Every Moana Movie Ranked Worst to Best, Including Disney’s Live-Action Remake

It’s fair to say that “Moana” has firmly sailed into the ranks of Disney’s modern classics. Since its 2016 debut, the animated adventure has only continued to gain momentum, with viewers embracing the journey of Moana (Auli’i Cravalho), a spirited Polynesian teenager who defies tradition and heads beyond the reef to save her home island of Motunui from a devastating threat to its natural resources.

Her quest requires an unlikely partner: Maui (Dwayne Johnson), a shapeshifting demigod with a talent for heroics and an even greater talent for bragging about them. Together, they cross the ocean aboard Moana’s boat, facing danger, mythic forces, and the challenge of returning the stolen heart of the living island Te Fiti.

At the time, few could have predicted just how far the 2016 film would travel. Although “Moana” earned roughly $300 million less than “Zootopia,” Disney’s other major animated hit that year, it still secured two Academy Award nominations, became one of the most reliable streaming favorites across platforms, and helped set the stage for its theatrical follow-up, 2024’s “Moana 2,” to cross the $1 billion mark worldwide. Given that level of staying power, Disney’s decision to expand the story into a broader franchise through sequels, theme park attractions, and inevitably, a live-action remake now playing in theaters nationwide, was hardly surprising.

With three “Moana” movies currently in the saga and “Moana 3” already in development, it’s time to rank the films and decide which one truly has the courage — or the heart — to stand up to Te Kā.

One of the most persistent criticisms aimed at Disney’s live-action remakes is that they often seem more interested in duplicating beloved animated films than reimagining them in any meaningful way. The 2026 version of “Moana” follows the same path as 2017’s “Beauty and the Beast” and 2019’s “The Lion King”: a largely unnecessary adaptation driven by brand recognition. Somehow, though, it manages to make the formula feel even more exhausted.

Critics have been unsparing toward this hollow re-creation, which mirrors the original so closely that even the framing, story beats, dialogue, songs, and jokes feel copied and pasted. Under director Thomas Kail, one of Disney’s strongest animated films of the 2010s is flattened into a dreary, visually unappealing retread that seems to bank on nostalgia doing all the emotional work.

Dwayne Johnson’s live-action Maui often comes across less like a mythic trickster and more like an overextended “Saturday Night Live” sketch, complete with one of the most distracting screen wigs in recent memory. It’s especially jarring given how much energy, warmth, and comic timing he brought to the animated version of the same character. Newcomer Catherine Laga’aia has the vocal ability for Moana, but she often appears adrift amid artificial green-screen environments and visible production machinery. Worse still, she and Johnson lack the dynamic spark that made the original pairing work, and they frequently don’t even feel like they’re sharing the same space.

The 2026 “Moana” contains nearly everything audiences loved about the not-even-decade-old original, but almost none of its soul. That makes the project feel especially baffling, beyond the obvious commercial motivation, particularly when so much of the movie still relies on animation anyway. In the end, it plays like the live-action remake tailor-made for the generative AI era.

The Mouse House initially planned to bring Moana back to the screen in a television series for Disney+, which was developed throughout the early 2020s. Somewhere along the way, the project was retooled as a proper theatrical sequel. But much like this year’s “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” “Moana 2” still can’t help but feel like a bunch of episodes of a streaming series stitched together.

It takes place three years after the events of the first film, with Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) embracing her position as both a chieftess of Motunui and a wayfinder of the seas. Her ancestors inform her that the reason the people across the ocean are so fractured from one another is because of the storm god Nalo (Tofiga Fepulea’i), who sank the island beacon of Montufetu to the bottom of the ocean. Moana sets out along with a motley crew of islanders to find Maui (Dwayne Johnson), battle monsters, and restore the connection.

On paper, the plot of “Moana 2” sounds like a fun idea that sends the spunky wayfinder out on another oceanic adventure, as well as a timely story about communal reconciliation, but it can’t escape the narrative pacing of a television series condensed to a movie. You can clearly see where each episode is meant to end. Even the songs are completely forgettable, as are the raft’s batch of generic occupants. In that way, the film fails to recapture the magic of the original.

Otherwise, it’s still a gorgeously animated follow-up with its own share of colorful imagery. Allowing Cravalho to play Moana as older helps establish the passing of time and moves the story forward. “Moana 2” is able to stick the landing just enough that it presents an opportunity for the next movie to take advantage of the wayfinder’s newfound abilities.

Disney legends John Musker and Ron Clements continued their winning streak of directing some of the company’s most memorable animated features with 2016’s “Moana,” which still holds up insanely well. The pair’s original idea was meant to be centered around Maui and his place in Polynesian mythology as a demigod, but their research in the Pacific Islands led them to rework the project to center around a chief’s daughter, who would ultimately become Moana. 

It was a wise decision that gave audiences a contemporary Disney protagonist who could sing, be funny, learn from her mistakes, and leap into action at a moment’s notice. Then-newcomer Auli’i Cravalho (who believes she’s one and the same with her animated counterpart) is so effortlessly charming in the role, embodying a great role model. She doesn’t set out to shirk her responsibilities, so much as retrofit them to satiate her sense of adventurous yearning.

Cravalho’s presence is matched by Dwayne Johnson bringing an extraordinary amount of expressiveness, pathos, and humor to Maui. They’re an excellent screen pair who always keep each other on their toes. The tradition of earworm Disney songs is maintained with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s buoyant tunes, like “You’re Welcome” and “How Far I’ll Go.” It also helps that, in addition to being a very fun family adventure flick, “Moana” is deeply reverential of Polynesian culture in a manner that lends it a great deal of authenticity.

“Moana” is a movie that continues to reach the hearts and minds of many people through its stunning animation, lovable characters, and timeless lesson of environmental protection ensuring our future.