Headscratchers / Moana

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Rocky island

• Why didn't Maui circumvent Te Kā's rocky island on his supposed path to Te Fiti's body (where her heart should've been placed) by either going high above the island, around it, or below it? Why didn't he recon the surrounding area before having to do any of that, by transforming into a bird (e.g. Rüppell's vulture can fly at attitudes as high as 11km) to see where Te Fiti was and where was Te Kā?
  • Is Te Ka able to move much? What kept Maui fighting in their first confrontation instead of escaping? I'd assume pride or just wanting the short path if he could be nailed with fire balls anyway, but Maui can't just transform into any bird (only the creatures he has something from on his necklace) and he also probably didn't feel he had to check if an island was still there.
  • The fireballs and rock slides probably make it hard; the fireballs in particular looked like they had some range on them. Probably, that was the quickest / most convenient way, and detouring too far around it would either take too long or present other difficulties.
  • Te Kā's island is specifically called out as a "barrier island", which means it completely surrounds another island (and indeed, in the overhead shot in the climax, you can see that it does just that), so going around isn't an option. Going under isn't an option either, since it is an island, and so goes all the way down to the ocean floor. That just leaves going over, which is a possibility, but has several factors against it:
    • Birds that can fly high usually get to those altitudes by riding thermals and updrafts. The ocean is too homogeneous to create a good thermal, and too flat to create a good updraft, so the altitude a bird can reach would be severely limited.
    • Te Kā's fireballs have a long range, so even if he did fly over the island and then dive straight down, he'd still be dodging fireballs.
    • He's Maui. Charging in headlong while yelling "CHEE-HOO" at the top of his lungs is always going to be his Plan A. It's possible that he might have tried something a little sneakier after he got his tail kicked that first time, if Moana hadn't charged in when she did.
    • Barrier islands are islands that are close to the mainland, and protect it from storms.
    • Except there is no mainland anywhere near any of the film's islands. Nobody even seems to have heard of a mainland.

Leg

• Why hasn't Tamatoa's leg grown back by the time the heroes encounter him?
  • Presumably because he's not an actual crab, but a crab-like monster. The lack of any regenerative ability is the least of his physiological oddities.
  • Crabs regenerate by shedding their shells. He'd lose his shiny treasures (at least temporarily) if he did so.
  • Very old crabs, particularly male crabs, molt less and less often with age, because it gets harder and harder - sometimes even fatally-so - to break out of their old exoskeleton. Tamatoa may be so huge that he doesn't dare to molt, because the strain of busting out of such a thick shell could kill him.
  • Molting would also leave him vulnerable until his new shell could harden. The guy lives in a realm of monsters, some of which are even bigger than himself, and many of which probably consider soft-shell crab tasty.

Trapping Moana

• Didn’t Maui think that by trapping Moana inside the cave (and on a small island) he’d effectively be killing her?
  • He was probably too caught up in his song to care.
  • Alternatively, there was a way out and some rations for her to live on, but was expecting to be long gone by the time Moana figured it out.
  • Maui is shown on several occasions to be very careless of Moana's life. Case in point, when she followed him down to the Underworld and was separated from him, Maui shrugged, said "Well, she's dead" and continued on with his business.
  • Although Maui didn't seem to know it, there was a way out of the cave, and the ocean could've helped to get Moana off the island even if he'd gotten away with her boat. And it's been suggested that having the Heart of Te Fiti helped to increase her resilience, so she would've been able to survive a lot more than she would normally.
  • Maui doesn't really care about individual human lives at first. Even if there's a few fruit trees somewhere on that island, there'd be no way off that island after he stole her boat, so she'd be stranded and would die pretty soon. Also note, he throws her overboard without knowing the ocean would save her, clearly intending to leave her to drown. He's a trickster god. And mortals are disposable.

Maui's song

• And for that matter, you definitely can see her snap out of it when she realizes he's pushed her into the cave. Is that supposed to be a symbolic representation of a character going back the "real world" after a musical number or did he literally put her in some kind of trance to lure her to the cave?
  • Given he handed her "fruits" that turned out to be rocks at the end of the song and she was surprised by that, it seems implicit that there was some sort of trance or illusion in effect. He is a Trickster Demi-God after all.
  • Although most of his powers depended on using the hook, what were those tattoos? Thinking of "Castaway" with Tom Hanks and his "Wilson", how would a semi-god Shapeshifter deal with centuries of isolation? Perhaps mini-Maui was an expression of his own mind, and its behavior, comparable to that of Jiminy Cricket, a dissociation of personality.
    • Not sure what this has to do with the question at hand, but the tattoos are basically Maui's conscience. Since they're all there in honor of his humble origins and the heroic actions he's performed throughout his life, Mini-Maui is representative of all the goodness and altruism in Maui, rather than being a separate character.

Pua's age

• Why didn’t Pua (the pig) grow older by the time Moana herself did, in-between the song scenes?
  • Maybe it's not the same pig and Moana's parents haven't been telling her the truth...
  • Moana eats pork in one scene and comments on how good it is, while Pua's present. Pua looks horrified, and Moana realizes her slip-up too late. Is it possible we just learned what happened to the (alleged) original pig?
    • The original may have been Pua's mother, who wasn't eaten but is kept to breed piglets.
  • Or maybe the reason that Pua didn't come on the main adventure was because it had been eaten. Harsh for Disney, but accurate.
    • ...No, Pua's there at the end of the movie when she gets back.
    • He could be a dwarf pig, they do exist.

