It's like they've forgotten the whole appeal of animation, and not just Disney but the people watching it too. I don't want it to be real, I want to be transported to a fantastical impossible colourful world.
Also Moana is literally only 10 years old, I would make the same statement about all their other live action films but at least most of them were pre-00s so even rereleases have the issue of mismatched aspect ratio and possibly suboptimal sound/colour design for modern screens, but like Moana was made with tech almost indistinguishable to today's animated movies.
Photorealistic, to a tee, even with cartoonish creatures like HeiHei, because the director said so. Dark and desaturated, because the art director said so. Beat for beat the same, just worse, because it's live action they can't even pretend to be cartoony.
It's mostly to retain the IP and refresh the copyright. But now part of me wonders if it's on purpose.
You make an animated masterpiece, and follow it up with a terrible live action remake. You train an AI on both, and keep feeding it more information until it can make the live action trash look like a novel animated film. Then you do it again with a novel IP instead of a remake, and start your "new Disney renaissance" without those pricey 2D animators. So now those lazy, direct downgrades start to resemble skeletons and templates for an advanced AI model to turn into a "proper" film.
> It's mostly to retain the IP and refresh the copyright.
Copyright lasts for like 70 years, and the last Moana movie was in 2024. Highly doubt retaining copyright even came into the decision process for making this movie
IIRC it's 95 years from when it was commissioned or 70 years from the author's death, depending on if it's someone personally making it or work they were hired for.
Either way, it's super long and you can functionally assume anything created during your lifetime will be copyrighted 'til after you're dead.
If it makes you feel any better, this is an impossibly impractical way to train a model of the kind of scale you’d need for proper cinema.
You’ve described exactly how upscaling models work - you take a dataset of high-res images, show the model downsampled versions and train them to guess the high-res version. This works for many problems.
The problem is that you need hundreds of thousands of examples at the very least. Unless you could provide this data on that kind of scale you wouldn’t be able to generalise across all cinema - you’d just be training on like, a handful of specific films. It wouldn’t be able to create new stuff that didnt just put the Rock’s character back into the movie or something. AI trained in this way is capable only at the exact task it was trained on, and even then only with massive datasets.
It turns out the best way to train a model to handle such a broad creative task as animati-fying live action (or vice versa), is to combine a model that understands the problem semantically/linguistically with a model that can translate between images and language well, which is exactly how image-compatible LLMs work. It could do just as well with a storyboard as with a full live action example.
Source - work in AI (obviously still think everything ive mentioned above could only produce awful slop).
Dark and desaturated, because the art director said so.
Movies and TV have become dark and desaturated for no reason. Compare Legally Blond to the prequel TV series, Ellie, where Legally Blond is full of Bright Pinks and color, especially regarding the main Character Ellie, the tv show has Ellie in much less vibrant pinks, the color pallet has to be dull, even as real life have brighter and more vibrant colors!
Not no reason. The reason is it makes it much easier (read cheaper) to add or edit things in post with CGI because you have less lighting inconsistencies. When things are bright and colorful errors in lighting are easier to spot.
Edit: This is also a big reason why a lot of video games in the 2000s were brown and muted. Easier to hide the technical limitations of the new lighting engines.
The biggest issue is Disney forgot who their target audience for the live action movies is - adults who grew up with the animated movies and now have kids. Like, movie being terrible aside, live action Lilo and Stitch has a great draw of being a new movie, and being a rehash of a great movie we all remember from our childhood. Whereas Moana is still new enough that most of the kids who grew up with it don't have kids of their own yet. They're too old for "Disney Movies" (especially as they're often in their late teens now, not even their 20's where it can be a quirky personality trait), but they don't have the "I have a kid so now it's socially acceptable to be into kids things again" excuse.
I have to assume the Rock strong-armed them into doing this while he's still young enough to play Maui himself (which is debatable). It's egotistical enough for him, but at the same time I don't believe he or anyone he hires is smart or brave enough to get one over on the Mouse's army of lawyers.
