Matt Reviews: Power Rangers (2017)

This is the tale of how five teens with attitude defended a Krispy Kreme against Effie Trinket’s Poison Ivy cosplay.

The story is pretty simple: In the town of Angel Grove, five teens discover mystical coins that grant them superhuman powers. They are recruited by an alien named Zordon (Bryan Cranston) to become the newest iteration of the Power Rangers, an intergalactic team of warriors designed to protect all life in the universe. With the reawakening of the Rangers also comes the resurrection of their greatest enemy: Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks), the former Green Ranger who wishes to use Earth’s Zeo Crystal to cause planet-wide genocide. Despite the fact that none of them really know each other and are all a bunch of jaded, angsty teens, the Rangers must learn to work together as a team to stop Rita and save the world.

Full disclosure: I was never super into Power Rangers. Sure, I watched the original series on re-runs as a kid, but it was never my favorite thing. Maybe it was because I didn’t grow up in that era. The two Power Rangers shows I did grow up watching were SPD (in which the Rangers are space cops in the future) and Mystic Force (where the Rangers are wizards), and I remember liking them just find. But honestly, I think I liked them so much because they capitalized on my two main obsessions as a kid: aliens and wizards. So with that background, I didn’t go into the movie with the mindset of “If they screw up Power Rangers, I’m gonna burn their house to the ground.”

The film works hard to give the Rangers more complex character and more modern and sympathetic backstories. These are not the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers who are just the all around stand-up kids you’d find in a lot of cheesy kid’s shows. These Rangers have an edge to them. Their lives are plagued with bullying from school and from home, from hardships out of their control and stupid mistakes that sabotage their own happiness. They’re not perfect, and the movie makes sure to hammer that point home.

Red: the blood of angry fans/Black: the dark of reboots past

Granted, it can get cringy how hard the movie forces the “teens with attitude” bit down our throats, but at least the movie is trying to make them more believable as modern-day teenagers. The standout Ranger I believe is Billy, played here by RJ Cyler. Where the rest of the Rangers are jaded cynics who rebel with wild abandon of their parents opinions, Billy comes out as the comparative “goody two-shoes” of the bunch, which I found refreshing. He’s easily the most sympathetic and likeable of the Rangers due to just how different he is from the rest of them. The choice to also make him autistic was a bold one, but I think it worked out. To my knowledge, there aren’t a whole lot of superheroes representing those on the autism spectrum. The first one that comes to mind is Symmetra from Overwatch, and even then, it’s not a hero from a big blockbuster movie like this. It’s a minority that I think needs way more representation in movies like this, and maybe after this film, we could see more heroic role models for autistic children.

Speaking of representation, Trini is apparently supposed to be gay in this movie. I say “apparently” because this movie dances around the topic more than Beauty and the Beast did with Le Fou. There’s a total of one scene where it is vaguely alluded to, and it would have been interesting to go down that route since Trini is talking about how her parents like to use “labels” and want her to act more “normal” or whatever. That would have made an already heartbreaking scene that more emotional. But of course, they missed their chance to be out with it and have the first blatantly homosexual superhero in cinema. What was so wrong about Trini just coming out and saying “Yeah, I’m gay”? Billy’s autism was better represented than Trini’s sexuality, and the latter was the one that got more media attention! Studios should stop making a big deal about characters’ sexualities in press releases if it’s not going to be a big deal in their movies.

Aside from the Rangers, Zordon also gets a more complex characterization here. From what I remember from the original, he was just the big floating head that alerted the Rangers to when there was a new monster in town and was just the standard emotionless, incorruptible mentor figure. The most I remember him doing is when he died in the Mighty Morphin’ movie. (He did die, right? It’s been forever since I’ve seen that movie.) Here, he’s a more complex and flawed character. He’s selfish; the only reason he’s so adamant about the Rangers morphing for the first time is because it will allow him to use the Morphing Grid to come back to life so he can defeat Rita…somehow. But he goes through an arc, too, as shown when he sacrifices his only way to return to gain his body back in order to resurrect Billy. The choice to make him the former Red Ranger was one I also enjoyed, and it gives him a more personal history with the Rangers. Along the same vein, Alpha 5 is considerably less annoying than in the original series. And he’s an itty-bitty badass when he’s training the Rangers in fighting.

"Ah, after 22 years, I'm free! It's time to conquer the box office!"

