Don’t Tell The Rock It Was ‘Too Soon’ To Remake ‘Moana,’ Entire Internet

I grew up watching a lot of animated Disney films. The opening of Beauty & the Beast still haunts my dreams, Toy Story was a revelation in my family, and getting to see The Hunchback of Notre-Dame on a giant screen at the Superdome in Louisiana (which I’m now seeing happened barely over thirty years ago, Jesus). But as Life went on, I just kinda… stopped. It’s not for any particular reason, nor did I stop watching all animated films, but Disney’s offerings fell to the wayside. So, I’ve never seen Moana.

That’s a loss on my part, it seems! Anytime I have heard a song from it, I’ve bounced along. My niece was obsessed with it for a while, so I’ve heard her excitedly talk about it, which is incredibly infectious, but I’ve just never seen it. Part of me wanted to watch it leading up to the live-action iteration, so I could take my kids to see that. Now? I may just… watch the original and forgo the remake because, hoo-boy, it sounds like a mess.

To be fair, I probably could have judged how the film would turn out based just on the trailers. And I have seen those. In fact, when I saw Supergirl the other day, I was greeted with the same Moana trailer twice!! Two times!!! AMC says the trailers take 25-30 minutes and, apparently, they just had to be closer to the latter. So, I saw it twice; it looked awful both times, and within 48 hours, reviews would start pouring in. They are, predominantly, not kind.

Most of them take shots at how terrible and flat the whole thing looks, but a lot of the shots are at the fact that it just feels unnecessary. Why remake the movie so soon after release, especially if you are just trying to recreate it shot for shot? The whole thing reeks of a cash grab, which fans have been hip to from the jump, but The Rock, AKAK Dwayne Johnson, is here to dump some cold seawater on all of that.

“To be honest with you, I never bought into this idea that ‘you have to wait 20 years, you have you wait 30 years, it’s too soon,’” Johnson explained to THR at the movie’s premiere. “I honestly never did, and not because I’m biased and I made the film, but because there’s themes and values in this, in animated Moana, that could translate really well if you saw a real human being going through it, and a real young girl going through it.” The film has already translated just fine, Dwayne!

This won’t be the first time that Dwayne misunderstands what his audiences want, but it’s a bummer to see that so consistently be the case over the years. The man used to try! And the idea that The Smashing Machine was some big change for him rings hollow with projects like this and another Jumanji on the way (even if he did agree to do those before his turn as a UFC star). It also doesn’t help that he just kind of shoo-shoos away legitimate gripes. This feels like the “Black Adam tendrils” post all over again.