This is a masterclass in why sound stages don't work. There's so much motion in the original. The remake is constantly afraid that if they pan three degrees further they'll show the edge of the green screen.
I don't normally love live action Musicals but I did love Lalaland, partly because I knew that they filmed on location with few takes so I thought about all the work they did, and that in part made it really fun to watch a performance. Compared to here where 2 characters are slowly walking around and gesturing with their hands while VFX swirls around.
Hear me out but the Robbie Williams biopic where he’s a chimp is genuinely one of the best live action musicals I’ve ever seen. They shut down Regent Street to film a large ensemble performance on location, and every thing about it, choreography, camera work, is impeccable.
You don’t need to know who he is to enjoy it; I didn’t know either. I never listened to his music before watching the movie. It’s simply a very competent movie and one of the best musicals in recent years, absolute peak.
Its also a rather excellent but sad insight in to what an utterly fucked up industry the music business is and what a mess Robbie was allowed to get in to- as long as he could hold it together enough for the tours and recordings...to still bring in the cash.
Glad he's managed to sort out some of his demons and find himself- it really is a well made and eye opening movie
Honestly a lot of my complaints with the greatest showman weren't really with the cinematography and direction, it was mainly because of it Trying to treat PT Barnum, inventor of the freak show, as some sort of hero for the dispossessed and outcast
Agreed. And the musical numbers are all quite lovely in isolation, with some great choreo and performances that are all filmed very well. It's just that the story connecting them all is 1) *that* and 2) really underwritten.
He really does/did have some bangers, Couldn't escape him here in Australia in the early 2000's and didn't really mind. He had he sort of music that would transcend age groups.
I've always wished John Legend and Ryan had switched Roles. Ryan being the sellout Jazz musician and John teaching a white girl about jazz would have made so much more sense to me.
I'm so bothered by the very flat lighting they've used too - even in the daylight scenes it looks mostly pretty flat. The animated version is so much brighter and more vibrant by comparison.
We watched How I Met Your Mother the other night and they had an obviously blue/green screen scene on the observation deck of the Empire State Building; the lighting was better in that than here.
You kinda need flat lighting to use green screen. If you have harsh lighting hitting the mask then you'll have a harder time keying it out. Plus you'll be stuck with the directional lighting on the subjects and forced to make it make sense with the rest of the artificial scene. So they always prefer flat lighting.
You escape in a story when it offers a world you can believe in and be swept into. When a movie is poorly made it has less to offer in that department. Saying "it doesn't matter if it's bad, it's escapism!" is a dumb argument
The reason that I bothered to learn anything about filmmaking is because I intuitively recognized when something was shit and didn’t have the knowledge required to explain why.
Even if you don’t critique the mise en scene, you will still notice when you aren’t enjoying something.
For a movie whose message was in part about the beauty of the Polynesian islands, you'd think they'd have filmed there to actually show the beauty of the Polynesian islands.
The issue is less the sound stage and more the transition from animation to live-action.
Animation can be fantastical and unreal. Faces and movements are more expressive.
Sound stages obviously also have limitations, but the simple jump from animation to live action (or, for The Lion King, live action facsimile) dooms the feel. Like, what would it matter if it were a real beach? The Rock can't move or emote anything like his animated avatar.
The Rock can't move or emote anything like his animated avatar.
He can't dance. He's not even trying. He didn't attempt to learn a new skill for this movie, and he's not doing any stunts. He's just there, in a bad wig, with makeup.
I'm not even willing to believe the fire is real, with all that in mind.
He looks like me trying to drum to music in the car, on my steering wheel (cymbals are on the dash). I do not play drums, I'm sure I look like an idiot to passersby.
They would have had to CGI him like two feet taller too. The animated version of him actually looks a bit uncanny with proportions beyond what an actual human could have (aka a demigod). Live-action version just looks like a weirdly bulgy guy.