On the other end, Rita is not a particularly developed villain. Elizabeth Banks does provide some genuinely unsettling scenes, and her performance is delightfully hammy. But the real shame here is that they make her the former Green Ranger, which gives her an immediate connection to Zordon, but they barely explore that aspect. I don’t think Zordon and Rita ever have an interaction aside from the beginning scene (ya know, the part where Zordon orders an aerial strike on prehistoric Earth that kills the dinosaurs).  We don’t even get to explore the reason Rita betrayed the Rangers other than, “I’m crazy and want to destroy everything that lives!”

Here’s an example of the kind of backstory they could give her: Maybe Rita thought that she deserved to be the Red Ranger over Zordon, believing that he didn’t have the strength or merit to be the lead Ranger and she did. She grew a jealous superiority complex over Zordon being chosen (or however this stuff works), and strived for a way to prove she was more powerful than he. She became obsessed with unearthing and controlling the Zeo Crystal – which she saw as her key to true, incomparable power – and her betrayal of the Rangers is deeply rooted in her own lust to prove how better she is than Zordon. Her genocidal plan could be explained as her insanity caused by her Zero Crystal obsession coupled with the disillusionment of a universe that would pick Zordon as the Red Ranger (thus making her just as jaded and angsty as the new Rangers). The fact that they didn’t kill Rita off at the end of this movie makes me hopeful that the next will get to expand on her character and motivations a lot more.

The movie is also quite inconsistent with its tone. It can’t decide whether it wants to be a darker, more mature reboot of the franchise or something goofier like its predecessors. It can go from Zack monologuing about his fear of being alone after his mother dies, to discovering that the all-powerful Zeo Crystal is buried underneath a Krispy Kreme, in an act of product placement so egregious that it transcends all pre-existing concepts. Between the two tones, I would have probably preferred if the movie stuck with the darker, modern option. Those parts of the movie really played to the strengths of the actors and added more emotional weight. And I never felt like those parts went too dark and dull like Fant4stic. Then again, witnessing the Megazord pimp-slap Rita into the stratosphere was pretty fun.

"But Zordon, what does cooking meth have to do with becoming Power Rangers?"
"Becoming what now?

The film’s other major problem comes from the Rangers themselves. Oh, not the kids. The Rangers. As in the costumes. The costumes that only show up in the last twenty minutes of the movie.

Yeah.

Like I said before, the movie takes a lot of time developing the characters, their personalities, their backgrounds, and their relationships, but maybe they could have shaved off a bit of that time for actual Power Rangering. Granted, we do get to see the kids train a lot with Alpha, so we get some fight scenes with their powers. But the movie isn’t called Angsty Teens with Superpowers (although that was the unused alternate title for Chronicle). It’s the same problem people had with the 2014 Godzilla movie: With a movie titled Power Rangers, you’d expect to see more Power Rangers than what we got.

Power Rangers is not a great movie. It is also not a terrible movie. To me, it is very middle-of-the-road. It never does anything too horrible that makes me want to punch the nearest person, but it also never does anything adrenaline-pumping that makes me want to punch the air in excitement. The closest thing we got to the latter was when the Rangers FINALLY morph and head out in their Zords, scored by the classic “Go Go Power Rangers” theme in the background. But even then, it only lasts like fifteen seconds before switching to Kanye West’s “Power.” Had they kept the Mighty Morphin’ theme go-going, maybe the climax would have been more exicting to me.

In terms of modern-day reboots of kid’s properties from late 20^th century, this movie is much better than the Transformers series. More effort is put into the characters and story here, and the action is more exciting, with actual humans fighting sometimes and not just constant CGI vs CGI. The best fight scene in my opinion isn’t even the final fight with the Megazord vs. Goldar; it’s the first fight the Rangers have with the Putties after (FINALLY) suiting up. It’s also MUCH more mature than Transformers could ever be. Whereas Transformers continues to put in juvenile jokes that it thinks its audience will love, Power Rangers mostly shies away from that. The only joke of Transformers caliber is at the beginning with the tired “Milking a male cow’s udder” gag. I haven’t seen either of the new Ninja Turtles movies yet, but I’m gonna take a stab from what I’ve heard and say that this movie’s better than both of those two. Moral of the story: Don’t let Michael Bay near your childhood if you don’t want it turned into dick jokes.

"So how come we keep our faces out even though it decreases our armor?"
"Shut up, I'm not being paid to be stuffed in a CGI Iron Man reject for two hours."

