Moana

[D82]

In some foreign territories (so far in Spain, Portugal, Belgium) the film will be called Vaiana due to existing registered trademark of the name Moana there.

Couldn’t they just have changed the title of the film instead of changing the name of the main character? Vaiana doesn’t sound as good to me as Moana.

[Prince Edward]

Moana is basicly just a darker variant of Rapunzel/Anna/Elsa. Disney's CGI princess design is getting very generic. The 2D animated heroines had a much more different design to me. (And that guy looks really, really ugly IMO!)

[disneyprincess11]

Good gravy, not THIS again

[Disney's Divinity]

Moana is basicly just a darker variant of Rapunzel/Anna/Elsa. Disney's CGI princess design is getting very generic. The 2D animated heroines had a much more different design to me. (And that guy looks really, really ugly IMO!)

That's true. But, to be fair, she looked fairly different in the 2D designs--I mean, similar to Pocahontas and Nani, which is at least a little less common for Disney--but there's a lot lost in translation unfortunately.

[kiseki]

Moana is basicly just a darker variant of Rapunzel/Anna/Elsa. Disney's CGI princess design is getting very generic. The 2D animated heroines had a much more different design to me. (And that guy looks really, really ugly IMO!)

I'm not seeing it.

Though to be fair, Moana probably just looks more different just because she isn't white.

[Kyle]

I see more of big hero 6 in these designs than anything.

[dollover]

I think it doesn't help that in every first pic we see of these recent CGI princesses they all have the same dreamsworky raised eyebrow crooked smile expression. That expression doesn't even necessarily fit the character. Certainly it doesn't fit Elsa or Rapunzel. No wonder some people think they look similar. The 2D animated princesses never had that expression in the promos.

[Lady Cluck]

Moana is basicly just a darker variant of Rapunzel/Anna/Elsa. Disney's CGI princess design is getting very generic. The 2D animated heroines had a much more different design to me. (And that guy looks really, really ugly IMO!)

I'm not seeing it.

Though to be fair, Moana probably just looks more different just because she isn't white.

Thank you for that link. It helped showcase some of Moana's many distinct features.




She's really quite different and will certainly look better in motion, though I do agree 2D animation has produced more distinct art styles over the years which was reflected in the character design.

[DisneyEra]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7hoE6HbGU4#t=158

[unprincess]

its not that she looks the same its just that Hollywood CGI films are very limited in their stylistic choices so every hand drawn design ends up with a homogeneous look to them. That wasnt a problem with 2d because you didnt have to fit distinct pencil drawn character designs into preset CGI models. Its also why you could tell which animator did which character like Glen Kean, Mark Henn etc...

[disneyprincess11]

Possible new Moana music at 0:10-0:28.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txxZ_X6suKI[/youtube]

The music is very beautiful!

[DisneyFan09]

No offense, but I doubt it's the music for the music. It sounds like Polynesian radio pop music.

[Sotiris]

It's weird that Aulii is already doing so much press for the movie. Not even the actors for Zootopia are doing press yet. It looks like Disney's bent on promoting Moana as much as possible (perhaps to ease fears that a princess movie starring a girl of color might not be successful at the box office?)

In any case, Disney showed two clips from the film at the press conference at the Aulani Resort.

This film looks great, visually. We were shown a scene of Moana’s first encounter with the ocean as a little girl, inspired by the words of a Fijian navigator (“The Ocean is alive. You must speak gently to it.”). The water teases and plays with her; each ripple and wave emoting like a living creature that’s at once powerful and shy. It’s really a breathtaking and beautiful scene.

Source: http://www.honolulumagazine.com/Honolul ... New-Moana/

Her first public appearance included the showing of never-before-seen footage from the film, which media were not allowed to record.

The scenes included one of demigod Maui, who also features in the film and whose voice is played by former wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The scene shows Maui -- covered in tatau (Polynesian tattoos) -- springing to life with his weapon of choice: a large fish hook with the power to "pull down the sun and bring up islands".

Another more poignant scene shows Moana as a toddler and her first interaction with the ocean. Sitting on a beach, she spots a conch shell near the water and waddles towards it to pick it up. All of a sudden water washes towards her feet -- the first time she feels the ocean -- and she lets out a squeal and runs back towards the beach, laughing.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11528541

The footage shown at the press conference, while short, revealed a lot about the film's art style and ability to be emotionally moving.