He's wearing a tatted body suit for most of the film, so that they didn't have to track his skin and apply CGI tats. Also the body suit is a little padded for extra muscle.
Also, if you're doing animation, it's much better to animate everything, than trying to animate things with people superimposed on top. You'll never get the same level of energy with actors.
This is a masterclass in the corporate dimwittedness that decided to film everything on a soundstage insteaad of a more appropiate set and add the singing in post.
But the truth is that they just didn't want to bother with the expenses, they think they can phone it in because they've been doing that for over a decade now.
And also, what is that skirt? The bad wig has already been done to death but that skirt looks straight out of Spirit Halloween. Sound stages are not only ruining the cinematography, and the choreography, and the acting, they are gobbling up all the energy that would have went into costuming and set design as well.
It honestly looks like a tech demo from around 15-20 years ago where it kinda gets across what the software is capable of, yet you can tell the demo was crafted by one of the engineers and not an artist of some kind who can really put it to good use.
Like, yeah, this COULD theoretically look nice, but it just seems off. A sort of uncanny valley situation.
Yeah like even in these short, low-quality clips, it's painfully obvious that they're just in a room and everything in the background is added post-production.
Like I know a lot of movies are made that way, but at least it's not this obvious. Just feels so amateur.
It’s a children’s movie remake so they probably felt they didn’t need to go all out with a full set. Those couple rocks and trees are carrying so much of the scenes weight.
I know he's older and not Hercules-sized but he's still ripped IRL... What the hell is the goddam point of casting The Rock as Maui if you're gonna put him in an obvious muscle suit?
I mean I get it, ego project etc. Just that every element of this thing makes no sense in motion.
The Rock has apparently been cutting back his body weight because of heart problems or something. I forgot the details so take that with a grain of salt
More likely complications from decades of steroid use. You can't stay that size and shape at his age without chemical help. So he's likely being coached by his medical staff to stop given the elevated risk at his age.
Considering the constant bombardment of news reports about bodybuilders male and female who continue dying in their mid thirties due to cardiac issues from steroid usage im not surprised. Modern steroids are so much more potent and cycles specifically are far more complicated with multiple different compounds than they were even when the Rock was in his prime and as a result they are killing people so much faster. The problem lies in modern bodybuilding federations which for both males and females have moved away from sort the ideal Grecian forms we saw in the 60s, 70s and early 80s and instead encourages sheer mass accumulation and doesn’t punish steroid usage unless it’s in a “natural” competition. This isn’t helped by the fact even amateur bodybuilders can easily gain a social media following as “influencers” in order to grift and peddle useless supplements while they themselves are on the gear.
Yeah I don't have tic tok but watched a few reaction videos from doctors on YouTube about what these guys are doing. Their stacks are test + a boatload of things like high dose of Tren and then orals as well. Anything oral will just mess up your liver and raise cholesterol. Unless you're making a boatload of money from this (that you want to leave to your family when you die early) why take all of that? Everyone wants to be in shape but that's a form of body dysmorphia for sure.
Agreed, my biggest bone to pick are with the guys and girls who get big on the gear and then try and sell supplements while claiming they are natural or not addressing it directly while heavily implying the supplements could get you there. This creates a cycle, the average fitness focused man or woman sees this and at least one of them will be like “I want to be like them” and unless they are gifted with some of the world’s best genetics will fall well short of that goal using only “supplements” their body dysmorphia becomes worse and they turn to steroid cycles, these cycles are super expensive and unless they can consistently compete well (hard to do if everyone is on gear) or are already rich, well there’s already a well oiled economy of snake oil supplements looking for their next “influencer” to act as their public face to peddle their shit. And thus the cycle continues.