Now, if you want a recommendation for a really stellar Power Rangers film, check out the short film Power/Rangers starring James van der Beek and Katee Sackoff. It’s much darker and more emotional than this movie, but it’s written almost as a self-aware parody of darker and grittier reboots of children’s entertainment. But as for the 2017 Power Rangers flick: it has its problems for sure, but it’s a solid framework for bigger and better movies in the future. Apparently they’ve got six or seven of these things planned. Yeesh…

Final verdict: 6/10

Also, not a critique on the movie itself, but the theater I went to has one of those big drink dispensers that has all the flavors of soda imaginable, and it was out of everything that wasn’t diet, lo calorie, or lo sugar. I had to settle for Diet Orange Fanta, which was the least disgusting option I had. AND my friend bought the last thing of Red Vines. Ugh.

Matt Reviews: Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Ah, Beauty and the Beast. My favorite Disney movie. Everything about this movie is magical: the songs, the characters, the breathtaking animation. Some say that Belle was my first crush. I don’t remember this, but I also don’t deny it. It was the first animated movie to be nominated for an Academy Award, and it certainly deserves that praise. Truly, it is a tale as old as time.

So why in the name of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont would you want to go and remake it?

For those of you who have been in a coma for the past twenty years, here’s the story: A prince (Dan Stevens) is cursed by an enchantress for being selfish and vain, transforming him into a hideous beast. His servants are also cursed for some reason, with them transformed into household objects. The curse can be lifted if the prince finds true love, but he must do so before the last petal of a magic rose falls. In a small provincial town, a girl named Belle (Emma Watson) is an outcast because she’s a woman who thinks. When here father (Kevin Kline) is taken prisoner by the Beast, Belle takes his place, and in her captivity, she learns to love the Beast as he falls for her as well. It’s not as Stockholm-y as it sounds.

Okay, let’s get this out of the way first: the remake is nowhere near as good as the original. I know, shocker right? But it does try to be an expansion of the original film. It goes out of its way to try and explain some of the questions that people had from the original, like “Why does nobody notice that their prince has disappeared for several years?” and “How long was Belle with the Beast if the seasons changed so much?” It also changes a few things for the sake of clarity and storytelling, like leaving out all reference to the Beast’s age and how long the curse has lasted (so as to not make it seem like the Enchantress cursed an 11-year-old for being an 11-year-old). It also takes a cue from the stage musical by having the servants slowly transform into fully inanimate objects as the curse deepens, which actually makes the ending a lot sadder when it looks like the curse will never be broken.

Emma Watson is also not good as Belle. I’m sorry, Emma, I love you and all, but your Belle is blasé. Her acting is so dull and uninterested that I don’t think she strays from a blank expression for much of the movie, not counting for the occasional smirk that I guess is supposed to pass for human emotion. Her singing also isn’t very good. Now, I’m not musical expert and my singing is flat itself, but when Belle sings the opening number of the movie, I should feel something. And I felt nothing listening to her try to compete with Paige O’Hara.

There goes the studio with remakes like always/The same exact film to re-sell

The rest of the cast is hit-or-miss. Emma Thompson is okay as Mrs. Potts. I couldn’t tell if I liked Ewan McGregor as Lumiere or not because I was too distracted by his inconsistent French accent. (The movie makes time to explain all these things, but it still can’t explain why, in a movie set in France, the only one with the appropriate accent is the damn candlestick?) And while Ian McKellan is a fine actor, I didn’t really buy him as the fussy, neurotic Cogsworth. That’s the main problem with some of these characters, particularly the object-servants: the movie doesn’t give them the chance to show off what makes these characters memorable. Some of these characteristics are there, but they’re not explored enough like in the original and the actors don’t really convey these classic personalities to their full degree.

However, I did think Kevin Kline was good as Maurice, downplaying the wacky, screwup-ness of the original character to make him more believable. He even gets some good emotional scenes mourning is dead wife. Luke Evans worried me a bit when he was cast as Gaston, but he really surprised me in not just how well he played the character, but how well he played a villain. Dan Stevens is alright as the Beast, but I think I liked his performance better when he was acting like a villain at the beginning.

But I think my favorite casting – as well as my favorite character in this film – is Josh Gad as Le Fou. The film took Gaston’s one-note, bootlicking lackey from the original film and transformed him into a much more realized character. He’s much more moral than Gaston is, and even tries to act as his conscience at various points in the film. His character development was much appreciated, as the way he was written in the movie, I didn’t really want him to suffer the same way the other mob members did during the castle battle.