Shell

• Why does Moana put the shell on top as her rock? I understand the symbolism, yada yada yada, but think of the next generation - won't it be crushed?
  • The entire tribe is leaving the island. There won't be any more generations there. The shell is an end-marker.
    • This seems unlikely, as there's no reason to leave permanently. They're most likely going to establish contact/trade with other populated islands, and to discover and settle new ones in addition to Motunui. As for the shell, well, even if they'd just kept placing rocks, you'd imagine at some point they'd have to start another stack, just for the practical purpose of making sure it's not so tall that it keeps falling over.
    • Indeed, in the exact same scene we see almost as many boats inside the reef going nowhere as the number that is moving away in a formation. Looks like some of the tribe remained behind and just took the fishing boats out to escort their leaving kin to the reef, but not beyond.
  • Moana is the one who returned Te Fiti's heart and saved the world. Each successive chief of Motonui will have to put their rock under Moana's shell so the shell won't be crushed and so their rock will sit level on the stack, so no matter how high the stack goes, her shell will still be the highest point of the island.
  • Each of the stones symbolizes a chief while they were in exile/isolation on the island. The shell represents the breaking of that line, as Moana leads her people back to the ocean and they resume travelling.
  • Moana herself isn't planning to return to the island, so she and her descendants will be chieftains over the revived Voyagers who live by island-hopping. Whatever fraction of her people might choose to remain on Motunui and live by farming will select a new chieftain, who will start a new cairn representing his or her bloodline's reign.

Other Tribe

• I've been thinking around: what happened to the other tribes in the Islands and how did the Motunuis survive such a long time being trapped in just an island? ? We Know The Way scenes implies that there is more than one island inhabited by people which may or may not be ancestor to multiple tribes, and Maui, being trapped for he knows how long, thinks that the Polynesian People are still out there exploring (For the islands I pulled out from the sea). Is the Motunui the Racial Remnant of what their people was?
  • Maybe they all got trapped on other islands, and Moana's tribe will run into them eventually.
  • The people who settled Motunui ceased venturing past their island's lagoon because after Te Fiti's heart was stolen, the open ocean became too dangerous to travel. Presumably the residents of other islands stayed put for similar reasons.
  • And the darkness is causing the life on the island to wither and die. So if it has now reached Motunui and is starting to affect their resources, perhaps the nearest islands have already been wiped out.
  • Presumably they had no choice but to abandon their islands when the darkness reached them. No telling whether they reached land, died, or were captured and enslaved by the kakamora or some other threat.

Stubborn Tui and famine

• Yes he was traumatized by what happened to him and his friend but seriously, why was Tui so stubborn in the face of a possible famine that he refused to consider fishing outside the reef or looking for opportunities elsewhere? At this point they already planted new groves instead of the diseased ones on different parts of the island and tried fishing in every possible spot within the reef. Clearly staying and doing nothing would have only meant certain death while risking it at least would give some chance.
  • Because he was just that traumatized about what lies beyond the reef - and years of dragging his daughter back from the sea probably reinforced his stubbornness. His daughter and his mother, lacking those emotional restrictions, could be more rational about it.
    • I admit years of dragging her back might have made him more stubborn, but as a chief it still feels like an Idiot Ball moment for him to focus on that stubbornness instead of his tribe's survival.
    • That's the definition of being stubborn.
  • Also, considering how much worse things had gotten with the island's decay, he's kinda justified. Tui's probably worried about the ocean being even worse now than it was when his friend died, so even if he knows his tribe needs fish, he probably thinks his fishermen would be even more likely to go out and drown as well.
    • Which would somehow be a completely unacceptable demise relative to starving to death.
    • Yes, but then he'd have the added guilt of the potential "chief sending his citizens out to drown" situation. It's not the smartest thing, but still an understandable worry.
  • There's also the very likely possibility that everyone on the island has forgotten how to sail on the open seas. They've been on that island for many generations, and even with a proper sailboat, Moana just barely managed to get by until Maui took over and agreed to teach her.
    • The problem is he never makes a reasonable argument for why they should no go further out and just assumes it is her wanting to go out to the ocean. He pretty much had the Idiot Ball in his hands and wouldn't let go. Especially since it later shows he seems to know where the bigger boats are.
    • To be fair, those ships are probably hundreds of years old, and it's more surprising that Moana was able to get one in working condition.
  • As Moana's mom pointed out, the initial suggestion of fishing beyond the reef came from Moana herself. While standing on a boat. With an oar in hand. You know, the same girl whom has been trying on and off her whole life to get on a boat and get out there in the water? Tui seemed more like he jumped to the conclusion of "Moana is just saying this because she wants to sail." rather than thinking of it as an actual potential solution to their fish problem. Also keep in mind, he doesn't see the food shortage as the result of a supernatural problem, the curse of the missing Heart, and he feels it's a mundane issue which can be solved with a mundane answer. In fact, when Moana eventually discovers the old voyaging ships, she finds Tui in a council meeting discussing what can be done about the food shortage.
  • The food shortage seems to be a very recent problem, so he might just be in denial about it. Perhaps he would have come round once he was convinced that there were no other options - which is exactly what happens at the end.
  • Their people aren't starving yet. They still have a certain amount of food stockpiled, the village animals have yet to be slaughtered, the jungle and inshore waters may still have edible invertebrates and vegetation that can sustain life even if it'd taste lousy. It's likely that Tui was still gambling that the fish would return before the community's resources were exhausted.

