Having returned yesterday from a Disney cruise, it is appropriate that I saw Moana (2026) in the theater this weekend.  If you have ever been on one of these trips, you will know that there is a Disney film played somewhere on the boat during every waking hour.  Invariably, one of these is the animated version of today’s film.  It is a live-action one, virtually the same exact movie, with Maui (Dwayne Johnson) in all his flesh.  As a Catholic, I like consistency.  People rail against it because they see a tendency towards stagnation.  Rather, it is an opportunity to explore and go deeper into a subject, which roughly aligns with the themes here.  Yet, because the two are so similar, it raises the question: why bother?  The cynical answer is money, and the Mouse will earn a pretty penny off this one.  At the same time, will anyone sailing aboard one of their liners notice when they are shown in succession?

Because Moana (2026) is a carbon copy of its predecessor, I am going to skip the synopsis.  I have already written it, and I would ask that you follow the link above if you need a reminder.  Instead, I will focus aspects of the film that align with Catholic teaching.  With the cartoon iteration, I focused on the creation angle to the plot, and how it is a more literal interpretation of how things came to be rather than the allegorical one presented in the Bible.  Our protestant brothers and sisters like to look at Genesis as actual fact, but science has a different truth that Catholicism accepts because God gave us brains in order to help us begin to understand how the universe works.  Obviously, what is seen here is different than what is taught in Christianity, but I enjoy looking at how other cultures interpret who we are.  By the way, keep that idea in mind.  At any rate, Catholic history is full of tales of its missionaries going out into the world, listening to the myths and religions of other cultures, and reframing them in a context that explains how they can fit into a broader world view.  After all, Jesus appeared solely to the Israelites.  Further back, we only hear about the plight of God’s chosen people, while we know that there were other populated parts of the world at the same time.  When Jesus commissioned His disciples, He told them to go out to the farthest ends of the Earth, indicating that there were parts who had yet to have the Word proclaimed to them.  This is a roundabout way of saying that we have only the vaguest of ideas what was happening in the South Pacific, where the film is set, at the same time as Israel suffered through slavery in Egypt, for example.  Could God have created a living island called Te Fiti whose heart gave life to the islands of the ocean?  Or imbued a man with the powers of a demi-god like Maui?  Of course He could.  After all, we do have Samson in the Book of Judges.  This is not meant to suggest that I take the events here as literal fact.  Rather, we should understand that God is so much bigger than we know.

Another thing that is big in Moana (2026) is the ocean, and it is to it that our title character (Catherine Laga’aia) is drawn.  I do not know why I missed this in my discussion of the previous iteration, but for whatever reason it is this theme of figuring out who you are that moved me most while watching it.  In particular, I was struck by the line in one of the songs (yes, it is still a musical) that states, “Happiness is where you are.”  The figuring out of who you are part indicates a grasping at things beyond us, which is something I wish fewer Christians would do.  The argument against this is Moana, but the counter is that she is being literally called to take the heart of the ocean back to Te Fiti.  Had she denied this prompting, bad things would have happened, like her people on her home island of Motunui dying because their crops and fish are failing.  In other words, there would have been no happiness where she was.  Ironically enough, before going to the theater I saw on Facebook a clip about Father Scott-Vincent Borba.  He was the founder of Eyes, Lips, and Face (E.L.F) Cosmetics, a multi-million-dollar beauty company.  In the interview, he admits to having ignored the vocation implanted in his heart by God from his birth.  It took his father passing away and realizing how empty was his life for him to realize who he is, which is a servant of God.  Like Moana on a boat in the Pacific Ocean, he is now fulfilling the role he is supposed to do.  What makes it more special is that they are doing so in the service of others.  As such, my response to the song referenced in this paragraph is that they are servants of God.

So far, there are a lot of reviewers who are critical of Moana (2026) because of what I referenced above in how similar it is to its animated cousin.  Further, they see the live action version as duller.  It is all of a piece to me.  They are fine as movies go, but not my favorite.  Make of this judgement what you will.