A lot of Moana fans are talking about the similarities between the OG Disney animated movie and the live action adaptation, but to me, a lot of the more interesting conversations are around the changes that were made. Some of them are bigger and will be obvious to anyone who has seen both movies, but there are also a lot that are more subtle and won’t immediately be noticeable to the casual viewer.
As an example, mega-star Lin-Manuel Miranda no longer sings “We Know The Way.” He’s the most prominent voice in the original version of the standout track that’s been streamed nearly 300M times on Spotify. He returned to work on the music for the new movie, but ultimately, the team decided to replace his vocal with one from Moses Mackay.
CinemaBlend recently had the chance to interview director Thomas Kail during the press day for the movie, and he gave us a pretty detailed explanation of the shake-up. Apparently, Miranda wasn’t supposed to sing on the track in the original movie either. He recorded a vocal demo to work as a placeholder. It went over really well, and since he was such a huge star, the original directors and the team behind the movie decided to just keep it.
When it came time to make the new movie, however, both Kail and Miranda felt like it was a good opportunity to turn the track over to a Polynesian voice. Here’s a portion of his quote…
This felt like an opportunity to have a Polynesian voice there. Lin was the first person to say, yes, let’s go do that. And we found an amazing singer to join us, Moses. So that, that’s the voice that you hear in that vocal.
Miranda and Kail have worked together for more than a decade. Kail was the director on Manuel’s breakout musical In The Heights, and he was heavily involved in Hamilton, directing the workshop, the off-Broadway version, the original Broadway version and the movie adaptation. As such, it wasn’t exactly a surprise the two continued working together on Moana.
In fact, when the subject of Miranda came up, Kail couldn’t stop talking about what a joy it was to be working with his longtime collaborator. He said the two have been scheming and working together constantly since they first met more than two decades ago, and to actually be together on set was a dream.
My conversation with Lin is one that hasn’t stopped since we met in May of 2002. So we’re so deep into it. We’re talking about everything all the time. The fact that we got to come together on this one, this was something that he did on his own when we were making Hamilton. And so now for us to be able to be sitting on set to be planning and plotting to show him cuts, you know, to be dreaming of, you know, what this could be, you know, he’s such an essential collaborator for me.
The critics reviews of the collaboration haven’t been positive, with many pointing to how similar the finished product is the original film, but thus far, the audience scores have been quite strong. It’s sitting at around 90% for the fan numbers on Rotten Tomatoes, and the word of mouth has been strong from the target audience. Its disappointing box office, however, has likely been a sign that it’s having trouble attracting casuals and people outside that target demographic.
You can check out the live action adaptation of Moana in theaters right now. Dwayne Johnson is back, and his wig is worth the price of admission alone. All the great songs and fun acting are just an added bonus.