Ryan Herda

While the core spirit of the characters remain, the story build up is rather safe. At almost every turn, Moana 2 attempts to replicate the same beats as the original. This is glaringly obvious from the score to dialog. It’s clear this was meant for Disney Plus first and altered to make a feature due to the original’s streaming success. With the tease of the third, hopefully that will be treated as its own unique story.