When I heard Ron Clements & John Musker: guys behind Aladdin, Hercules, Little Mermaid, Princess & the Frog
Were setting their next film in the world of Polynesian myths and legends, I had to find out more
They're....kinda, cute
Moana is set in the south pacific, among a world of Polynesian myths and legends
And features the talents of Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Taika Waititi & Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda
With a budget of over $100M it's one of the year's most anticipated movies
So we're here in LA at Walt Disney Studios where they've made every Disney movie from Jungle Book right through to Frozen
And I'm trying to do my best not to freak out
I'm kinda failing
When you guys first started working together, did you have any idea you would continue to work together in this professional partnership decades later?
It started in 1974, January 1974, so that's almost 43 years
He was the supervising animator and I was a lowly fledging animator, he was already well established so I -
I had to listen to his rants as he would demand things
I never ranted
He ranted from one day to the next
Our friendship was formed out of that feeling ‘why don’t people like these ideas that we have? These are good ideas’
And that led ultimately to Ron pitching The Little Mermaid
Turned out fine
What happened to that movie? It involved a mermaid, there was a little crab, right?
But there was a period of time when people thought Disney animation & particularly animated features where coming to an end
And then The Little Mermaid changed all that
Movies were getting more expensive, the audience was sort of declining, it was stigmatised as thing just for little kids almost
Other movies were being made cheaper
It was a tough time. Then things got a lot better
Moana's world of Polynesia is made up of over a 1000 islands spread across the central & south pacific ocean
To make sure they were accurately portraying the region, Disney consulted dozens of experts on Polynesian culture to approve or axe aspects of the movie
So we’re at the Tujunga which is the location where Moana was created
from story right through to concept art to the FX team who are putting the finishing touches on the film right now
It’s exciting because for a lot of people it might be their first introduction to Polynesian culture
I mean, everybody I’ve met on the team has taken so much time & energy & effort & heart to understand a lot of the essence of our
Polynesian cores and values
Part of my ancestry comes from Samoa, so for me I had to go back to Samoa when I was working on this film
I took my family on our kind of time and dime to immerse oursleves and feel the culture
We took lots of notes, lots of drawings, this is my grandfather’s tapa
it was 14 feet long, it was huge, it was gorgeous, so I decided to try and sneak it into the movie
Samoa is in my blood and to tell a story inspired by the south pacific is truly a great honou
Now there was some criticism around the character of Maui who’s voiced by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, of course
About the physicality adhering to cultural stereotypes and things like that. How do you guys respond to that kind of feedback?
I think our conception early on was if he was going to do these super heroic things – if he was literally going to pull up an island from the sea
this super strength – in our minds like a superhero, built solidly and powerfully and that was our intention
We saw him as this massive, bigger than life character. There again, Dwayne Johnson is the embodiment of that
I mean, he's The Rock
He is the Rock, he's a walking demi-God himself
It's a lot further down than it looks
I boarded this sequence where she walks in there and it took about a week, maybe two weeks
Typically for live action, a writer would go off for two or three months & write the whole script & come back & say 'here's the whole script'
We don’t do that here. I’ll go off for maybe two or three days, try and write as much as I can.
I mean, do you just throw these out or is someone collecting these for their personal collection?
I would be that person like I’m just going to keep these… Don’t worry about it guys, it’s totally fine.
You guys gave us the first African American Disney Princess in Princess Tiana
Now you’re giving us Moana and a Polynesian story. Are you conscious of the fact how important this is gonna
be to little brown girls growing up everywhere, that they’re going to have Moana as a role model?
Rachel House who is an actress who does a marvellous voice she was saying to us
'You have no idea how much impact this is gonna have on Poly girls that they can really see someone who looks like them'
'And who can have dreams'. We always saw it as an empowerment story, so I really hope that this can be a source of pride and empowerment
for young women of the Pacific Islands, I think that would be a wonderful thing
Ron, John, thank you so much for your time and thank you for my childhood
You’re welcome, you’re welcome.
You turned out very well so I think we'll take credit