Let’s talk about that surprising ‘Moana’ ending
Even The Rock is sounding like an old softie
Spoiler alert: Stop reading now if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
Dwayne Johnson has bodyslammed, People’s Elbowed, killed, impaled and crushed many foes in his professional wrestling and film careers.
But the 6-foot-5 actor voicing the demigod Maui in Moana says he was surprised and heartened to see the very compassionate ending in the animated adventure, which topped the Thanksgiving holiday box office with $81.1 million.
No deaths, no smiting. Maui doesn’t finish off lava monster Te Ka with his powerful fishhook. Instead, the heroine Moana understands and sympathizes with the seeming foe, changing the vil- lainess in the process.
“I didn’t see the ending until I first saw the whole movie,” Johnson says, exhaling. “It was like, wow. Powerful.”
The ending starts with an epic battle, then Moana says calmly, before the looming, furious Te Ka, “Let her come to me.”
The ocean parts, and Te Ka bears down angrily as Moana sings Know Who You Are, “I have crossed the horizon to find you / I know your name /They have stolen the heart from inside you, but this does not define you /This is not who you are /You know who you are.”
Moana restores Te Ka’s lost heart. Te Ka presses her face to Moana’s in the Maori greeting ritual called “hongi” and transforms into the island goddess Te Fiti.
Directors John Musker and Ron Clements say the ending went through many variations before they decided on the sympathetic, and unusually musical, conclusion.
“We liked showing Moana’s empathy, which got her started on this whole journey,” says Musker, alluding to an early scene in which Moana saves a baby sea turtle. “This empathy is why the ocean picked Moana out.”
Musker adds that the ending allows redemption of the baddie “in a way in keeping with the movie. There’s a problem between man and nature, which ultimately gets resolved when man and nature come together.”
It’s a far cry from historical Disney movie endings. In Musker and Clements’ 1989 The Little
Mermaid, the sea witch Ursula was impaled by a ship sailed by Prince Eric before Ursula could kill mermaid heroine Ariel.
“The very typical response is something is bad and needs to be vanquished. There’s beauty in the empathy of Moana’s response,” says Alicia Lutes, managing editor of entertainment site Nerdist .com. “Moana was able to see and connect, to understand the problem. It’s a powerful thing to see in a children’s movie, especially between two women.”
Disney also went for a compassionate conclusion in 2015’s live-action Cinderella, after director Kenneth Branagh ignored test audiences who wanted to see a “revenge and punishment” ending. He had Cinderella (Lily James) tell Cate Blanchett’s Lady Tremaine, the stepmother who made her life misery, “I forgive you.”
Not all Disney endings will stay on Moana’s righteous path, though.
“It’s not a company mandate that you cannot get bad guys killed anymore. You see plenty of bad guys meeting very powerful ends,” Musker says. “But this ending was right for this particular story.”
Johnson jokes that he’s a convert.
“In Fast 8, it’s going to be very similar,” Johnson says of the next installment of The Fast and the
Furious franchise. “At the end, I’ll say, ‘Come to me.’ ”