Moana live-action remake is just more slop from the trough

Blander and blandish than a walt disney line archetype — with someways even worse lighting and set design. An uncannily ugly visual experience, birthed out of an outright disrespect of the medium it's adapting.

An objectively pointless rehash of beautiful source material that Disney seems desperate to strip-mine until even its memory is nothing more than the skeletal remains of something once alive. 

In other words: Moana is Disney's newest live-action adaptation.

Let's get this out of the way: between hate screeds against the Snow White, Avatar, Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid live-action remakes, there was never much hope here for this reboot of animated neo-classic Moana. 

Because obviously, there's absolutely nothing on offer. Instead, like almost always, our end result is even more a shot-for-shot remake than the corporatized gremlin of last year's Lilo & Stitch. And like almost always, our newest cash-grab has no defensible creative reason to exist. 

Once again, we follow young Moana (played this time by Catherine Laga'aia), a Pacific Islander who yearns for the sea. Once again, her chieftain father forbids her from venturing past the reef — even as their tropical island home withers away from disease. 

Once again, Moana throws her cares to the wind — literally. She sails out into the open ocean in search of Maui (Dwayne Johnson) — the shapeshifting demigod "hero" responsible for cursing her island in the first place. And once again, the two form a begrudging partnership: one searching for the returning adulation of the masses, and the other for a reforged connection with her ancestors. 

In that beautifully serendipitous way of all good narratives, both are really motivated by the parallel desire to belong — and both do so to the dulcet tones of Lin Manuel-Miranda's admittedly infectious song stylings. 

Speaking of which, Miranda's return does mark one update to 2026's Moana: an original song, Along the Way. That hallmark checkmark of originality paperclipped to virtually all of Disney's musical remakes is fine enough here. Unfortunately, that sole beneficial addition this time around isn't even really in the movie itself — instead, this disingenuous claim to creativity is relegated to the end-credits. 

For whatever talk its producers give about the song acting as a torch-passing moment between original Moana actor Auli’i Cravalho and new, it's also an infamous low-effort ploy to beat out best original song competitors without actually bothering to make a song fit into the continuity of the movie. Miranda must be a big fan of Toy Story 5's Taylor Swift end-credits ballad.

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Which is really the perfect analogy for what is really wrong with this Moana. Because, like so many other live action remakes, it's not terrible in any obviously offensive sense — this is literally just Moana again, after all. 

Moana again, though just slightly worse in every aspect — given its move from the medium it was designed for. A move into one that does nothing to serve the pacing, world-building and even humour that story was initially built for and out of. A move that results in worse visuals, painfully stilted movement, near-absent suspension of disbelief and a rehashed story necessarily drained of its original impact. 

For example: Maui may have not been traditionally depicted as a barrel-chested strong-man — so much so that his animated appearance in the 2016 film caused outcry and controversy of its own. But now audiences are used to the stylized character, making The Rock's self-serving choice of going for the body-builder look impossibly bland in comparison.

Then there's the inexplicable and repeated efforts to give the musical breaks more obvious in-universe reasons to exist (to make them, as us musical nerds say, "diegetic" instead of "non-diegetic")— from Moana tilting stage lights towards the crab villain during his Shiny villain song, or having more of her How Far I'll Go played as an awkward soundtrack-style voice over instead of having the character fully sing her "I Want" song.

While a common enough trend to satisfy the "But why are they singing?" crowd endemic in the live-action space, explaining away musical numbers isn't so much a problem in the inherently fantastical world of animation. Add on the fact that the pre-emptive admission of live-action's presumptive realism versus animation's heightened whimsicality just leads to awkward and sluggish changes.

Or there's the fact that half of this "live-action" movie is still necessarily animated — just now with gross (Hei Hei the chicken), alien (the entire ocean) or cheap-looking (goddess Te Fiti) CGI-characters nonsensically mixed with the awkwardly mugging live-action actors. 

Of course this is still ignoring the performances — serviceably OK, but drained of just enough energy (and framed by such inexplicably terrible lighting and obvious soundstage sets) to feel like an extended in-flight tourism ad.  

Which is always the most difficult hurdle in criticizing these releases: the fact that, based as they are on universally praised classics of modern media, they're rarely abject train wrecks.

Following the tried-and-true plot beats laid out before them, a Disney live-action remake is (almost) always going to be at least generally watchable. Given that we're getting these movies anyways, should we really be looking that gift horse so closely in the mouth?

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Did you catch it? It's the "AI is coming whether you like it or not, so you better get on board," argument: the repeated message that these movies are as fated and intractable as a hurricane, instead of a boardroom strategy only as strong as the audience response. 

Perhaps the goal is to hypnotize the audience into believing they have no say in what slop they'll scarf down from the trough, so even allowing yourself to ask for better is being ungrateful. Or more specifically, that kids don't know or demand better anyways, so judging movies made for them is inherently wrongheaded. 

Though do you know what kids also enjoy? The original Moana. Regardless of whether they will be entertained by garbage, they'll also enjoy quality storytelling from storytellers who care about more than just a box office return. 

At the same time, adults in general do not need to make excuses for the streaming-quality fare shoved down their throats. No one's got to hand it to Disney for exploiting manufactured nostalgia to pump out almost-entertaining visual pollution. That Moana is only mildly tasteless is not a virtue, and no one needs to treat it as such. And no one needs to believe that we are fated to be force fed that tasteless slop just because they say it's so. 

And all you need to do to stop it, is to call Moana (2026) what it is. Slop.

Senior Writer

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