No one fought like Gaston/No one's wrought like Gaston/No one elicits scary gay thoughts like Gaston

And yes, like the news has been buzzing about, Le Fou is gay in this movie. They never outright state it, but his mannerisms and the way he interacts with Gaston make his sexual preference totally clear. I’m not sure if it’s an unpleasant stereotype to make him the sassy gay friend who lusts after a macho straight guy, so I don’t know whether or not this was a positive representation of the LGBT community. But on the whole, I really wish they would have just come out and said he was gay in the movie instead of awkwardly beating around the bush with it.

There’s four new songs added just for this film, and while they’re alright songs, they’re not very memorable. They allow some of the characters to show off their singing voices more than in the original film – like the Wardrobe and the Beast – but some of them didn’t really feel all that necessary. One of the songs actually felt like a discount version of “Human Again”, the cut song from the original theatrical release of the animated movie. Why not just put that song into the remake instead? It’d please the fans who liked that song, and boom! One less song you have to write for a longer runtime.

I’m also not crazy about the designs of things in this movie. The Beast looks far too human in my opinion, especially in the face. Really makes it hard to believe the “for who could ever learn to love a beast” line when he looks marginally more attractive than the animated version. All of the inanimate objects’ designs are either boring or creepy, with the exception of Lumiere, who I thought looked alright. Belle’s dress is no where as beautiful as the original, and at times, it looks more like a pricey prom dress than something a Disney Princess would wear. I think it’s the gloves. The remake ditched the gloves and it’s throwing the whole thing off. And while I think the exterior of the Beast’s castle has an ominous, gothic look to it, the interior is far from majesty. Everything just looks too small, especially the ballroom, which should look just as grandiose and magical as the original.

I think that’s where a lot of my problems lie with this movie: it’s just not as grand as the original. Nothing really elicits an awe-inspiring response from me like the animated version does. Most of the time, it feels more like I’m watching a well-done TV movie rather than a big budget Hollywood remake. The only part of the movie that I thought captured this sense of grandiosity was the “Be Our Guest” musical number, which managed to show off the movie’s special effects to a spectacular degree and make me kind of glad that I saw it in 3D (it was the only showing that was convenient with my schedule). It also has the best new joke in the whole film (“After all, miss, this is France.” Cue vegetable guillotine. Dark.) But even then, the ballroom scene should have received the same level of effort in order to remain a showstopper like in the original. I mean, it’s the titular song, for Walt’s sake!

Be our guest/To detest/Disney please give it a rest/I am praying to the Lord that Aladdin won't be a mess

The film is largely a shot-for-shot, word-for-word remake of the original with not a lot of significant changes. The few changes they do add seem pointless to the overall story. The tragic backstories of Bell and the Beast? Not plot-relevant. The Enchantress living in the village as an old beggar woman and being around the castle to personally lift the curse? Goes nowhere. The fact that, in addition to the rose and the mirror, the Beast also has an ENCHANTED BOOK THAT ALLOWS HIM TO INSTANTLY TELEPORT TO ANYWHERE ON EARTH? Yeah, you bet that sucker’s never used, seen, or heard from again. Seriously, you can NOT just throw something this big into a movie like this and not expect questions to be raised. This could have been their big new change to add to the movie to distance it from the original. But, nope. Bell and the Beast go to Paris, Belle learns her mother died from the plague (yeah, real big secret you were keeping there, Maurice), and the movie continues on like the book never existed. WHAT?!

Overall, the remake seemed entirely unnecessary. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the original that needed improved upon. When it comes to older movies like Cinderella or The Jungle Book, an argument for a remake makes more sense. These are older movies that often have larger story or logic problems. Sometimes the storytelling wasn’t always the best or characters weren’t the most defined, so a modern-day remake could definitely fix things and add in new twists that play with these classic stories. But Beauty and the Beast isn’t even thirty years old. It already comes from an era of modern storytelling that put focus on dynamic characters. And there’s no new twists here that change or play with the story at all. Now I’m actually kind of nervous for the other remakes of 1990’s Disney movies that the studio has planned.

If there was no animated Beauty and the Beast movie, with the live action one being Disney’s first iteration of the fairy tale, it still wouldn’t be a great film. On its own, it’s just a meh movie with bland characters, bland acting, and bland visuals. But since it is a remake of a previous movie – and a beloved one at that – it needs to be compared. Nearly everything about the remake is inferior to the original, and it lacks much of the charm that the animated version had. While some aspects are expanded upon, nothing is really added or changed that affected the overall story to make it something different. If you want to see a really spectacular Beauty and the Beast movie, go watch the original instead. To paraphrase one of the film’s timeless musical numbers, there’s nothing here that wasn’t there before.