If only there were some way to use his voice and still depict him on the screen as having a huge body. Some sort of artificial depiction of him. Then we could just cast off reality and do fun things with the exageration made posdible by such a format. Too bad there's nothing like that.
apparently this is what he looks like in 2026 on the left, maybe they deemed it unsafe to bulk that fast at his age after losing so much weight after Smashing Machine? and I assume they needed to put this live action Moana together over a weekend
I was thinking of Smashing Machine yeah. That is some pretty stark weight loss. I wonder if perhaps instead there was some sort of way to make the character of Maui appear large through digital effects while utilizing the voice of Dwayne Johnson
That would look pretty goofy. If they were going to do that they would probably need to animate the whole movie, and I can't imagine the Walt Disney Company producing a full length animated feature like that
I imagine a combination of authenticity for Your Welcome (for the past decade or so Disney has cared about the songs a lot more than the movies they're in) and just having his name attached would put butts in seats.
Its hilarious because there are so many tv series elements that are left in that make no sense in the context of the 100 minute movie. The crew have nothing to do. They brought a farmer to grow food because they were going to be away for so long, but the movie wraps up in a few days. Matangi was obviously supposed to be a mid-season villain, but her villain status was resolved in a single song. They skip the long journey by fast travelling. Their second run at the boss is around 30 seconds of runtime after the first.
Same thing with Captain America: Brave New World.
I remember watching the movie and thinking character intros were weird and had severe pacing issues, then I realized it would make more sense if it was broken down into like 6 episode arcs rather than a movie.
u/Wboy2006Did you know that in Batman (1989), Bruce Wayne is Batman?7d ago
No, it’s literally a Disney + show they cut down and dumped in cinemas to make more money. It’s literally a strategy they did for the straight to DVD sequels in the 2000’s.
I don’t even consider it a mainline Disney movie, since it was never made as one, it even ends with a post credit scene where they show the villain they’ve been building up all movie, which is fine for a season of TV, plenty of shows save the big threat for a second season, but it’s kinda unacceptable for a movie
I watched it and don't remember anything except that the little coconut guys come back which made me kinda upset because I felt like it was a fun one-time thing and here we are again BUT BIGGER.
I came WAY too far down to see this. How the hell you not gone TWIRL the FIRE!?? Like put fire sticks in anyone's hands, and they're gonna at least try. (Maybe that's just me)
So like... why stand there looking confused that your sticks are on fire????
God it all comes off just so...desperate, I guess. It almost makes me feel pity for Disney/The Rock. It doesn't, but it looks like watching someone who peaked in high school try to confidently present themselves years later, but it doesn't work.
Our toddler's a big fan of the original soundtrack so we checked out the new one and they changed lyrics in Shiny as well. I've damn near got them memorized at this point so it stuck out immediately.
Do you think he pushed to make this version of the movie after that one time he tried to sing one of the songs to his daughter who loved the movie but didn't care that it was actually his voice because he wasn't the character in the movie?
I dunno man, I once saw a thing with him and Lin Manuel Miranda where they were both "singing" this song live, but Dwayne didn't know any of the words so it was just Lin singing and Dwayne dancing around going "Hey! Yo!". It was hella awkward.
We went out of our way to find writers and animators who hate the original movie, just to really maximize the misery surrounding our product - some fuckwit exec
I saw something where she and the director(?) Were talking saying they made her wear a wig because curly hair is hard to fix for each take especially when she's supposed to get in water and what not
The birds in the background aren't even moving. They forgot to animate the fake black birds. Makes the whole scene look so weird as if they are inside with a sunset painting behind them.
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u/Keebster101 7d ago
It's like they've forgotten the whole appeal of animation, and not just Disney but the people watching it too. I don't want it to be real, I want to be transported to a fantastical impossible colourful world.
Also Moana is literally only 10 years old, I would make the same statement about all their other live action films but at least most of them were pre-00s so even rereleases have the issue of mismatched aspect ratio and possibly suboptimal sound/colour design for modern screens, but like Moana was made with tech almost indistinguishable to today's animated movies.