Now in theaters, Moana 2 is the long-awaited sequel to the 2016 original story set in ancient Polynesia, in which a terrible curse incurred by the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) reaches the island where Moana (Auli'i Cravalho) and her people live. The new film is set three years later, and it reunites Moana and Maui for an expansive new adventure alongside a crew of new seafarers, including one named Moni (Hualālai Chung), a passionate storyteller and Maui superfan. Directed by David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller, and produced by Christina Chen and Yvett Merino, Moana 2 features colorful and vibrant animation that surpasses even the first movie.
Chung was born and raised in the islands of Hawaiʻi in a family of performers, and as a young boy, Polynesian culture was always a first love. Learning how to dancing ʻori Tahiti, hula, and siva afi (fire knife) made him fall in love with performing and sharing his spirit with audiences. He turned to acting, first by helping friends out on a couple of short films and performing in for series television; he’ll be seen next year in the live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch.
Chen joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2010 as a financial analyst and made her producing debut in 2023 with the Disney+ series Iwájú. Born and raised in Irvine, Calif., Chen attended University of California, Berkeley, launching her professional career as an assurance associate at the Ernst & Young accounting firm, before her lifelong love of films led her to Disney. She’s since worked on such productions as Big Hero 6, Frozen 2, the Oscar-winning short Feast and the short Us Again.
I had a chance to sit down with Chung and Chan recently when they visited Chicago, and although, at the time, I hadn’t seen Moana 2, they were able to walk me through some of its themes and creative innovations. Please enjoy our talk…
Did either of you work on the first film?
Christina Chen: I did in a different capacity; I worked on production finance.
Okay, so simply as fans of Moana, what did that film mean to you just as a person watching it?
Hualālai Chung: First and foremost, being Hawaiian/Polynesian/Pacific Islander, we spent so much time not having a film like that. So as soon as the first film came out in 2016, we saw so much of our culture being represented on the big screen, in such as new way, a way that was palatable to the masses. Moving from that to this film, you see even more—more elements of our concepts and culture, whether it be our daily life, crafts, myth and legend, depicted on the big screen. That’s something that makes our community really proud.
CC: You’re totally right. I was a huge fan of the first film, and not just because I worked on it. Moana is such a unique heroine. She’s such a badass, she loves what she loves unabashedly. I love and gravitate toward that, so to me it was the honor of a lifetime to be able to work with a cast that includes Hua, and I got to work with my fellow producer Yvett Merino. I felt lucky every day that we got to tell this story.
I can’t believe it has been eight years since the last movie. But when the process really gets going in earnest and you start piecing together a story, where does that process begin? And how long did it take to get this story together?
CC: For our animated films, it takes at least five years to make, starting with development and production. And we always start with character first, that’s the crucial rule for anything coming out of Disney Animation. It has to be character, emotion, the arc; we really wanted to see a Disney character actually age and have Moana three years later as a leader. And because it’s such a profound love for the character, we all want to know what Moana is like when she gets older.
What I remember about the first film is that she doesn’t go on an adventure just for the heck of it. She wants to help and represent her people. Is that theme carried into this film?
HC: Flat out, she gets a call from the ancestors to search for more people and what’s beyond Motunui. That’s such an underlying theme, not just in wayfinding itself, but also in the spirit of individual beings, going out and searching for what’s beyond your horizon line, whether it be a call from your ancestors or something in your heart that’s telling you to do something or something your family wants you to achieve. That’s definitely the main theme of both films, and you get it see it tenfold with this film.
She’s gotten older, the challenge has progressed greatly, she’s no longer on a small, dingy-type canoe; she’s on the grand voyaging canoe. And with that, she has to recruit a brand-new crew, including Loto, who is our female engineer, voiced by Rose Matafeo; there’s Kele, who is our grumpy old man farmer, voiced by David Fane; and then there’s my character, Moni, who’s larger than life. In society, he’s a historian and tells the stories of the island and its past. He uses that as an assistance to navigate through this new journey. Other than that, he’s the oarsman of the ship and bring so much heart, laughter and joy to the journey ahead.
From the extended clip I saw, that’s exactly what Moni is doing. He’s got these tapestries that he’s painted about Maui, but I get a sense that the stories he’s telling are not ones he’s been a part of before. Is that the appeal for him to join Moana on her new adventure, that he finally gets to be a part of one of these?
HC: Oh, totally. In that sequence from the trailer, he’s so surprised that he gets to go on this journey. He’s spent so much of his life reciting these stories, and now he gets to be in one. That’s something I relate to: I grew up a big Disney kid, and culture was always my first love. I remember walking down the streets in Disneyland, talking to family and friends, even watching movies, wondering if there would ever be a chance to pair my culture with what Disney does. That would be amazing, a dream come true, and here it is—it’s happening. It was a definitely a characteristic and a mindset that was beyond easy to get into because I’m living it myself.
It also seems like he’s a Maui superfan. Does that pay off at some point?
Oh yeah, and in the best way possible.
Can you tell me where the initial inspirations for this story came from and what were some of the big changes made along the way?
CC: Sure. Two of our three directors, David Derrick Jr. and Jason Hand, actually worked on the first film as storyboard artists. So for them, they had such a deep passion for Moana, and Dave is part Samoan. He wanted to continue to expand that world and tell Moana’s story through a deep, cultural lens. For him, who was first on the project, he felt really passionate about this character and wondered, “What would Moana be like with a crew, with the stakes being so much higher?” He’d always tell this amazing story about his daughter and son with an age gap similar to Moana and Simea, and he was really inspired by that and wanted to show Moana a little bit older, knowing that when she leaves, she’s leaving a little sister behind. I can’t speak for the directors, but from the stories they’ve told, that’s what their guiding post was.