Tale as old as time/Barely even thirty/Characters made of wood/The cartoon looked so good/So expectedly

 Final verdict: 5.5/10.

So does this mean they’ll be doing a live action remake of Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas? I won’t see it until they bring back Tim Curry as Forte.

Matt Reviews: Moana

WARNING: SPOILERS for MOANA follow. You're welcome.

I have this problem with Disney movies: Whenever I don’t see them in theaters, people go nuts over how good they are, forcing me to see them as soon as they are released on DVD to join in on the hype. It’s happened with Frozen, Inside Out, Zootopia, and now Moana.

Long ago, the shape-shifting trickster demigod Maui (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) stole the life-giving heart of the god Te Fiti, which incurred the wrath of the demon Te Ka and caused a darkness to start spreading throughout the world that will eventually snuff out all life. On a distant island, Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) – the chief’s daughter – is chosen by the ocean to return the heart to Te Fiti, against the wishes of her father, who wants her to be training to be the new chief. After wrangling Maui into her quest, the two journey across a dangerous sea of monsters to return the heart and save the world from dying out.

The girl playing Moana must be praised extensively for her performance. Not only does she provide great emotional and comedic material, not only does she have an amazing singing voice, not only does she do all this at only sixteen years old, but this is her first professional acting role. Ever. She managed to get the lead in a Disney movie as her first gig, beating out countless others who auditioned before her, most of which probably had the years of experience that she had not. Kudos to you, Auli’i. Let’s hope this is the start of something great.

Dwayne Johnson was also a surprise in his role as Maui. Yes, Maui does have the typical boisterous, “Can You Smell What the Rock is Cooking?” attitude that many other Dwayne Johnson characters have, but as the film goes on and Maui matures, we get to see some truly believable emotional acting from Johnson. It’s a side of him you don’t often see, but a side I hope films show more of in the future. Also, the Rock can sing. He’s not the greatest singer in the movie, but he can carry a tune, and I’m just shocked that he has that much musical talent to begin with.

"You will board my boat and take me to the Incredibles sequel."

 Like many other modern Disney films, Moana works hard to subvert many of the classic Disney tropes and clichés, which sometimes just causes more clichés. Moana is the “princess who wants more than what her normal life gives her” character – like Jasmine or Belle – but the film manages to distinguish itself in two fields:

First off, Moana isn’t technically a princess. She’s a chief’s daughter. Now automatically, this just sounds like splitting hairs and just me saying “She’s not a princess because her title is different, HA! Loophole!” But as the chief’s daughter, Moana is much closer with the labor and everyday governing of her people than I think we’ve ever seen with other Disney Princesses. Moana suggests ways to better the islanders’ way of life and is actively training to be a future ruler. Rather than just sitting pretty waiting for a prince to come and kiss her awake, or strictly rebelling against her family’s traditions from the get-go, she actually works on ruling her kingdom.

Secondly, Moana doesn’t have a love interest, and there’s no romance element in the movie. At all. (Well, except for a brief moment where a younger kid tries hitting on Moana early in the movie, but that doesn’t count!) This is especially notable because so many subversive Disney movies like this try to downplay the traditional “prince-and-princess” romance aspect and by giving the characters more chemistry and making their romance more believable – like in Frozen, Tangled, Aladdin, etc. But in this movie, there’s no prince, no love interest, and no romance. Moana is strictly business. The only two interacting characters for the majority of the movie are Moana and Maui – a girl and a boy – and by the end, they’re still just friends. It’s not like in Zootopia where the opposite gendered friends are just friends but you can definitely feel the romantic subtext. Moana and Maui are like brother and sister: completely platonic in every sense of the word.

The film also works to subvert a few other classic aspects of Disney movies, like the animal sidekick trope. From the advertisements, it would appear that Pua the pig would be the animal company that would follow Moana on her adventure. Nope. It’s Hei Hei, the chicken who’s almost entirely too dumb to live. I freaking love this character. He’s hilarious in how unfathomable his stupidity is – considering most of his near-death experiences in the movie come from him blindly walking off the boat – and he’s a refreshing change of pace for Disney animal sidekicks. From the limited screentime he had, Pua just seemed like other adorable, nonverbal animal companions from Disney movies, like Sven from Frozen or Cri-Kee from Mulan. Hei Hei adds a dollop of originality to this classic trope, and his self-destructive ignorance also provides Moana and Maui with an additional challenge at times.

The rooster has seen when the endtimes will come, but can not communicate it. He screams, for that is all he can do.