The Necklace

• If Moana's abalone shell necklace was originally worn by Matai Vasa, then passed onto his son when he became chief, then why is Tala (essentially the "Chief Mum") wearing it instead of Tui? Did they just forget about that ritual some time after they stopped voyaging?
  • Was Tala ever the chief? The necklace might belong to the chief's family without being the symbol of the chief.
  • It might not symbolize the Chief, but of being the tribe's master Wayfinder. Its symbolism may have been largely forgotten by the story's time, as Moana didn't even know about the tribe's past as voyagers. When Matai Vasa handed it off to his son, it appears that he stayed behind to administer the village while his son went on exploratory voyages.
  • They've been settled on the island for many generations. Perhaps it's as simple as that style of necklace, over time, having gradually come to be thought of as a feminine style, with tusks and bones being more "macho".

Chief Stones

• If Maui's been on the island a thousand years (or even close to that long, if he was rounding off or lost track of time), shouldn't there be a lot more stones on the pile at the top of the tribe's mountain? Let's assume Maui's imprisonment began within a day of when he stole the heart (a safe bet, if things happened as depicted). Apparently, the ocean became dangerous to voyage, causing the tribe's ancestors to stop voyaging, shortly after the heart was stolen. It is thus probably safe to assume that the tribe came to their present island within one generation - which is probably no more than 25 years on average, given the setting. Even if only the first chief born on the island laid the first stone, that's still less than 100 years before the first stone was laid. One stone per chief means one more stone each 25 years (or less). 900 / 25 = 36 (and again, that's using generous assumptions to reduce the number). There did not seem to be nearly 36 stones in the pile.
  • Granted, he called Moana 8 when she is clearly much older, so he may have been exaggerating with the thousand years too, though he did not seem to have reason to do so.
  • I assumed it was not an instant catastrophe but a slow, spreading process. Moana's people have lived on that island for however many generations and are just now seeing the blight/ashes. So they probably didn't immediately stop voyaging after the heart was stolen, but gradually voyaged away from islands already affected and the ocean gradually became more dangerous until they settled on Motunui and kind of got stuck and, because they were away from blighted islands, forgot/didn't believe that it was coming eventually.
  • All traditions have to start somewhere. There's no reason to believe the tradition of the stones started at the same time as the voyaging stopped.
  • Gramma does make reference to how "ships stopped coming back" when telling Moana the story of their island settlement. That shows they were still travelling/exploring for a time after the heart was stolen, and only stopped once they realized it was too dangerous to continue.
  • The stones may only represent how long that particular bloodline of chieftains have governed the island. Not every dynasty lasts forever; there could be other cairns on the island's peak that aren't as tall, because eventually those chieftains failed to produce an heir, got deposed for one reason or another, or just plain refused to take the job.

Ocean

• Why did the ocean let Tui's friend drown, and not try to save Moana when she almost drowned, when it was shown to be capable of saving lives several times?
  • Because it's the ocean. If it had been thinking like a person, it could have just tried to throw (spit?) the heart right back where it belonged. With the spiral right there on the demon's chest, it would not have been that hard a shot. Or better yet, lift some tentacles to make it clear to the fire demon to stay still, then lift another one to the demon's chest and toss the heart back in from a decimeter or so away.
  • Its pretty much the same reason as why Eagles weren't used to drop the one ring into the fires of Mt.Doom. There wouldn't be much of a story if the supernatural entity just did everything for the main characters.
    • The Eagles have sufficient reasons that can be easily inferred from the information in the films and/or book as to why it's not a good idea for them to be the ring-bearers. The same isn't true for the Ocean not carrying Moana all the way to the end of the quest (unless "The Ocean" was never carrying Moana at all and she was using powers she didn't know she had - see the WMG page for more).
    • The Heart was taken on mortals' behalf, by a guy who was once a mortal. It was therefore mortals' mess to clean up, not the Ocean's.
  • Because at that time Moana, and Tui and his friend still had to 'prove' themselves worthy. the ocean was acting as a "Threshold Guardian" from the cycle of the hero; a challenge to overcome for the story to progress.
  • Simply put, the sea is a fickle mistress. Even those she loves she abuses when the urge strikes her. She would not hesitate to teach Moana via the most effective means possible: Pain. And Moana had to learn. If she didn't, she would never have become a master wayfinder, and would not have had the confidence or ability to teach her people how to cross that fickle ocean that preserves or kills as she sees fit.
  • My guess is that the ocean's spirit can't be everywhere at once, and was off doing something else (or just sort of inactive) when Tui's friend drowned. The reason we see it following Moana is because she's The Chosen One and it's its job to help her when she absolutely needs it.
  • Maui pretty much explains it in the movie. He says that the Ocean is "crazy" or whatever, but in the process he explains that it does things by its own methods and for its own reasons. Those reasons do not include constantly babysitting any human that sets sail on it. It did the things it did for Moana because it had a specific purpose for her that it wanted her to carry out in a certain way. To put it another way, you're asking why the Ocean didn't do something considered by some a moral obligation when, as a literal force of nature, it's not beholden to any moral structure.
    Maui: The ocean's straight-up kooky-dooks!
  • Or, hey, maybe the ocean only becomes sentient when the Heart of Te Fiti is nearby. The heart was out somewhere in the middle of the sea when Tui and his friend tried to go out sailing, which is why it couldn't save them. But it had made it closer to the island by the time Moana was born. Te Ka's darkness was moving from island to island through the water - maybe the same was true for Te Fiti's life.
  • Perhaps Moana needed to be taught that the ocean can be dangerous before she could enjoy its protection. Because if the end goal was teaching her people how to sail again, she had to be aware of the dangers that come when you go out on the water unprepared or not knowing what you're doing. Maybe if Moana hadn't been able to free herself, the ocean might have helped her. But since she did, it had no reason to.
  • Maybe the Ocean would have saved Tui's friend, but some other powerful agency - the gods, a curse, the Sky if it's sentient in its own way - overruled it.

