DVDizzy Forum

Sotiris wrote: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.

Prince Edward wrote: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!)

Prince Edward wrote: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!)

kiseki wrote:

Prince Edward wrote: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.

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.

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.

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.

DisneyFan09 wrote:No offense, but I doubt it's the music for the music. It sounds like Polynesian radio pop music.

Sotiris wrote: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.

disneyprincess11 wrote: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.

disneyprincess11 wrote:It's more like Lion King/Pocahontas: *This* will do much better than *this*. And this could backfire.

John Musker wrote: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.

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.