In one piece of footage, after it was revealed that the ocean itself would be a living character, they showcased a scene that seemed nearly complete. Most likely the intro to the film, the scene had Moana as a toddler walking on the beach unsupervised. The ocean notices the inquisitive child, and decides to play with her by pulling back a portion of water to allow her to collect sea shells. Being lured further into the ocean, Moana becomes surrounded by a wall of seawater, allowing her to look at the sea life through glass-like walls. Though there wasn't dialogue, the footage emotionally moving and we saw a few members of the audience get watery eyes.

Another scene shown focused on Dwayne Johnson’s character, Maui, as he told a brief story about himself. Rather than using flashbacks, Clements and Musker decided to bring art to life, similar to the vase muses from “Hercules.” In this case, it’s Maui’s tattoos that come alive to reenact his legend. The loud applause by the audience that followed was well-deserved.

Source: http://www.kaleo.org/features/moana-a-l ... 6c6e7.html

[Kyle]

Just a hunch but I think it might have more to do with wanting to take attention away from their countless live action remakes in the works.

As for why they aren't promoting Zootopia as much, it looks like a Bolt type of movie. Maybe they see it that way too. Even if its good its not going to have the same pull as a princess movie.

[disneyprincess11]

No offense, but I doubt it's the music for the music. It sounds like Polynesian radio pop music.

That is very possible, plus Disney would not have such confidential music leak easily like that. The song sounds pretty and it could fit, but that is very poppish sounding for a Disney movie and a movie that takes place 2000 ago.

It's weird that Aulii is already doing so much press for the movie. Not even the actors for Zootopia are doing press yet. It looks like Disney's bent on promoting Moana as much as possible (perhaps to ease fears that a princess movie starring a girl of color might not be successful at the box office?)

I was literally thinking this. We don't even have a real trailer for Zootopia, which comes out in 5 months and yet here they are: Interviews and promos for a movie that isn't even coming for a year. This wasn't even the case for Frozen

I doubt they're doing this b/c the "POC princess will fail". It's more like Lion King/Pocahontas: *This* will do much better than *this*. And this could backfire.

[Sotiris]

I was literally thinking this. We don't even have a real trailer for Zootopia, which comes out in 5 months and yet here they are: Interviews and promos for a movie that isn't even coming for a year. This wasn't even the case for Frozen.

I know. This early promotion is so unusual for Disney. Maybe they didn't do this for Frozen because they hadn't anticipated how successful it would be but now that they know how big a princess movie can get they're trying to promote it early on and create buzz to create another Frozen-like success.

It's more like Lion King/Pocahontas: *This* will do much better than *this*. And this could backfire.

I really can't fathom how Zootopia could ever be a bigger success than Moana but weirder things have happened so I guess you never know.

[Sotiris]

You can just tell that John Musker really wanted Moana to be a 2D-animated movie.

All the films that Ron and I made prior to this have been hand-drawn animated films. This is our first CG film. 2D has a shorter pre-production process. It really starts with a pencil and a piece of paper and you can have shorter development and you get into production sooner but it takes longer. It's flipped in the CG world. It takes longer to build and rig the characters and do all the setup. That takes a longer time but the actual animation process, the production process actually takes a little shorter. So, it's been a little bit of a switch for us. We're learning as we're going along.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7hoE6HbGU4

I have to ask you two about Moana, because I saw the cute video last week announcing the casting of the new Disney princess.

John Musker: It’s our first CG feature. All the other ones we’ve done were hand drawn. This one’s CG. And it’s a musical. There’s a musician Opetaia Foa’i who’s got a band called Te Vaca. He’s doing the music with Lin-Manual Miranda, who’s done Hamilton here on Broadway. It’s been exciting. Sort of a coming-of-age story set 2,000 years ago in the South Pacific. You know, when we started at the studio, we were trained by the Nine Old Men, and they were in their early 60s. Now we’re in our early 60s. A lot of the young animators come into the field who saw our movies as kids, so it’s kind of crazy. But that’s how it was when we came in and we had seen Snow White and Pinocchio, and we got to work with Eric Larson and Frank Thomas and those guys who animated those films. And we really learned literally at the drawing board, the master-apprentice thing where they would do animation and they’d put a sheet of paper over it and show you how it could be stronger and better. And in a sense we’re kind of doing that now, trying to impart the lessons that we learned from those guys on to the younger generation.

Source: http://www.ew.com/article/2015/10/13/aladdin-roundtable

[Kyle]

You're putting your own tone on what was said, I don't know how you got that out of that at all.

[DancingCrab]

Yeah, I didn't read that as anything more than "this is something a little different for us" ...I didn't read it at all like he regrets it being CGI.

[unprincess]

Read between the lines. They keep mentioning how they used to do 2d every time they have the chance, but they cant overtly mention that they would have preferred to have done it in 2d b/c they dont want to end up like a lot of their peers, without a job.