When I first heard that there was going to be a live action Moana movie, I thought it was a joke. I thought it was just a stupid rumor that someone came up with and it ran around social media. I even thought that it was going to be canceled at some point and Disney decided no more live actions. Although, when I was scrolling through TikTok and saw that a teaser trailer dropped, it dawned on me. It slapped me across the face and made me realize that this movie is actually happening, it’s real.
It’s just one live action after another, and sometimes it just doesn’t make any sense. The original animated movie came out on Nov. 23, 2016. Yes, 2016, that’s almost ten years ago. Not only that, but the sequel to Moana came out only a year ago on Nov. 27, 2024. So it just doesn’t make any sense that we’re getting a live action Moana when the sequel just came out.
The live action Moana movie is set to release on July 10, 2026. Although, since Disney has been dropping teaser trailers left and right, they decided to drop the Moana live action teaser trailer on Nov. 17. While watching, I noticed so many changes that could either make or break this movie. For instance, in the beginning, you hear the first few lines of the song “How Far I’ll Go (Reprise).” Although, it’s not from the actress who is playing the live action Moana, it’s from the original. Why are we adding the original voice of Moana when this is supposed to be “different” from the original movie? Also, another big change that surprised me was the hair change on the girl playing Moana. As we know, the original Moana had beautiful long curly hair, but in the teaser – when we get a glimpse of the girl playing Moana – her hair is straight. Like, straight with a touch of beach waves or heat curlers that were taken out before shooting. Which is very odd to me; why change the hair of Moana? She’s relatively known (besides for her songs) for her hair being curly, so why change that? Although the one thing that stuck out to me the most was when I was reading the description of this movie, and it said Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is playing Maui. Yes, you read that right. Johnson, who voiced Maui in the original movie, is going to be playing Maui again in the live action. I am really wondering how that’s going to work with this movie.
From watching this teaser trailer, it just seems like Disney is just going scene by scene from the animated movie and turning it to live action. My guess is that they probably saw the success that How To Train Your Dragon (2025) had since that movie was basically just like the animated movie but live action (except Toothless looked decent).
I think I can speak for most people when I say I think we’ve become exhausted when it comes to live action movies. These movies are just emphasizing the fact that Hollywood doesn’t know what to do anymore, so they just take their animated movies and turn them into live action. Hollywood is known for original and creative ideas and turning them into songs, movies, art, etc. Seeing that creativity die out and just reusing what they already had but turning it into live action makes no sense, and it’s one of the many reasons why Hollywood is in bad shape right now.