I know with a lot of animated works, there’s a director and co-director, but you had three directors here, which I’ve never seen before. Was there a defined division of duties, or did they all do everything?
CC: What’s amazing about these animated projects, especially a sequel, was that we wanted to make it such a huge, expansive story that there’s more than enough for three directors to do. Our third director was Dana Ledoux Miller. Dave and Dana are both Samoan, so the three of them together created a beautiful trifecta in the storytelling process. I should mention that Dana was a co-writer on this film, along with our executive producer Jared Bush, who was a writer on the first film. It’s a nice Moana family when they go through production, and production takes a couple of years, and it’s been amazing to watch them lean on each other going on this journey.
In most animated works, there are one or two things the production team is really proud of visually; it might even be an innovation. I remember the look of the water being a big deal with the first film. Are there any things like that we should keep an eye our for?
CC: In this one, there’s a monster storm that is really badass; it’s terrifying in such a great way. You really get to see Moana work with her crew, including Moni, as they battle the god of storms.
When you do a sequel, the inclination is to grow the universe by adding new characters and going beyond where you’ve been before. Walk me through some of those elements, beyond the new crew members.
HC: There’s definitely an expansion of characters with the three new crew members. We get introduced to Simea, Moana’s little sister; there’s a new villain, Matangi; and then one of the coolest things that I love about this second film is that you get to have a relationship with Tautai Vasa, who is the originating wayfinder in the village of Motunui. He’s depicted in the first film; he’s the one on the ship when she has the flashback into being aboard the boat with Tautai Vasa as they sail through the song “We Know the Way.”
But in this film, you actually get to hear him speak and communicate directly to Moana. And that’s voiced by another talented Samoan, Gerald Ramsey. You get to see new characters, but also go deeper with people you’ve seen before. I think that’s one of the coolest ways of expansion. Plus, you get to go out into the middle of the ocean and adventure through new environments that the ocean didn’t provide in the first film, like the storm, new worlds, new realms.
In the first film, you had cultural experts who you worked very closely with, and I assume you carried that practice over to this film. Tell me about some of the elements they bring to the production.
CC: They are an integral part of the process. They’re called our Oceanic Cultural Trust; it’s a group of consultants that represent different aspects and regions of the Pacific Islander community. What they do is bring that level of authenticity. We have certain screening milestones, and we show the film every few months, but even in between that, we have production designer reviews, production recordings, and we lean into pronunciation, how the clothes look and feel, how people move that feels authentic, because for us, culture and story have to go hand in hand in the sequel. Animation building is all about world building, and it has to be about every tiny detail, even the fibers of something they might be sitting on or the quality of paper.
HC: I’ve had friends and family speak about certain scenes in the trailers, as well as scenes in the first movie, and the flora and fauna is stuff that we have in our backyards that are very particular to Polynesia, and even though they may grow in other places, they hold the essence of Polynesia to all of us. To have that depicted in something like this is crazy.
You have different people doing the music this time around; it’s not Lin Manuel Miranda…
HC: Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear are our songwriters.
What did they bring that was unique?
CC: What’s cool is that time has passed, three years, and there’s a sense of maturity that grows in the story. And having Abigail and Emily is that they are young, they are near the age of Auliʻi, and they have matured themselves in the same way the story has, and they get to depict a lot of that maturity and growth in the way they’ve written the lyrics or direct us to sing certain songs. You get this sense of growth when you hear these new songs, but it still has that beautiful Disney essence, and thanks to Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foaʻi , it still has that Moana worldly sound that is iconically Moana and Polynesian.
In talking to people who have done voice work in animated films, they all tell me that when they’re in the booth recording, they get just as physical as they would have if it had been a live-action movie. Was that your experience? Did you break a sweat?
HC: Oh, 100 percent. The common misconception is that the animation comes first, when in reality, we get filmed in every scene segment that we go in to record, because they’ll use our facial expressions, the way my mouth moves, the way that we act. When we auditioned for this, we had to film a self-tape like you would for any live-action film. A lot of that goes to help the animators really bring the characters to life, to make the voice match the body.
I think I read that you also have a role in the live-action Lilo & Stitch. Will this be your first feature film?
HC: It will be, yeah.
Can you say anything about that?
HC: From my experience, it’s very much the same as Moana 2. Everybody comes ready to work, with their heart invested, ready to make Hawaiʻi proud and make the Disney community proud. I can’t wait for everybody to see that one.
Tell me about striking the balance between going back to things we saw in the original Moana versus telling the new story. It can’t be all nostalgia, so did you find yourself pulling back on some amount of that in order to forward the newer elements?
CC: It’s definitely a balancing act because people loved the first film so much. They love the characters of Moana, Maui, Pua, and Heihei, and we wanted to make sure we celebrated that. So one of the first songs is about welcoming people back to Motunui and back to this world. As Hua mentioned, it’s also about Moana getting a little bit older, which is something we can all relate to as people, and she has to adventure beyond the reef. It’s such a nice complement.
If the first film was about her going beyond the reef to save her island, this next film is about how she connects to all the people across the ocean, not just beyond the reef, but across the whole of Oceana. My heartbreak on the first film is that Pua didn’t get to go on the journey, but with this one, I’m exciting to say that Pua and Heihei both get to go.
Thanks you both so much for talking.
CC: Thank you!
HC: I appreciate you.
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