I hate to defend Disney here, but based on the evidence presented by this article (maybe the actual filing is better) this is hard to see as plagiarism.
Both stories are based on the same cultural stories, so they automatically have similarities there. Maui typically uses a hook in those stories, so of course that is a common element. A portal in a whirlpool is a known trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PortalPool
Monster in a mountain is obviously a trope (e.g. Smaug, etc).
Yep poor Didney getting sued because of remotely related similarities, they would never do this to someone else
They definitely would, they’re evil greedy bastards, but the question is are they doing it HERE? Because a lot of what the article is pointing to as a smoking gun is just the cultural background, so yeah I don’t know about this one…
Below, see a breakdown of story elements that are present both in the Moana movies and the Bucky screenplay:
- The setting of an ancient Polynesian village
- A teenager goes on an ocean adventure that involves the spirits of ancestors manifesting as animals
- Said adventure begins because of a turtle
- A symbolic necklace is important to the story
- A supporting character is a hook-wielding demigod with tattoos
- A large creature is hidden in a mountain
- The crew is sucked into a whirlpool portal
weren’t a good portion of those already established in Moana 1?
Yeah, and it looks like they tried to sue then too but missed a deadline.
Not to mention both stories being explicitly rooted in Polynesia means they’re working from a shared common mythos. Maui is a real-world mythological figure who wields a hook, Moana didn’t just make that up. Turtles are also culturally significant, as are boats/seafaring journeys, tattoos, ancestral spirits represented as animals, and so on.
I hate to defend a corporation as evil as Disney but the most they’re guilty of in this circumstance is making a non-Eurocentric movie for a change.
FYI, crossposted to [email protected]