Gramma Tala

• Why and how did Gramma Tala die exactly? While certainly emotional, it seems to just come right out of the blue. And she seemed perfectly fine before. Was it old age? Did she already have an illness no one knew about because she was good at hiding it? Or did she catch something fatal from the darkness creeping onto the island?
  • It was pretty clearly old age. Heart failure, perhaps, or possibly the darkness intersected with her frailty.
  • There has been supposition that the Heart of Te Fiti was sustaining her unnaturally, and once she gave it to Moana, its magic no longer affected her and she started dying. The Heart's corporal enhancement may also be why Moana seemed unusually durable for a mere human in many instances, especially in Lalotai.
  • Gramma does look a lot older than the rest of the island residents. I can't remember if we saw any other old people. So if life expectancy is pretty low then the above theory does explain why Gramma managed to live so long.
  • Granted, it's a Disney film. She died on purpose so Moana would have a motivation to fulfill her destiny, and later she would be able to appear to Moana as a spirit in the right moment.

Maui's Survival

• If Maui got his powers from the hook and has normal parents, how did he manage to survive on that tiny island for what sounded like hundreds of years?
  • Given how the movie makes a big point of how Maui is mistaken in centering his self-worth around the hook, it could be like this: he was made a demigod first, then given the hook which helped channel the powers he had. Without the hook, he only has the durability, stamina and lifespan, the hook helps him do the rest.
  • During the "You're Welcome" song, he is able to make Moana believe that the armful of rocks she's holding is an armful of fruit. So, he clearly has some power that doesn't derive from the hook.
  • He seems to just transform with the hook. He has other powers from being a demi-god - it's just they're not very useful when going up against giant lava monsters.

Tamatoa's song

• In Tamatoa's song Shiny he sings: 'Did your granny say listen to your heart, be who you are on the inside. I need three words to tear her argument apart: your granny lied!'. How did he know that Gramma Tala has said these things to Moana? Was it a wild guess (because it's a very grandmother-ish thing to say to grandchildren) or is something else going on?
  • Since he says it rather mockingly, I'm pretty sure he's just saying whatever comes to mind/guessing. Presumably he wouldn't know about Moana's past.
  • Given the film's love of Lampshading Disney cliches, it's likely Tamatoa is dismissing Moana as a generic princess-type. Or he's eaten princesses before.
  • Or perhaps he was referring to something his own grandmother told him. He may have meant 'Did your granny too say listen to your heart, like mine?' Since he ate his grandma, it's logical he mentions it with a mocking tone.
  • Moana herself mentioned her grandmother when Tamatoa first examined her, when she protested how he was looking at her necklace. The defiance in her voice as she objected, in itself, was enough to tell the crab that she cares a lot about her granny. As for the apparent quotations, that may just be him reeling off the kind of thing sweet little old ladies tend to tell their grandkids.
• Not only that, but he also seems to know a lot about Maui's past. Did Maui tell Tamatoa about his past himself?
  • Possibly. There's also the possibility that he made a point of learning about Maui after their first encounter. Maui has been alive for a VERY long time, and, since they know each other, so has Tamatoa. He's had plenty of time to listen to tales and rumors about Maui.
  • Also, wasn't it suggested somewhere that early on, Tamatoa and Maui were friends (before they had a fight and Maui broke off one of Tamatoa's legs)? Maui might have told Tamatoa about his past during that time.
  • A lot of old folktales and legends have the massive intimidating monsters as knowing a great deal about the protagonist when they show up, whether they were told about it by minions, have the power to see great distances, can look into the hero's heart, or just know as a part of their nature... precisely because it's pretty scary to be confronted by a giant dangerous thing that knows all about you. This is probably just an example of that.
  • Didn't hear that upon the first watch of the movie. Upon several subsequent watches: "Did your daddy tell you listen to your heart, be who you are on the inside; I need three words to tear his argument apart. Your daddy lied." It was a memorable moment because it was a clue that he was guessing about her motivations based on the assumption that she was one of those "special princess" types instead of a very determined girl whose daddy actually encouraged her to give up what she wanted to be on the inside for the sake of her village's safety.
  • It's possibly a reference to the original script drafts, where Lalotai was supposed to be The Underworld as opposed to the mere Realm of Monsters, in which case, Tamatoa would have met Tala's ghost at some point.

