Disney has kept the best of its reliable formula and freshened it up with a spirited story inspired by the ancient myths of the Pacific Islands and a spirited heroine who dreams of adventure, not finding a prince. It is gorgeously animated, heartwarming, exciting, and slyly self-aware. At one point a character notes that if she has a dress and an animal sidekick, she must be a princess. And in a scene way at the end of the credits (stay ALL the way to the end), a character re-appears to compare himself to another well-known animated Disney character. But it is also utterly sincere in its affection for the heroine and her quest.
Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) lives on an Polynesian island paradise. Her father is the king and she will someday be the community’s leader. She has the run of the island, and loves the shore. She has the heart of an explorer, but her parents tell her that their people do not go beyond the reef because it is not safe out on the ocean. They do their best to warn her, but there is nothing that can stop Moana’s curiosity and sense of adventure, even after an initial voyage goes badly. Moana wants to know what happened to the courageous voyagers who once led expeditions from her island led by wayfarers who navigated with the stars. The ocean itself invites her to explore.
When an environmental disaster strikes, Moana realizes that the rules have to change. Her people will be wiped out unless she can return the heart that was stolen from Te Fiti, the goddess who created the world. Her heart, a pounamu stone, was stolen by the mischief-maker Maui (Dwayne Johnson), and the destruction that created has reached Moana’s island. Moana needs to find Maui and return the heart, before all of the island’s plants and fish turn to ashes.
Moana finds Maui, but he does not want to help, he has lost the stone, and Te Fiti broke the magical fishhook that is the source of most of his power. Without a working fishhook, his ability to shapeshift is badly compromised, leading to some hilarious misfires (watch quickly for one of his mistaken personas, a character from “Frozen”). Johnson’s ebullience is perfect for Maui, reminiscent of Robin Williams as the genie in “Aladdin,” with his mercurial personas and helpful but trickster role. He is covered with Maori-style tattoos which delightfully interact with him, a mini-movie of their own.
The two of them go on a journey filled with adventure and with great songs from “Hamilton’s” Lin-Manuel Miranda and Opetaia Foa’i. Highlights include Maui’s riotous “You’re Welcome,” as he explains all that he has given mankind (inspired by Maori creation myths) and “Shiny,” performed by Jemaine Clement as a treasure-loving giant crab. Moana is an appealing heroine, brave, smart, determined and devoted to her community. She is even devoted to her animal sidekick, a scrawny chicken with very little brainpower.
The animation is spectacular, with the ocean a character of its own, pygmy pirates, the giant crab, and a lava monster. And the resolution is especially satisfying, with not just redemption and triumph for our heroes and justice, compassion, and forgiveness rather than demonization of the character who would otherwise be the typical villain. The loveable characters, hummable songs, and heartwarming and joyful conclusion make this a holiday season treat for the whole family.
NOTE: Stay all the way to the end of the credits for an extra scene. And be sure to get there in time for the adorable animated short before the film, “Inner Workings,” a sort of variation of “Inside Out,” as we see a man’s internal organs responding to the world around him and enticing him to transcend his daily drudgery with a visit to the beach. It was directed by veteran Disney animator Leo Matsuda.
Parents should know that this film includes action-style peril and violence with some disturbing images, sad (offscreen) deaths, brief schoolyard language, and brief potty humor.
Family discussion: Why didn’t the ocean return the heart itself? What did Moana learn from Maui’s story about his parents?
If you like this, try: “Whale Rider,” “Brave,” and “Mulan” — and try navigating without GPS
For music-lovers, check out the terrific George Martin PBS series Soundbreaking, and go behind the scenes with more than 150 interviews, including Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton, or Dave Grohl’s Sonic Highways.
For sports fans, try Color Line of Scrimmage, a documentary about the 1950’s, segregation-era championship all African-American 1956 Burley High School team, not just undefeated, but un-scored on.
For anyone — check out the selection from The Great Courses. They are wonderful!
