Moana was several different brands of delightful, but one
aspect that captured my heart is that it draws its inspiration from
mythology rather than from fairy tales—something Disney hasn’t really
done since Hercules, and something that gives its heroine a very interesting dynamic. The movie features the trickster god Maui
as one of its main characters and incorporates other elements of
Polynesian folklore, but I was especially interested—and pleasantly
surprised—to see that Moana herself has quite a traditional mythical
hero’s character arc.
She is a leader, chosen by nature and destiny, who sets out on a
quest surrounding an important magical object, where she ventures
through the realm of the supernatural and tangles with gods. When it’s
over, the balance of nature is restored and she returns to her people as
a wiser and more capable ruler. It’s a quintessential hero-king quest
narrative, which, incidentally, is also a quintessentially male narrative. But without so much as a shrug, Moana gives this archetype to its female heroine and sends her on her journey.
One of the things I liked best about it was that they didn’t just give her the standard arc, though. And they didn’t change any of it to make it more feminine-seeming, either.
But one of the elements of the destined hero story that hasn’t really aged well is the But Thou Must factor. Hero Kings may suffer from self-doubt, falter, go astray, or try to abandon their path, but in the end they’re typically forced back onto it by the repeated insistence that this is their Destiny. Moana has some elements of this, but the narrative goes out of its way to make it clear that it’s not just that she was chosen, it’s that she chooses. The ocean might help get her back on her boat, but only once she starts swimming towards it anyway. When she expresses a desire to turn back, her grandmother – both times – simply accepts her decision. It’s Moana herself who rethinks it. Moana’s desire to sail and explore is purely her own; her desire to lead is something that takes more time for her to develop, but when she comes into it as she gets older, she takes on the responsibility not just with sincerity, but also with enthusiasm.
Moana chooses her destiny. It’s written, but it’s also made clear at several points that just because somebody has to do this job, doesn’t mean that it has to be her. In the end, it is her, but only because Moana wants it to be. Her grandmother even apologizes for asking her to do it at one point, because destinies are not something one person should be deciding for someone else. And, at the end of the tale, everything works out for the better because Moana could choose to be the kind of chief she wished to be. Her people not only got a better leader out of the bargain, they got a whole new outlook.
Moana doesn’t just have the traditional Hero King arc, she has an improved version of it that suits a modern audience’s sensibilities much more. I mean, compare it to the Lion King, where Simba’s dead father comes and does pretty much the opposite of what Grandma Tala did, and guilts him into becoming king. It’s a really refreshing departure from the usual concept that choice is irrelevant to the grand designs of the universe, or even that choosing something for yourself is somehow cowardly or traitorous to those designs.
