A "Moana" Sneak Peek with Lin Manuel-Miranda
Friday, October 28, 2016 at 12:01AM 
We're just 25 days from Moana hitting theaters and more fresh looks have been coming. This past week I had the opportunity to see a few scenes and hear Lin-Manuel Miranda speak about the film afterwards. Curiously the scenes they showed us weren't "song scenes" despite the pairing of those two things.
We mostly saw scenes involving Moana herself, voiced by the joyful Auli'i Cravalho, the teenage discovery Disney chose to voice their latest princess. Baby Moana, before Auli'i Cravalho takes over, is just about the cutest thing ever and there's a long scene of her discovering the ocean that is not unlike the adorability of Pixar's wonderful short from earlier this season, Piper, albeit with less fear because Moana is immediately in love with the ocean.
They also showed us a complicated ocean action sequence that the exuberant Venezuelan animator who hosted the event revealed was inspired by Mad Max Fury Road. Later when Lin-Manuel Miranda spoke we learned that he got the job before Hamilton (!) and when he was composing for Maui the demi-god he used The Rock's wrestling videos, of all things, to get a sense of his vocal range.
I was reminded of that when this new clip emerged very recently featuring The Rock singing in character as the demi-god who accompanies Moana on her journey. (In one of the clips I saw last week we also got a sense of how fun his magical tatoos are, including "Mini-Maui" who you can meet here for yourself.)
Are you counting down the days? Or are you still a Zootopia or Red Turtle fan for the Oscar?
Reader Comments (13)
don't give up your day jobs, rock
Something of beautiful has gone in the transition from 2-d to 3-d animation.
No doubt it'll be a blockbuster, but, if the Pixar guys don't adore
or care about "princess movies", why to insist?
Kimberly -- what do you mean? I think it's good that princess movies still exist in spite of Pixar's lack of interest.
Animation of hair has come a long way.
I'm afraid I'm going to be having an internal battle between Zootopia and Moana come Oscar time. Zootopia is currently in my top 10 movies I've seen this year which I don't see changing because I'm constantly thinking about how beautiful and touching it was.
Will Lin-Manuel Miranda be the youngest EGOT winner ever?
Cal -- i'm not convinced he's a sure thing winner. He'll have to get around LA LA LAND, which has so much heat. But yeah, i think he'd be the youngest ever at 36. I think Robert Lopez from Frozen is curretnly the youngest since he did it by like 38 or 39?
I'll juuust be fine if ZOOTOPIA wins Animated and MOANA Song. Or vice versa (if the latter is as good a film as the first).
Okay, let's sum up my reaction to Moana. My reaction from the first trailer was "Will this be on the level of Aladdin, or is this on the level of Hercules, because it could go either way in terms of quality." And, based on that clip, I'm actually getting a little more nervous, especially since this is NOT a movie that I want to have any disappointing aspects. Which, if all the songs are on the level of "You're Welcome" (which, because no song scenes were showed off in the "scenes showcase" you attended, I have to guess is unfortunately kind of true), every time it goes to song the quality is going to suddenly tank at multiple times throughout the movie. So, Miranda's Original Score or, especially, Original Song Oscar? Score is likelier, but I'd guess either win would owe more to Hamilton than the stuff actually done for Moana.
So, yeah, I'm probably still leaning on Zootopia winning Animated Feature.
I've got to be honest, every bit of footage from this movie just feels wrong to me in some way I can't pin down. I think it's something about the extreme style of Maui's design and movement, very much in keeping with Ron Clements and John Musker's directorial efforts (Ursula in The Little Mermaid, Genie in Aladdin, everybody in Hercules), but the way that this style of 3-D animation insists on plausible physics makes him seem just deeply off-putting and gross. Every time it zooms into his tattoos, I want that to be the whole movie. I find that I'm actually slightly dreading this, and I hate that feeling.
Also, that's a crap song. Hopefully it's this film's equivalent to "In Summer", because if that's as good as it gets... yeesh.
Nathaniel, I love "princess movies" like you and a lot of
people. What annoys me is that it seems like they are
trying to hide the idea of a "princess movie", like if Dwayne Johnson's
role were more important than Moana's, for commercial reasons.
Kimberly S, what Pixar has to do with this. Moana is a Disney, or WDAS film.
This is my most anticipated film of the year but I am a but worried, this song and what we have heard of Moanas from the pop song cover does not seem that promising. I do not know Miranda´s music but I have not been that impressed so far. And Clements and Musker have never been my favorite Disney directors but I was really excited before the clips and trailers were released. But Disney marketing for animated films is never the best so I am still hoping this will be great.