Moana directors Ron Clements and John Musker talk Little Mermaid connections and Mad Max homages in Moana.
This article contains a smallMoanaspoiler.
Along the way she meets demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) for an adventure across the sea.
Are you drawn to leaving home stories?
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Musker:We both left home.
Hes from Iowa, and Im from Chicago.
Clements:Were both from the Midwest.
Ive never really thought about that, but yeah, its true.
Musker:Weve been going toThe Wizard of Oz,which we both saw as kids.
It was on TV every year.
Yeah, theres something about it.
Its growing up basically.
Clements:Theres an archetypal kind of aspect.
Joseph Campbell writes about that.
Theres that aspect and theres the line, If you have an animal sidekick, youre a princess.
Was it fun to comment on the mythology that youve been such an integral part of creating at Disney?
Musker:It was fun.
Jared Bush wrote the line and we supported the line.
Clements:We liked that line.
We like acknowledging the princess elephant in the room.
Her mission is to save her world, to save her people.
If she fails, the consequences are really dire and yet shes up to the task.
We never had a romance for Moana.
It was always thought of as more of aTrue Grittype story.
It was not a love story.
[Its] an adventure story.
And Moana and Maui are at odds with each other the whole movie.
Musker:Yeah, theyre kind of a mismatched sort of an odd couple.
Its kind of a road movie in a way with the two of them.
It was fun getting that dynamic working.
Clements:It was hard.
We rewrote it also too to leaven it a little bit.
Musker:And Aulii, our voice of Moana, shes an unknown.
We cast her when she s 14 but shes totally fearless, even though she had no formal training.
She could go into these recording sessions and tease us, we could tease her back.
She could improvise and match up to the Rock basically, which was great.
So those scenes I think are really smart because shes got such wit and personality.
Clements:Theyre a good match for each other I think.
Theres one more reference to your previous movies if audiences stay for the Easter egg at the end.
Was the Sebastian reference scripted or improvd by Jemaine [Clement]?
Musker:Jared wrote a bunch of stuff, and I think the Sebastian part actually was scripted.
Clements:Jemaine adlibbed a lot.
He did a bunch of improvs.
Clements:The credits are fairly long but if you stay through, you get that little extra.
Musker:Surprise at the end, a little Easter egg.
Chris Williams and Don Hall get credit as co-directors.
I know there are always co-directors on animated movies, but were they more integral than usual forMoana?
Musker:Weve directed everything with each other.
Don Hall and Chris Williams, who had doneBig Hero 6came on.
We were at a point, about midway through, maybe 2/3.
Clements:A year and a half.
Musker:A year and a half ago, we were having big story problems.
Clements:And going into production.
Musker:And we were going to production at the same time.
It was like oh my gosh, how are we going to solve these story problems?
So Don and Chris had been doing some boarding, were really empowered to help reshape the story.
They were really a huge help.
Its part of the process that everybody helps everybody else.
Sometimes, theyve had one director and then another director.
Musker:Its not every movie.
Clements:No, but certainly the story jot down things are.
When we watch the DVDs, those are the most interesting ones with drastic changes behind the scenes.
Musker:The original version of this story was a little different.
That kind of went away.
That was one of the things that went away.
But you found a place for that in the fathers backstory.
Musker:Yeah, we did.
We wanted to give him a reason why he was so dead set against [Moana leaving].
Sometimes that backstory was in there and sometimes it wasnt, but we really felt it was crucial.
Clements:Sometimes its finding the right balance of things.
There are elements that come and go.
Theyre in, theyre out.
Musker:The song We Know the Way used to come at the beginning of the movie.
That was sort of the prologue of the movie to set up the whole voyaging thing.
So Don and Chris were more co-directors of story?
Musker:They were story, and then we worked with the animators to do all the acting.
Clements:We were working like 12-hour days and Saturdays.
There was more lead time, I would say, because theres a long process as the story develops.
While the story is being developed, youre creating the assets.
Youre building the characters, rigging the characters.
The environments are created in three dimensions and it takes a long time.
Youre not really seeing a lot except youre seeing designs and youre seeing three dimensional things.
It gets very intense with a compressed schedule like that.
We had 90 animators on the movie which is way more than weve ever worked with.
This is the best hair weve ever done.
Clements:Certainly with camera movement.
We could be more ambitious with lighting.
We had a lot of tools we could play with in CG that we dont have in 2D.
Moanazips into theaters on Wednesday, Nov. 23.