Interview: “Pete’s Dragon” Screenwriter David Lowery
Posted on November 15, 2016 at 8:00 am
“Pete’s Dragon” screenwriter David Lowery answered my questions about updating and transforming the Disney classic for a live-action 21st century remake, and how being the oldest of nine children helped him learn how to tell stories. The movie is available on DVD/Blu-ray November 29, 2016.
How did you decide what elements of the original were important to you to keep and what new elements you wanted to add?
The only elements I wanted to keep from the original was a dragon named Elliott who could turn invisible and a boy named Pete who was an orphan. And I took those elements and thought that if I just maintained those and kept the title I would have the flexibility to tell a completely new story that would stand alongside the original on its own two feet. And that was it, I took those elements, I didn’t go back and watch the original. I just really wanted to focus on telling a new story and creating something the audience could appreciate and love just as much as they loved the original.
How did growing up with so many younger sisters and brothers help you become a writer? Did you read to them, tell them stories?Copyright 2016 Disney
Oh man, that is a great question. I have eight younger brothers and sisters and it really taught me how to tap into a childlike sensibility. I definitely read to them. We wrote stories together, we wrote comic books together, we made movies together. Whenever I made a movie, my siblings were the actors. So we were creative together all the time. My parents encouraged us to always be expressing ourselves creatively through the arts, whether that be through movies or music and books, or drawings or paintings. And it really, I think, has had a big effect on who I am today as a filmmaker, not only in terms of my sense of collaboration but also in the way I approach storytelling. I always approach every movie I make whether it’s for adults or families with a very childlike sensibility and I think that’s because I spent so much of my life growing up around so many other kids and it really has an effect on how I see the world, how I want to see the world and how I feel I can best tell a story.
When you began working on the film what did you learn about the capacity for special effects or technology that inspired some of the storyline?
One of the things that was fun about this movie was getting to do visual effects on a scale that I never had done before. I knew a little bit about how CGI worked and how visual effects worked and I knew that Elliot would be entirely created on the computer but there was a lot that I had to learn, especially once we got done shooting and were in post production and I saw all the work that went into making him do anything. If they wanted him to blink his eyes it required a lot of steps to get him to blink his eyes right. It is an incredible team at Weta who brought him to life. There are modelers and sculptors, there are animators, there are people who are in charge of putting the 20 million hairs of fur on the body and making sure that that fur moves right if the wind is blowing. It’s just really incredible and so I learned a lot. There is no shortage of boring technical details that I could fill in here but it’s really amazing what is possible with modern digital technology. At the same time it’s important to learn the limits of it. You don’t push it too far because at the end of the day you want the movie to feel real. You want to feel like it is really happening. You want actors to feel like they belong in this world and so you have to find the right balance with it as well.
Your work often focuses on children who are on their own. Why is that a good basis for a story?
If a child is on their own they have somewhere they need to get, there is somewhere they need to be and that automatically gives your story a narrative arc because all of a sudden you have a journey that must be embarked upon. Whether it is a little kid that has run away from home or a little kid like my first film “St. Nick” or a little kid who is lost in the woods like “Pete’s Dragon” or even a grown-up who thinks he’s still a little kid like in my last film “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” where the Casey Affleck character in that movie a full grown man who is on the inside just a 7 year old playing with a gun and trying to find where he belongs in the world — I have gradually realized it is one of the key tenets of all my movies. It wasn’t intentional but I think part of it comes from having such a strong home life, of having such a strong family that I’m coming from that the thought of not having that has been the basis for so many of the stories I have sought to tell on the big screen. You tell stories of what you know but also you imagine yourself in different circumstances and how you would react to that. And I try to imagine myself in a world where I didn’t have the things I had growing up or I wasn’t surrounded by such a strong family that cared for me. That is great food for thought but also a great basis for exploring various stories.
Okay this is a two-part question, do you remember the first Disney movie you saw?
