While The Odyssey dropped its social media embargo for early critic impressions nearly two weeks before release, Moana waited until the very last minute to do the same, stacking actual, full reviews the very same day. We are exactly one day before release, and those scored reviews are live. Going through many of them, it’s easy to see why Disney might have waited, given its horrific Rotten Tomatoes score.
At a 32 % Rotten Tomatoes critic review score, the live-action Moana remake is on the worst score ever out of of the growing amount of live-action animation adaptations that Disney has done, often pulling in huge profits, answering the “why” of why they’re bothering to remake so many classics. That is a big criticism about this version of Moana, that it is often a shot-by-shot, line-by-line remake of the original, so why should it have been made at all? “Money” is not usually a reason critics will consider when giving it a score.
I do find it interesting that the How to Train Your Dragon live-action film was similar, reusing some of the voice cast (like Dwayne Johnson here) in their former roles, the film again being an extremely close visual and script clone of the first movie. And that got a 78% critic score and a 97% audience score. I suppose it’s possible we see a high-end audience score like that for Moana too, but these reviews are so mixed that it would be a little surprising.
There’s also the “distance” factor here. The original Moana was only released 10 years ago, much more recently than some of the other films being remade in live action. Almost all of them, in fact. Then, Moana 2 was just released in November 2024, not even two years ago. It seems…ill-advised to reproduce these characters so quickly.
Praises include the performance of new Moana, Catherine Laga’aia, though at the cost of outshining The Rock, where, despite the fact that he’s reprising his Maui role, it doesn’t work nearly as well onscreen with him and his silly wig. There are also often complaints about the visuals of the film, greenscreen flatness as opposed to the rich world of the animated original.
Here’s how Moana stacks up against the other Disney live-action remakes:
- The Jungle Book (2016) – 94% critic score, 86% audience score
- Cinderella (2015) – 83% critic score, 78% audience score
- Cruella (2021) – 75% critic score, 97% audience score
- Lilo and Stitch (2025) – 72% critic score, 91% audience score
- Mulan (2020) – 72% critic score, 47% audience score
- Beauty and the Beast (2017) – 71% critic score, 80% audience score
- The Little Mermaid (2023) – 67% critic score, 93% audience score
- Aladdin (2019) – 57% critic score, 94% audience score
- The Lion King (2019) – 52% critic score, 88% audience score
- Alice in Wonderland (2010) – 51% critic score, 55% audience score
- Dumbo (2019) – 45% critic score, 48% audience score
- Maleficent (2019) – 39% critic score, 95% audience score
- Moana (2026) – 32% critic score, N/A audience score
And here is a sampling of what critics are saying about the film:
- Mashable – “It evoked in me a similar reaction to AI slop, where I cringe at the unnerving blend of the familiar and the not-quite-right.”
- Independent UK – “Dwayne Johnson’s terrible wig is just one low point of a film that has all the visual allure of a Febreze advert.”
- Consequence – “Maui’s nipples aside, Moana contains no nightmare fuel on the level of 2025’s Snow White — which ends up being high praise for adaptations like these.”
I’m sorry, what about Maui’s nipples? In any case, they’re not going to be putting any of those on the poster, that’s for sure. But now we wait and see whether audiences care and just how many hundreds of millions this might make.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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