 Moana even plays with repeated tropes from recent Disney films. The past three animated Disney movies have had a “surprise villain” – someone who was thought to be a good guy, but turned out to be evil all along by the film’s climax  (see Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia). At first it was kind of clever, but when every new Disney movie was doing it, it started to get old and predictable. Moana, however, subverts that by having the bad guy turn out to be not so bad all along. The choice to have Te Ka turn out to be an angry, transformed Te Fiti all along was unexpected, especially when the past few movies decided to have a good guy be evil. This decision allowed the finale to be much more emotional, as it was not about defeated the unstoppable forces of evil, but reaching out to the goodness inside of a being that has been wrong and made inconsolably furious.

However, the movie still feels the need to strictly enforce other Disney cliches, like the death of a family member. Sure, Moana has both of her parents, and both survive to see the finale, but her grandmother suddenly perishes from “Being a Parental Figure in a Disney Movie” Syndrome. Seriously, one scene she’s perfectly fine, then the very next one she’s on her deathbed. Did I miss something here? Yes, it's an emotional moment and it allows her to go all Force Ghost mentor later on in the film, but it still feels incredibly tacked-on and sudden.

Of course, you can’t talk about a Disney movie without discussing the musical numbers (Unless it’s not a musical, in which case there’s nothing to talk about). Moana’s sountrack has a nice, tropical sound to courtesy of songwriter and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. In every song, you can feel the rich Polynesian heritage that the movie does so well to represent. “How Far I’ll Go” is definitely the “Let it Go” of this movie: powerful, emotional, and sung by a woman with a brilliant voice. (Let’s just hope it doesn’t get overplayed to hell and back…) “You’re Welcome” is nice and catchy – nicely showing off the Rock’s musical talents – and “Where You Are” is a jaunty way to open up the movie and introduce us to Moana’s people. “We Know the Way” is one of the most beautiful songs in the movie, sung by Miranda himself and partially performed in the native language of the Polynesian people. I kind of wish the whole song was sung in this language; it just sounds so cool, different, and fully emerged in the culture of the Pacific Islands. “Shiny” is a great villain song performed by Tamatoa, the giant, treasure-encrusted crab voiced by Flight of the Concord’s Jermaine Clement. This song opts to forgo the Polynesian sound of the rest of the numbers and instead presents itself in the style of a glitzy, David Bowie-esque glam rock ballad. This was the only song from the movie I heard before watching it, and I may have listened to it over and over again until I knew most of the lyrics. Disney villains always have the best songs, and this one is no exception.

"There's a staaaaar craaaab waiting in the sky/He'd like to come and eat us/But he thinks we're not shiny."

 On the topic of Tamatoa, I feel it would have been interesting to have him as the main villain instead of Te Ka. While Te Ka is definitely intimidating and has the sympathetic backstory, there’s not really a ton of personality there - just intimidation and fireball throwing. Tamatoa is brimming with personality and serves to be a great foil for Maui: both are long-lived egotists who let their greatness be defined by material objects to make up for their shortcomings. While I am grateful that his scene served to reveal some key information about Maui’s background and character development, making Tamatoa the primary antagonist would have elevated him from just being one of the most memorable parts of the movie to another great, vanity-obsessed Disney villain.

The visuals in this movie are also a feast for the eyes. Most of this movie takes place on the ocean, and that’s clearly where the Disney animators’ talents shine through the most. There were points where the water effects looked so realistic, I forgot that I was watching an animated movie. Moana’s hair also has realistic physics, and the islands and landscapes all look incredibly detailed. Frozen showed how well Disney could show off the beauty of snow and ice, and Moana shows that they can do just as well with the opposite climate.

Moana had a lot to live up to seeing as how the previous animated Disney flick – Zootopia – quickly became one of my favorites. While I don’t think it blew me away as much as Zootopia did, Moana is still an incredibly solid, beautiful Disney movie that should not be missed. I might like it better than Frozen, though that might just be because I’m sick of seeing Frozen everywhere.

Unless I’m forgetting one, this is Disney’s first movie since Hercules to tackle foreign mythologies (not counting the Thor movies) and the first one to depict a non-white mythology at that. Considering how well this one turned out, maybe this will inspire Disney to make princess films based on other ethnic mythologies, like African or Hindu.

Final verdict: 8.5/10

Now, who’s waiting for Moana to be included as one of the worlds in Kingdom Hearts 3? Come on, a Heartless Tamatoa fight would be kickin’!