The very first Disney movie I saw was also the very first movie I ever saw, period. and that was “Pinocchio.” It was re-released in theaters in the 80s and my parents let me go see it and I just was spellbound. I had a huge crush on the Blue Fairy. There was a big cardboard stand of the Blue Fairy in the lobby of the theater and I wanted to take it home. I was just madly in love with her at the age of three or four, however old I was. I guess my favorite Disney animated character would probably be Ariel from “The Little Mermaid” because I was just obsessed with that movie. I really love that I really connected to her character and I still love it. I remember when we were shooting “Pete’s Dragon” when we moved locations as I got to another hotel and turned on the TV and “The Little Mermaid” was playing and I just sat down and watched the whole thing and that was one of the happiest moment in the entire shoot.
One thing that I loved about the film is that the bad guy is not entirely bad. What do you think makes a good movie villain?
David: You know a really good movie villain is someone who you love to hate, who is very enjoyable to watch even though you don’t like him but also one who you understand. You might not agree with him but you understand where he is coming from. With the character Gavin, I think the character is kind of a big dummy, he’s not the brightest, he is not the sharpest tool in the set but he doesn’t want to be a bad person, he thinks he is doing the right thing, he thinks he is protecting the town or protecting the kids and I think that’s important. I think it’s really important especially in this day and age to have empathy for people you don’t understand and you don’t agree with. And to understand they are not necessarily evil even if you strongly disagree with what they’re doing. So Gavin does some horrible things in this movie, he does some really bad things, but I wanted to make sure he was someone who can learn, who can grow because I believe that all people can and who ultimately isn’t that bad of a person because I do believe everybody has goodness in them and I wanted that to be present in this character.
There are some great movie villains who are just purely evil, I certainly enjoyed a lot of them over the course of movie history and sometimes it’s really fun to see someone you just purely hate and you’re happy to see die at the end of the film but I personally wanted to make a movie where the bad guy was someone who wasn’t purely bad but who got better, who grew as a human being. I really think that it’s important, especially for children, to see that there is more than one side to every story. There are perspectives that you are going to have to learn to adjust to as you grow older and as you meet people of different beliefs and different values and to understand that people make mistakes and come back from them and be better for it. I think that all those things are important for kids to understand and I wanted to just touch on that a little bit with the character of Gavin.
The forest in the story feels magical all on its own. How do you see the role of the natural world in the film and why is that important?
I think nature is spectacular, I really think it’s full of mystery and wonder and so many amazing things that we don’t even, we can’t even see. The ecosystem in the natural world that is beyond our comprehension is proof that magic does exist in the world. I don’t think that magic exists in terms of spells or witchcraft or anything like that but I do think that magic exists in the natural world and the forest. And I wanted the forest in the film to convey that sense of wonder and awe and mystery and magic because I do believe that that’s what you find in the real world.
Interview: Co-Director Angus MacLane on “Finding Dory”
Posted on November 14, 2016 at 8:00 am
Angus MacLane is co-director of the adorable “Finding Dory,” the sequel to “Finding Nemo.” In an interview, he spoke about the changes in technology and the decision to shift the focus to the memory-impaired fish voiced by Ellen DeGeneres. The DVD/Blu-Ray is available November 15, 2016.
How has the technology changed since finding Nemo and how did that affect your story, the setting and the characters?
That’s a good question. I think that thirteen years from release to release is such a huge time technologically. And so there was a brand-new animation system, there were brand-new articulation tools for the characters, there were brand-new lighting tools that were entirely different. So basically the system from the ground up was different. I think that one of the things that was a challenge in the first film was that water was so difficult to do and very complex, so it was difficult. It is still difficult but the effects we could get were so much more satisfying technologically that what we wanted to do was not the challenge that it was in the first film.
And so it just afforded us the chance to not worry about how these characters could break the surface of the water, which would have been a challenge in the first film, or where we were going to really spend our dollars doing splashes or big effects. They weren’t insignificant but it wasn’t a major hurdle in the same way where we would have to carefully plan for each of those effects that would potentially affect our story thirteen years ago. The technology improves and the renders in the computer speed improve and we’re always asking the computers and everyone to do things that are infinitely harder to keep pace with the speed and the technology. So it wasn’t any faster necessarily but we did have a lot of new technologies and a very capable crew to implement them and try out a bunch of new and interesting things.