Pua's thalassophobia

• When Moana and Pua almost drown, this clearly traumatized the poor pig, who squeals and runs away when he so much as looks at an oar. And yet, when the village is leaving Motunui at the end of the film, we can clearly see him sitting on the boat with Heihei. How did Pua get over his fear of the ocean?
  • The whole tribe is there, they appear to have been sailing for quite a while, and the boat they're on is much bigger and more stable than Moana's old little canoe. He's probably had a while to get used to the ocean and over his fear.
  • Also, I think "traumatized" seems like a pretty strong word to be using - the running-at-the-sight-of-the-oar was right after they were washed back ashore. Wouldn't it take a lot longer than that for a genuine phobia to form?
  • Or maybe it wasn't really that Pua associated oars with the ocean at all, but that he's been chased away from the fishing boats by oar-wielding fishermen in the past. They wouldn't want a pig nosing around in their gear or gobbling their catch. That he happened to shy away from an oar shortly after a close call with drowning was just an amusing coincidence.

The anemone creature

• According to the DVD Commentary, the creature with the anemone mask is actually a reused character prop from one of their recent films, but they wouldn't say which one. Does anyone have any idea?
  • It's Flash Slothmore, the sloth from Zootopia.

Maui's tattoos

• If Maui gets his tattoos by earning them, like he says, then why does he have one depicting his parents throwing him into the sea? It's not like children earn the circumstances they're born into, after all, and I can't picture him opting to have that one on his own, so where did it come from?
  • He also clearly has one for getting bitch-slapped out of the sky by Te Ka and losing his hook, so it's NOT just his victories that get inked on him. Alternately, in both cases merely surviving the incident might qualify.
  • He may have said "earned" as a means to brag, like "look at how much I have accomplished, I'm showering in tattoos, baby!". After all, he was still living in denial of his insecurities and perhaps tried to convince himself such by telling Moana that. At the time Moana asked about that specific tattoo, he decides to just spill it that they're not actual earnings, but marks picturing significant moments of his life (sort of like the core memories in Inside Out).
  • Well, when he told Moana he earned them, he didn't seem to be in much of a mood to brag. But I think I get what you mean.
  • As for the first one, considering that event is what led to him getting his powers, you could argue that's still "earning" it, albeit in a more indirect sense. So it still kinda works for Maui's initial explanation.
  • He may like to boast about having "earned" his tattoos because he takes private pride in having done so many great deeds that his first tattoo - i.e. the one of his abandonment, of which he is ashamed - got diminished and shoved off into a corner by the heroic ones. Later, when he was defeated by Te Ka, another embarrassing tattoo emerged as a form of karmic punishment.

Maui's age

• So how does aging work for demigods like Maui? Granted, I'm not up to speed on my Polynesian mythology, but he was thrown into the sea as a baby, and he mentions that the gods found him, gave him powers and his fish hook, and then sent him back to the mortals - did he age at all during any of this? If so, how much? And if he does age, why does he spend 1,000 years on an island after being beaten by Te Ka, then come out looking exactly the same as he did in Gramma Tula's story? Or does one of his powers pertain to altering his physical age and appearance as he likes?
  • Well, he doesn't exactly say how long he was with the gods after they rescued him, so that part is up for your interpretation of the movie's timeline, I guess. He probably didn't age much during that specific time, but my best guess is that overall Maui just ages very slowly. He doesn't seem to have fallen victim to the Elderly Immortal trope, so... either Immortality Begins at Twenty, or Maui can just use his shapeshifting powers to look however old he wants to.
    • The possibility that Maui might be choosing what age he appears to be could actually explain a lot about his behavior and attitudes. What if he acts so immature and irresponsible because he's emotionally still a pre-adolescent boy, who's only posing at being a buff adult demigod? Note that Maui never at any point seems to acknowledge that Moana is an attractive girl, even though 16 would be a marriageable age in their culture and he hasn't seen a woman in centuries.

Swimming

• After failing to ditch Moana and the heart, Maui attempts a Screw This, I'm Outta Here by jumping into the sea and trying to swim away, showing that, contrary to one of his lines in "You're Welcome", he is capable of swimming. So why didn't he try that as a means of leaving the island he'd been stranded on?
  • Without his hook, Maui's only real power (besides being The Ageless) is Super-Strength. While he could conceivably swim away from the island, without knowing where the closest island is he'd likely drown before he got anywhere.
  • Then where was he planning on going when he tried swimming away from Moana's boat?
    • Back to the island. They weren't that far away from it, especially for someone who has super strength.
  • Another question might be...Even if he can't get rid of Moana, she can't strong-arm him into doing anything that he doesn't want to do, and he was going to find his fish hook whether he agreed to her plan or not. Why would he go back to an island where he'd indefinitely and undeniably be stranded instead of staying to commandeer the boat and get his hook back?
    • Because Moana has the Heart of Te Fiti. An object that brought a giant lava monster down on his head the last time he touched it. As far as he's concerned, being stranded is infinitely better than being anywhere within a hundred leagues of the Heart.

