeper — and positively — into the Polynesian cosmology introduced in the original “Moana” in 2016.
Three years after the events of “Moana,” the young Polynesian woman’s quest is set by dead ancestors — her grandmother and a legendary navigator — to find and restore the island of Motufetu, once an idyllic meeting place that connected all of Polynesia’s navigators. These sailors from the far reaches of the southern seas — the predecessors of “wayfinders” like Moana — found on Motufetu a place to share their knowledge. But the island was “cursed by a power-hungry god,” Nalo, who sank the island to the bottom of the ocean to end the cooperation.
To ensure the authenticity of their dive into Polynesian traditions, Disney animators put together more than a dozen experts from throughout the Pacific Basin, called the Oceanic Cultural Trust, to advise them. (Members of the trust did not respond to repeated requests for comment on how their process worked.)
Teaching tolerance and understanding never has been Disney’s primary goal of these full-length animated features: Since “Snow White” in 1937 began the parade of princesses, profits are. With the original release of “Moana” and others since then, the studio has found its golden mean: Doing well at the box office while doing good — in this case engaging young viewers in a different faith tradition.
“Moana 2” film poster. (Image ©Disney)
With both Moana films, it has achieved that goal.
Beating expectations of opening weekend ticket sales of just over $100 million, “Moana 2” grossed $221 million in the five days from Wednesday (Nov. 27) through the weekend, the most any movie has made in its first five days.
In 2020, at the height of the streaming phenomenon, Disney announced that “Moana 2” would be a limited television series. But the streaming landscape was soon overrun by content, diluting the audience, convincing Disney’s Bob Iger to switch to a full-length feature. (A live-action film is also in the works, but the studio hasn’t announced whether “Moana 2” will also follow other Disney animated features’ lucrative journeys to Broadway.)
“Moana 2” continues the evolution of Disney’s animated features away from the studio’s early template of white, passive (and implicitly Protestant) princesses rescued by handsome princes. Beginning in the 1990s, the studio began introducing story lines involving other faith traditions and concepts: Catholic, Muslim, Confucian, shaman, animist, Buddhist karma and African Voudun.
Recent Disney princess incarnations in full-length features and cable series — strong drivers of merchandise sales to little girls — have also been assertive young women of color, such as the Chinese warrior princess Mulan; Arab Jasmine in “Aladdin”; Native American “Pocahontas,” Disney’s first African American heroine in “The Princess and the Frog,” (now also a theme park ride in Disney World and Disneyland; Latina Princess Elena in the Disney cable series “Elena of Avalor”; and, after much speculation, Rebecca, Disney’s first Jewish princess, appeared in a series episode.
There are periodic throwback exceptions to this trend. Some traditional Christian messaging was part of “Frozen” in the altruistic character of Anna, and its animator, Mark Henn, once told the Christian Broadcasting Network that “Christian families can use (“Frozen”) to talk to their kids ultimately (about) honest, sacrificial love … (T)hey can just peel back the layers a little bit and … just have conversations about that.”
A still from “Moana 2.” (Image ©Disney)
“Moana 2” tracks what I have called “The Disney Gospel,” which is always undergirded by an irrepressible optimism, in which good is always rewarded, evil is always punished, and, with belief in some higher power — magic, a star, a fairy godmother — a happy ending is guaranteed.
In “Moana 2,” that happy ending takes the form of the arrival of a Black islander on the restored island of Motufetu, after the evil Nalo’s curse is lifted and the previous era of cooperation is revived. The traveler symbolizes the unification of the diverse peoples from Oceania, but for Disney, it does more: It expands Disney’s promise of an increasingly racially and religiously inclusive world.
(Mark I. Pinsky, a journalist in Durham, North Carolina, is author of “The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)