Most sequels continue the story of the main character but this one makes Nemo and Marlin secondary to Dory. What went into that decision?
Well I think that the reason to do this film for Andrew Stanton really rested in seeing “Finding Nemo” in 3D several years ago, long after its release. He was worried about Dory. And so the question about where she had come from and if she was going to be okay became the reason for him to make the movie, the question that he most wanted to answer. So the idea was after this film the audience members would not be concerned for Dory and feel confident that if she got lost she could find your way back again.
This film has at least five characters with disabilities including Nemo, Dory and Hank. What was most important to you portraying the way that these characters adapt to and think about these disabilities?
I think the thing that was most important to us was that we showed them as four dimensional characters. Everyone in the film is at kind of a different stage than Dory is about their disability. Dory over the course of the film — not to spoil it for those people that haven’t seen it — but she learns to fully accept and embrace her disability and work it in a way that she did not at the beginning of the film. Hank has already moved past that. He is already on to other things. He isn’t worried about it that much. I think that people with disabilities, they have everyday struggles but I think more than anything, the ones that we are familiar with are certainly very, very capable and it was about portraying the truth in that.
What exactly does a co-director do?Copyright 2016 Disney
The co-director position is different for every movie. I had worked with Andrew most closely on “Wall-E” as a story artist and he was a Directing Animator and then he was the Executive Producer on “Burn-E,” the short film, and then on “Toy Story Of Terror.” So we had a wonderful creative partnership that continued on this film.
When I started working on the film, Andrew asked that I just try to do what wasn’t getting done and try to fill in the gaps. I was in pretty much all the meetings Andrew was in and there were some things that he delegated to me to manage. I would have input on pretty much everything with the understanding that it is ultimately Andrew’s decision. But he is a generous creative partner and an intelligent creative partner in the sense that he has surrounded himself with people who are not afraid to disagree with him if they have different opinions. And so a lot of the job is suggesting different ideas or trying to take a different point of view, and trying to drill down to get to the best idea. So it’s kind of a second opinion.
Do you remember your first Disney animated film you ever saw and what made the most significant impression?
It was either “Sleeping Beauty” or “The Rescuers.” For Sleeping Beauty it would have been that in the end Prince Philip has a battle with a dragon. And if it was “The Rescuers” I think it had this kind of really muted and dark and dirty colour palette that was kind of similar to or echoed a lot of the unease and uncomfortability of the 70’s animation. Most notable was the concept of a giant diamond inside this skull. It was kind of terrifying to me as a kid, so that kind of freaked me out.
And what was the best advice you ever got about directing, from Andrew Stanton or any of your other role models?
The most helpful stuff is just doing the job or being next to somebody that’s doing the job day in and day out and seeing the minutia that they deal with. But there’s something that John Lasseter said once about if you’re giving someone direction and they are not getting you what you want it’s not their fault, it’s your fault for not explaining it well. To me that’s just fantastic advice because in addition to being the person that explains what your vision is, it’s also your job to get other people excited about your vision. It should be a collaborative effort that involves all parties and it starts with the director and continues with the crew.
There are so many comedic moments throughout “Finding Dory.” Where do you guys fine inspiration to make it so funny from start to finish?
Angus: Most of it is trying to make each other laugh — to try to do something that’s weird, something that we think is funny. If you come with a gag that is in story, we try to make sure that that gag continues or is able to read as it goes through the production pipeline because jokes can be funny for different reasons and often jokes can be ruined if the elements that make it funny aren’t adhered to or understood as it goes through production. I’m glad you think it’s funny because I think we just are trying to make each other laugh, that’s kind of our rule.
From one of my favorite Disney special features, Ichabod and Mr. Toad, this is based on the classic “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving. Nervous schoolmaster meets headless horseman!