Gramma Tala's Tattoo

• Why would Grandma Tala think she got the wrong tattoo?
  • First, tattoos tend to smear and stretch with age. For instance, the tattoo of a dove can distort into a crow.
  • Second, the tattoo is on her back. So if someone says she has a manta ray tattooed on her back, she'll have to take their word for it.
    • It was shown that the villagers are present and awake for being tattooed; the process is somewhat painful, so it's quite likely Tala recalls where the needle pierced her skin.
    • They may be awake, and they may feel the needle pierce their skin. But as shown with one guy getting his tattoo, they don't have eyes on the back of their heads. He had to take Moana's word for it when she said it was "so close" to completion. (It wasn't).
  • She was talking about "getting the wrong tattoo" in the context of dying and being reincarnated as a manta ray. If she knew that she was going to be reincarnated into, say, a pig, she would have gotten a pig tattoo.
    • Specifically, she says "unless I chose the wrong tattoo."
  • She's pretty clearly joking. "I'll come back as one of these, unless I chose the wrong tattoo" is basically "Or my name isn't Tala Waialiki." Also from the bullet-point's writer: In many Polynesian traditions, you literally CAN'T get the wrong tattoo because they're statements of your bloodline/personality/occupation, so if Tala got a manta ray, it's not just because she thinks they're cool—she'd have a totemic connection to it.

Shapeshifting

• Is there a limit to what Maui can transform into? We see him turn into both Hei Hei and Sven from Frozen during his bout of Power Incontinence, but the only other shapes he assumes are an eagle, whale, shark, lizard, bug, and a fish. Are those just his favorites?
  • There's a popular fan theory that he can only transform into animals that he has a tooth on his necklace from (although, how he would get a tooth from a Haast's Eagle or a rooster is anyone's guess). Another theory that I lean toward is that he can transform into animals that are native to the Pacific, which means Sven is just a non-canon joke.
  • It's quite possible that he's able to transform into animals that he's seen before, considering he could transform mostly into Pacific Island fauna, but also a larger version of Heihei (a rooster, which he's just recently seen) and a caribou (which is not unlikely to have encountered on his many voyages and adventures).
  • The Pacific Ocean extends into the Arctic too. Maui may not (technically) have seen a reindeer, but a caribou - possibly a lone individual stranded on an ice floe and washed downstream into the sea - isn't beyond the realm of possibility, if one of his journeys took him northward.

Leaving Motonui

• Isn't it a little weird that everyone on Moana's home island would be willing to leave it so quickly during the ending? I know it's meant to be seen as them returning to their roots, in a sense, but their settlement has been there for a good long while. Why so eager to just up and leave it all of a sudden? And wouldn't it take a good deal of time for Moana to be able to teach the majority of them how to sail again, considering they haven't done it for years and years? The way I understood it from the earlier scene was that some of the tribesmen would stay on the islands they discovered and build settlements, while others would go wayfinding to discover new ones - shouldn't it have been the same for Motonui?
  • It was probably much easier for Moana to convince the villagers once all the plant life had spontaneously came back to life.
  • Maybe, even with the Heart of Te Fiti restored, food is still scarce in Motonui, as the villagers used up most of its resources.
  • It doesn't seem like everyone left. If you watch the scene at the end at the "place of chiefs" where Moana had placed her seashell on the pile instead of a stone. The camera pans up and over the pile to show the lagoon below. There are a dozen or so boats heading away from the reef toward the open sea but there's an equal amount of boats remaining inside the lagoon's reef. This implies there are those who are staying behind on the island.
    • Correct. The vision Moana had of the voyaging before basically showed the villagers voyaging to a new island, setting up a settlement there, and perhaps a generation or so later sending out another expeditionary force while leaving settlers behind.

The Power of Creation

• The Heart of Te Fiti is stated to have the power of creation. A power so great that the Kakamora, Tamatoa, and Te Ka^note who has a better claim to the heart than the others, seeing as it's hers. are all willing to fight for it over everything else. And neither of the main characters ever even tries to use it?!? A power like that should have made their trip so much easier but neither of them even tries to capitalize on this massive power they have. And if Maui doesn't know how, then why did he steal it for mankind in the first place?
  • Maui's probably reluctant to use it for personal reasons, considering that stealing it ultimately led to him getting trapped on that island for 1000 years (he does have a scene where he reacts rather badly to Moana showing it to him). As for Moana herself... she might just assume that would make things too easy and that the journey is as important as actually returning it. That or she's just so focused on the "returning" part that using it doesn't even occur to her.
  • Maui wouldn't have needed to know how to use it to have developed a desire to steal it - remember, his goal was just to give it to the humans in order to earn their respect, admiration, and love. He probably would've left it up to them to actually figure out how it worked.
  • Using divine power without permission is probably a very bad idea...
  • Also, considering the film's moral of not defining yourself by things that are outside you, it's possible that the heart doesn't have the power to do anything unless Te Fiti herself is wielding it. The fact that it's built up so much and never used once would seem to hint that this is the case.
    • Or perhaps it's simply because of the meta reason that it'd go against the film's morals.
    • ...Well, what's the difference?

