Moana - Bad Trailers Don't Always Mean Bad Movies

Elizabeth Derstine
Aug 27, 2016
2 min read

Watch this trailer.

WATCH IT!

What you just watched is an aggressively mediocre trailer. But yet after seeing this trailer for the first time (before Finding Dory if you crave context) I was hell bent that this movie was going to be phenomenal. It was Hawaii, it was very realistic hair animations, it was the creators of the Frozen and Zootopia, it was LIN MANUEL MIRANDA. I waited in eager anticipation of the next trailer.

Trailer #2 :D

What a meh trailer. As equally meh as the first. Perhaps more. It might be more meh.

But... it did nothing to quell my excitement about the movie.

Hmmm.....

Why was that?

I think the fault of these trailers is how hard they are trying to play up the gimmicks, the gimmick is The Rock (I will never not refer to him as that) his bigness, his confidence, the Hercules style tattoos on his arm. The trailers focus on all those things instead of our title character or story. It feels cheep.

But I trust this movie because I don't trust Disney trailers. Do you remember how bad the Zootopia trailer was?

OOF

That trailer like Moana relied on the gimmick, in that case walking talking animals. I have two ideas about this

1) Disney does not yet totally trust this new Pixar-ian approach it has begun with animated movies. It still advertises them like they are a single joke single layer romp.

2) The movie relies on word of mouth excitement. The wonder behind Zootopia is not something that could have fit neatly in a trailer. It was an energy. If Moana contains an equally beautiful energy I don't think a minute or two before Finding Dory would do it justice.

Despite it's trailers, Moana has a lot to be excited about (LIN MANUEL MIRANDA). Particularly its appropriate approach to casting. Moana features voice actors that represent the culture being depicted in the animation. This is especially important to note coming off of the controversy surrounding Kubo and the Two Strings where many of the Japanese characters were voiced by white actors.

Moana hits theaters November 23rd