Sep 15, 2016

Disney releases first full "Moana" trailer

Disney has released a full trailer for their next feature, Moana:

The film marks the first foray into full-CGI for the famed directing duo of Ron Clements and John Musker, who are best known for their Disneyified versions of classic fairy tales like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. It is also the first of the seven features they've directed that is based on a completely original story; previous films have been adapted from fairy tales (The Princess and the Frog), books (The Great Mouse Detective, Treasure Planet), and classical mythology (Hercules).

Interestingly, the trailer chooses not to highlight the illustrious past of Clements and Musker, and instead advertises Moana as being “from the creators of Frozen and Zootopia,” a Trump-worthy departure from facts. While Moana may be from the same studio as those earlier films, it stretches the limits of industry decorum to suggest that all three of these films have the same creators.

The filmmaking-by-committee approach of the contemporary Disney studio, however, does lend credence to the idea that Moana could in fact be from the same creators as Frozen and Zootopia. Indeed, the Moana trailer contains all the splashiness and calculated appeal of Disney's more recent output-flourishes that were all but absent from Clements and Musker's last dreary outing, The Princess and the Frog.

Whoever created the film, it's safe to say that Disney will begin making lots of money when Moana is released in the United States on November 23.