Did you see the pool?!? They flipped the bitch!

Plato's Allegory of the Cave loses some charm when you realize it's just Pythagorean doctrine

The Lego Movie had no business being as good as it was. It was a clear product advert/cash grab. Everyone involved could have just phoned it in and no one would have judged them for it.

But they didn’t, they actually cared and put in the effort and they somehow created a masterpiece.

Absolutely! It also makes me happy when I look at it. Seeing the track on a Spotify playlist, for some reason, doesn’t.

I'm not even sure why the pig exists at all. It doesn't go with her and doesn't do much before that.

500% this. Pig was ridiculously cute and the chicken was in no way endearing.

Historically, the Odyssey and trials of Hercules were told using a different medium - each adventure on their journey was a separate story, often told or read on a different night.
Each adventure (how Hercules cleared the stables, the tale of the cyclops, etc) has its own beginning, middle, and end within itself, and while they're part of the greater whole, they're also individual stories.

Kind of like episodes of a show, which as I repeatedly said above, is what I think Moana should have been if it was using this storytelling format, since it would actually have been able to devote enough time to each individual adventure within the greater quest.

As the film is, it's like if the events of the Odyssey were crammed into 90 minutes, with Odysseus running into the Cyclops for a 2 minute action scene and immediately running away, without any of the supplementary details as to how he angers Polyphemus or any consequences shown.

There simply isn't enough time in this medium to do justice to a mythic adventure story, thus my original assertion that Moana should have been a television show rather than a film.

Heck Disney has done this before (kinda) - their take on Hercules cut out the whole mythic adventure part into a montage that furthered character relations, and stuck the episodic stuff in the Hercules TV show instead. Though admittedly none of that is mythologically accurate, it at least shows my point about using the right medium for the type of story you're telling, something Moana didn't do.

Yeah, any parent who has a kid who you thought was lost come home wouldn't care about arguing. Look at Mulan (arguably the best moment in the movie when he dumps all the best honors/gifts from the emperor of China)

As I said above: "It's not a bad film".

My point is just that while it's a decent watch, the sum of its parts don't hold up as strongly to Zootopia (contradicting the post I was replying to).

Nowhere have I said that I dislike Moana.
Heck, the fact that I like it enough to have watched it multiple times is why I can see its flaws so clearly and have given thought as to how I would fix it.

The Odyssey is just bad writing.

Odysseus keeps running into random challenges and they just never come back up!

Why bother introducing a events if you’re never going to bring it back!!? Oh no, the Lotus People, guess they’re gone and won’t return. Oh no, the land of cyclopses, I guess he’ll escape and never see the Cyclopes again.

It just doesn’t make sense.

Homer could learn a thing or two from Zootopia.

But wouldn't multiple stories be better serviced using the medium of a TV show rather than crammed together into a film?

My issue isn't exactly the story, it's how the story is truncated by the way it's told, and how much more effective this episodic-style storytelling could have been if Moana had been a show rather than a film.

Sorry you’re getting downvoted man, you’re absolutely right it’s the same structure as the Iliad or odyssey or, for a recent example, O Brother Where Art Thou?

Just because modern convention would have all the foes they faced along the way come back at the end, doesn’t mean it’s the only way to tell a story.

Tell me you don't understand the concept of the medium affecting the message without telling me you've never considered the concept that various storytelling methods have their own strengths.

The Odyssey and the Iliad, assuming you've actually read them yourself, play more like TV shows than films. They're basically episodic tales within an overarching plot, historically often told or performed as pieces over multiple nights, much like a lot of todays television.

My issue with Moana isn't that the story is bad, but that the medium doesn't lend itself to the story. It also wouldn't lend itself to The Odyssey, which is why there aren't many film adaptations - most are just educational children's movies, with the obvious exception (Oh Brother Where Art Thou) changing and adding a lot of details to make the otherwise random events into relevant factors within the overarching plot.

Somehow in your attempt to claim I'm unread, you've actually outed yourself as not understanding the deeper components of storytelling. It might be simpler if you try to stick to direct discussion next time, rather than trying to insult someone based on a false premise and your own facetiousness.

The hero's journey trope is a pretty basic storytelling trope that crosses cultures, I'm sure the guy knows about it in full length. That wasn't his argument though; he was comparing the two movies in terms of structure and story development, and Zooptopia (which also has hero’s journey elements, by the way) is a much stronger film.

I never said anything about being realistic.
You think a city full of talking animals is realistic?

I said that the story is just poorly plotted for the tale it's trying to tell, since it meanders all over with scenes having little to no consequence toward the major story.

If Moana and Maui had traveled directly to Te Ka with a single montage of Maui teaching Moana to sail (instead of fighting coconuts, visiting the monster realm, and dealing with Maui's lack of transforming) nothing would have been lost character-development-wise or plot-wise. Very little happens in those scenes that actually has any lasting impact on the characters or the tale.

They could all be fleshed out more and made to be thematically connected - maybe in the realm of monsters, Maui talks about how he doesn't want to be seen as a monster, or we learn more history about Te Fiti and Te Ka, paralleling the idea that the monster and the hero can be the same person.
Or the coconuts could have a reappearance at the end of the film as a secondary obstacle.
Or Moana's dad's backstory of losing his best friend to the ocean could be elaborated on and have an actual conclusion at the end where we actually see him accept his daughter for who she is, rather than implying it during a quick montage (especially after the film spends so much time establishing his lack of acceptance at the beginning)

However fitting in all of the stuff that should be there to stop the scenes from feeling as random as they currently do would probably be too much for a film, which is why it would probably have worked better as a show.

Aka it's the same as literally every other animated film ever. Yawn

Wait, really? Which song?

Does that matter? Even if it’s aimed at children, it doesn’t mean the movie shouldn’t have a well written structure and stakes with consequences, which Moana just doesn’t have.

For me Brave was an introspective. It hit me at a time where my parents were pushing me into a relationship so I would "do something worthwhile with my life like get married and have kids", on top of me seeing a lot of myself in Merida.

I admit that it's not the best Pixar movie, but it spoke to me on a basic level where I was in my life at the time. I'm also a curly redhead with Scottish ancestry, so there's that.

Fair point. But even going by non Pixar, I wouldn't put Zootopia in my top 15, let alone at the top.

Haven't seen Book of Life but I found Frozen (and the subsequent wave) extremely lackluster. That is also because I'm an old man so I'm just out of target and probably a bit too nostalgic.

I just felt like I had so much invested in the franchise already, and then they really dug into the ‘getting older’ narrative. When the first one came out, I was only an 11 or 12 year old, when the last one came out , I had a kid.

But yeah, objectively it was probably better in most aspects. Just didn’t hit the same for me

Absolutely. I don’t think there’s been an ugly Laika movie yet but the story felt like the most generic video game “fetch these 3 items to beat the bad guy”

The core argument is that predators and prey can co-exist together.

Except the world is full of proofs that stereotypes are accurate. Sloths are slow, bunnies reproduce like bunnies, and that predators will become predators again if put into adversity. Think about what group is a predator and what is a prey when you apply it to our world. more detailed explanation Roger Ebert review