Te Ka's tattoo

• Maui appears to already have a tattoo of his encounter with Te Ka at the beginning of the film, even though he hasn't met her yet. Was this an animation goof, or was just stealing the heart enough to earn him that one, in a "his fate was sealed"-sort of way?
  • I'd assume that Te Fiti turned into Te Ka almost immediately after Maui stole the heart, while he was still nearby, so the tattoo could simply be a case of "he was badass enough to survive his initial encounter with the angry lava goddess." Either that, or because he has tattoos of things that happened afterwards, that "counts" as the beginning of all his heroic deeds.

Maui Shark Form

• Judging by the markings and shape of the teeth, when Maui takes the form of a shark he's mimicking a tiger shark. Now his shapeshifting in general seems limited to creatures he has added a tooth or claw or bone from them to his necklace. There is no tiger shark tooth on his necklace. There is a shark tooth on his necklace, but it's the wrong shape to be a tiger shark tooth. In fact, by the size alone, that tooth could only have come from the ancient megalodon shark. Yes, that megalodon. Even if he does have a tiger shark tooth, say, on the part of his necklace hidden by his hair, why would he choose that form over the much more badass megalodon!?
  • Isn't it just a theory that Maui's shapeshifting is connected to the teeth on his necklace? He's able to transform into Hei Hei at one point, and I don't think roosters even have teeth.
    • This does not change the fact that Megalodon is much more badass than a tiger shark. Even if he's not bound by the animals connected to his necklace, why choose the less awesome shark!? And Hei Hei was more Rule of Funny anyways.
    • Doesn't he only turn into a shark once or twice throughout the entire film? And in neither case would having a greater size have helped him in the situation he was in.
  • As well as, he seems to only be able to turn into animals he's seen or known about before, Sven's cameo notwithstanding. He may've found a Megalodon's tooth to wear on his necklace, but he hadn't actually seen the real thing.
  • There are giant crabs, giant bats, and giant sea lilies in the Realm of Monsters. Who's to say there aren't a lot of Megalodon sharks alive down there, too?
  • Roosters, hawks, starfish, beetles, and baleen whales don't have teeth, yet Maui takes on all those forms. The necklace is just a necklace, I think, or at best a collection of trophies from his adventures.

Maui's sense of direction

• Maui says that they have to head east to reach Tamatoa's lair... how does he know this? He's spent the last 1,000 years on an uncharted, uninhabited island, then left without knowing which direction he was going in, then they got into the scuffle with the Kakamora and probably got pretty turned around as a result of that. Even if you take into account that they were heading north after all of that happened (since the sunset was to the boat's left when they made their deal), how would Maui know that going east from their location would take them to Tamatoa?
  • As for him knowing where Tamatoa is, they were friends. And he knows his own location because he spent long enough on that island to memorize the night sky from that fixed point by heart, and he has enough experience to go on that once he actually gets his hand on a boat.
    • Adding to the above, Maui describes wayfinding as "knowing where you're going by knowing where you've been." He certainly knows where he's been for the last thousand years.

Moana's mother

• What significance is Moana's mother helping her prepare to leave supposed to have? Does she even know why she's leaving or where she's going? And if she does, why is she letting her go? Because Grandma Tala's death doesn't seem to have anything to do with the threat being posed to their island or anything, and that was the only impactful thing that happened since Moana first brought up the idea of leaving.
  • Shortly before Tala's death, Moana interrupts an island meeting where the villagers are expressing concern over a lack of fish and poor harvest. Whether or not she believes the legends, Moana's mother might simply be helping because she realizes what Tui refuses to acknowledge: that the answer to their problems can't be found by staying within the reef.
  • She may also realize that if Tui keeps stubbornly refusing to deal with the food crisis, and allows the villagers to starve rather than venture beyond the reef, he's liable to be deposed as chief for his intransigence. In which case, the whole ruling family could be at risk and it's better if Moana leaves now, before the panic and recriminations set in.

Maui's return

• Shouldn't Maui have been able to see that Te Fiti was gone when he was flying in to save Moana from Te Ka? Even if he wasn't focusing at the time on the state of her island, it seems like he should've noticed that a huge chunk of it was missing.
  • Perhaps he was too focused on arriving to save Moana to realise the significance.
  • It's been a thousand years. Even a demigod wouldn't have prefect memory after that long, and even an ordinary island would have changed somewhat due to erosion and volcanic activity.

Why couldn't Tui be the Chosen One?

• If the moral of Moana's arc was that there wasn't anything outside herself that made her The Chosen One, then why couldn't her father have done the same thing at least a generation earlier? Maui even speculates that the ocean chose Moana because it wanted people to voyage the seas like they used to... but Tui wanted the same thing Moana did. So why didn't the ocean give him the heart instead?
  • Simply having a desire to sail wasn't the apparent reason why Moana was chosen, rather it was her showing compassion and empathy.
  • The above plus, well, he gave up after his bad encounter.

