Seen on December 1, 2024

This was such a great expansion of the story we knew!

I enjoyed being in this world again of course. The old and new characters blended well together well. The movie did go by faster than I would have liked though. The new characters were fun to get to know.

I did think the music was better in the first movie, but the songs weren’t bad, they just didn’t hook me as easily as the first movie’s did. But I didn’t like that we got a lot more chanting and indigenous language use throughout the movie.

The visuals were of course wonderful. Some of the same cues as before, but also new things. And seeing it in 3D was nice too. There weren’t a lot of big 3D shots, but I enjoyed those we got.

The lore of the world expanded so much in this movie, I hope we get more at some point. Though, in December 2020, there was an announcement of a series spinning out of Moana, so perhaps they still mean to do that. This movie was going to be that series, and perhaps it would have been better to do that so that things would unfold a bit slower, but maybe that could still work. I feel like that would be enjoyed a lot by fans. That way we could sit with the aftermath of this movie in long format before a potential sequel. Similar to the How To Train Your Dragon shows in plot. We’ll see!

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Mid-credit scene: Yes, it connects to the future.

End-credit scene: Nope. But nice music.