Moana

[Bill1978]

To each his own I guess. I liked Shiny better than Love is an Open Door, Mother Knows Best, Friends on the Other Side and, especially, Mine, Mine, Mine.

I will never accept Love Is An Open Door as a villain song, it will always be a love song for me.

The main reason why I am not a fan of Shiny is you could remove the actual song and the plot still progresses and you don't lose any of the story. Whereas the others that you mention if you remove them you do lose some of the plot.

[Daniel]

It's the first time we get some insight into Maui being abandoned I believe, which leads to him opening up about it. He also gets his hook back and realizes he can no longer control his shape-shifting.

[EricJ]

I will never accept Love Is An Open Door as a villain song, it will always be a love song for me.

Technically, it WAS a love song, before they emergency-redrafted Hans into the Lying, Controlling Male Villain.

As villain songs go, it's not "Hellfire", but then, I never heard anybody give any other earthly reason for defending Hunchback.

[Farerb]

It's the first time we get some insight into Maui being abandoned I believe, which leads to him opening up about it. He also gets his hook back and realizes he can no longer control his shape-shifting.

It also have Tamatoa play into both Maui's and Moana's insecurities about their identities, which is the main theme of the film.

If there is a part that feels a bit unnecessary, it's the Kakamora sequence, but I would say that even that has a nice small set up and pay off with Maui doing all those tricks with the boat, Moana watches him and then she does the exact same tricks against Te Kā.

[Daniel]

True dat.

[Daniel]

Early demo of "How Far I'll Go". Interesting to compare.

[Farerb]

Musker and Clements' Swan Song is a love letter to the Disney Renaissance:

[Ben]

Or…it just shows up how formulaic these things are…

Ouch!

Sorry…

[Farerb]

Perhaps, I don't mind formulas if they are executed well.

[Ben]

Except the ones where you get turned into a cow and have to ask to be excused.

[EricJ]

I also put it next to Princess & the Frog, their penultimate-song, as an example of a story that had a Great Setting and an Empowered Heroine, but never the twain did meet.
New Orleans is nice to look at, and so is Tahiti, but what they had to do with the heroine's goal, I still wasn't sure by the last reel...And at least I knew what Tiana's goal WAS.

One thing Musker & Clements always did well (in addition to keeping Disney stocked with heroes like Aladdin, Hercules, Jim Hawkins and Basil of Baker Street), was find the synthesis between the "world" of the story and the appeal of its original tale--Aladdin and Little Mermaid were made for their environments, and you could put Treasure Planet in space without the Royal-Navy motif, but it just wouldn't "feel" like the classic story.

[Farerb]

Just announced: David G. Derrick Jr. will direct Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Moana” series for Disney+. Derrick first joined Disney Animation to work on 2016's Moana, which deepened his connection with his family’s Samoan roots.

https://twitter.com/DisneyAnimation/sta ... KY-ug&s=19

[Bill1978]

With 'We Don't Talk About Bruno' hitting the top spot in the UK Singles Chart, the Official Chart Company released the top 100 Disney streaming songs in the UK https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-ne ... uk__35039/. What's of note is that Moana had the most songs, and the #1 song (and maybe not the one you would have guessed). Which matches with that news from last month (I think) that said Moana is one of the most streamed movies on Disney+. Also of note is the minimum impact of the songs from Frozen II.

[Daniel]

Pretty amazing. It's definitely one soundtrack I revisit often.

[Dacey]

I mean, those charts mean a lot less now with everyone being able to get ALL of those songs for free legally on YouTube. The UK YouTube video of Let It Go has more than a billion views alone.