Reclaiming the hook

• Maui initially refused to let Moana venture into Tamatoa's cave, suggesting that he thought he could reclaim the hook on his own and didn't want her to needlessly endanger herself...but then he was perfectly fine with sending her in as a distraction a few seconds later?
  • Maui being dismissive of taking Moana into Tamatoa's cave wasn't because he "didn't want to endanger her"; he actually couldn't care less for her safety at that point yet (remember that just before that (end of "You're Welcome"), he tried to trap her in a cave left to die); he still just found her annoying then... On the contrary, his refusal was because he didn't yet take her serious at that point. He just thought of her as The Load. It wasn't until Moana managed to climb the difficult wall leading to Tamatoa's cave, that he realised Moana actually was a capable girl. And not until after they are done with Tamatoa, does he give her something resembling a compliment ("You did me a solid..."), though he even tones that down with "...but you could have died there!". And it isn't until the scenes where he teaches her wayfinding, that he seems to bond with and care for her in any way.
  • Also, Māui is a demigod, Moana is just a human being. And the wall was so steep that he probably assumed that she wouldn’t be able to climb it. But the Heart Of Te Fiti May have enhanced Moana’s strength to the point where she could climb it.

Losing the heart

• When exactly did Maui lose his hook and Te Fiti's heart? Grandma Tala's story at the beginning makes it sound like Te Ka immediately appeared and knocked Maui into the ocean, which would make sense, since she would be right there to do that if she was formed right away. But then Maui wouldn't have been able to go on and form all of the islands and do his other heroic deeds. Now, it could just be a case of Tala being Sadly Mythtaken and mixing up the timeline, but losing it too much later would also be kind of weird, since it would mean that Maui went back over by Te Ka's island for some reason, raising the question of why he would do that.
  • Maui himself says that he took the heart, tried to fly away and then everything exploded and he lost his hook. I don't know if he lost the heart or threw it in the ocean himself when he landed on the island.
  • Maui did all those things for the humans (pulling up islands, bring them fire and all) before he tried stealing the heart for them. Stealing the heart was just his latest plan to earn their adoration and love. The film shows both his hook and the heart sinking into the depths once Te Ka knocks Maui out of the sky.

Score one for Moana...How?

• Maui asks Moana if she's ever defeated a lava monster. Moana replies, "No...Have you?" Which Maui (well, Mini-Maui) treats as her having a point. Why? Maui didn't ask her that as a means to brag or anything; he was pointing out how the mission she wanted to take him on was effectively suicide. If anything, Moana acknowledging that neither of them have defeated a lava monster would only further prove Maui's point that it's a bad idea to go up against one.
  • Maui was kind of humble-bragging with that question, though. At that point in the film, Maui would struggle to admit his own weaknesses and sees himself as beyond needing mortal assistance, so by asking her that, he was trying to imply her own personal incompetence and his lack of faith in her skills (which he does have a point for admittedly). Moana's retort not only is a dig that he failed to defeat Te Ka, but also knocks Maui down a peg by bringing up that past failure and making it clear that both of them are not experts in this field. She has no reason to have faith in Maui's chances of beating Te Ka either, but she still believes he is capable of accomplishing it regardless. And, in her defense, she does actually manage to defeat a giant lava monster by the film's end, something that Maui never accomplishes.

Cursed heart

• Has Maui really spent enough time with/near the Heart of Te Fiti for his irrational fear of it to be justified? He flinches at the sight of it and refers to it as a "beacon of death," even though the one prior mishap he experienced could just be chalked up to bad luck. Unless the Heart has some foreboding background lore that he's buying into (like the Hope Diamond, as an example), I don't understand why he's so insistent that it's a Doom Magnet.
  • He stole the heart and then his world exploded, he lost his hook and ended up stranded on a barren island for hundreds of years. An experience that traumatic is going to instill a healthy fear of the object.
  • He IS the forboding background lore he’s buying into.
  • Maui prides himself on being this super-mega-awesome hero-champion-paragon who never fails at anything ever. Someone with a sturdier, less-inflated ego might dismiss what happened as bad luck, but it makes enough sense why he wouldn’t. And he already attributes his self-worth to his fishhook to an unhealthy degree, so it’s perfectly in-character for him to attribute his failure to another godly artifact of power.

Incredibly stupid chicken

• Considering Hei Hei seems to lack basic survival skills, such as both almost choking on a rock and jumping into the ocean despite not being able to swim, how has he survived this long? He's shown being around when Moana was a lot younger and yet seems to need constant babysitting just to not kill himself.
  • Hei Hei is clearly a pet, not just livestock. (Else, he'd have ended up as barbecue long ago.) Plenty of real-world pets are too inept to survive without human care and protection.

Entering Realm of Monsters

• Did Moana have any basis to assume she could survive falling into the Realm of Monsters? Just because the immortal, super-resilient demigod Maui made the jump doesn't mean she should've assumed it was safe for her to do the same.
  • Could be because Maui didn't bother telling her at any point, "You're staying out of the Realm of Monsters because going in involves a several-story drop that a puny mortal like you can't survive." He was only hinting that she shouldn't come with him, not that she physically couldn't. And considering he really didn't want her to come along, you'd think he would've brought up such a hindrance.

Manta Rays Not Affected By The Blight?

• So the encroaching death has reached the island, starting to poison the plants and either killing or driving off all the fish ... yet Moana's grandma can step into the ocean and be immediately surrounded by five manta rays. Are they immune, somehow? Should Moana's people have tried switching to a Manta meat diet?

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