Moana 2 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Moana 2 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 6, 2025

While for perhaps understandable reasons which will be discussed shortly Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki* seems to have fallen off the radar (an ironic turn of phrase considering the navigational "technology" featured within its very pages), the book was once a staple of libraries and even assigned reading, as I can state definitively from my own high school experience. Heyerdahl made the then seemingly "fantastic" claim that it was at least possible that people from South America sailed from their continent to various islands in the South Pacific, though Heyerdahl made the generally rejected assertion that these South Americans, whom Heyerdahl considered rightly or wrongly to be Caucasian, may have actually predated "native" Polynesians, since Heyerdahl thought those indigenous types weren't "sophisticated" enough for long distance travels on the sea. The historical record seems to flip this whole scenario on its head, though, and perhaps reveals a bit of "cultural blinders" on Heyerdahl's figurative eyes, since there is more than ample evidence that many peoples from this general (and undeniably vast) region in the Pacific were completely capable of navigation and long distance travel. And, really, how could it be otherwise? If people did not travel to various isolated islands, how in fact did they end up there? The choices are relatively few, including thinking that maybe those islands were once part of a larger conjoined land mass that later split apart, or that somehow people just magically appeared at these remote locations, a la Venus on the half shell. One way or the other, both Moana and this follow up which was even more of a sensation at the box office than the first film make the probably obvious case that "native" islanders, no matter how they may have ended up on that particular island, continued to be explorers, navigating vast distances across roiling ocean waters to make contact with other islanders.

* Note: The link points to a documentary based on the original book.

It's of course not hard to see the good folks at Disney hewing rather firmly to a template in Moana 2 that has been, well, explored in any number of previous animated outings from the venerable studio. Spunky heroine defying Dad to investigate places no female has gone before? Check. Exotic location that allows the animators and score writers (whether musical or not) to offer at least hints of ethnically appropriate production design and ambience? Check. Occasional intervention by either a real or figurative Deus ex Machina? Check. Little animal friends (furry or otherwise) to tag along and provide comedic shtick? Check. You can virtually draw a straight line from efforts like The Little Mermaid to Pocahontas to Mulan to Brave to offer a roadmap of sorts of just how frequently Disney tends to revisit some of the same story tropes, often "gussying them up" with "exotic" locations in order to give things a little flair and color.

Well, if the bad news is that you've seen Moana 2 before, and not necessarily just with regard to Moana itself, there is abundant flair and color in the visuals and the song score throughout the film. Once again Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) is on a quest of discovery, and unsurprisingly Maui (Dwayne Johnson) is along for the ride. Yes, the specifics have changed for this particular adventure, but the through line of empowerment, recognition and celebration of cultural traditions, and overcoming obstacles to find a broadened community is pretty much exactly the same as in the first Moana film and frankly probably all of the other films mentioned above. It's at least arguable, though, that this film is even more visually ravishing than the first, which is quite an achievement. The song score is also enjoyable and at least hints at an authentic islander sound.

Moana 2 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 1080 disc in this package.

Moana 2 is presented in 4K UHD courtesy of Disney / Buena Vista with an HEVC / H.265 encoded 2160p transfer in 2.00:1. I frankly wish there were a bit more information about the workflow of this project, simply because looks so spectacular so much of the time, but as might be expected from something created purely within the digital realm, the transfer is crisp, clean and quite strikingly saturated. The 1080 version is a delight in and of itself, but Dolby Vision / HDR add significant luster throughout the huge gamut of tones utilized. My eyes were particularly struck by the frequent purples and teals throughout, colors which might admittedly be more associated with the likes of, say, John Wick, but which are just as evocative here in a completely different context. But even primaries look fantastic throughout, and blues in particular are amazingly vivid a lot of the time. Detail levels are at least marginally improved here from already excellent 1080 levels in everything from grains of sand on beaches to Maui's impressive hair.

Moana 2 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As seems to be the unavoidable case with Disney releases that appear simultaneously on 4K and 1080 discs, the audio codecs are a bit different. The 1080 disc offers a really sumptuously immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track, while this 4K disc offers all of that surround activity plus what might be jokingly referred to as "wait. . .you also get" blandishments courtesy of Dolby Atmos. The Atmos track on this disc offers a gorgeously sumptuous and spatial rendering of the song score in particular, something that's evident from the get go courtesy of the charming a cappella singing that begins the film. As with the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track on the 1080 disc, the "traditional" surround channels get regular workouts courtesy of the glut of ambient environmental sounds in the outdoor scenes (by far the bulk of the film). Water effects in particular are quite evocative. Some of the goofy sound effects attending Moana's animal BFF's can also be amusing and at times hilariously directional. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English, French and Spanish subtitles are available.

Moana 2 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

4K UHD Disc

• Song Selection allows direct access to any song in the film. There's a Play All option in this submenu.

1080 Disc

• Call of The Wayfinder (HD; 12:17) documents some real life seagoing.


• A New Voyage (HD; 15:36) discusses the first film's legacy and some of the wishes for this newest entry.


• Songs of the Sea (HD; 13:28) focuses on the film's charming music.


• Join the Crew (HD; 11:40) addresses the addition of a larger cohort for Moana in this film.


• Kakamora Chronicles (HD; 4:33) offers a kind of fairy tale look at the supposedly frightening little sprites.


• Fun in the Booth (HD; 3:08) looks at the voice recording sessions.


• Deleted Scenes (HD; 14:35) includes introductions from the three directors.


• Song Selection allows direct access to any song in the film. There's a Play All option in this submenu.

As of the writing of this review, Moana 2 is available in 4K only in SteelBook packaging. The SteelBook is quite handsomely designed, with the major characters (human or otherwise) on the front panel, with a swirling, liquid "2" in blue behind them. The back panel offers a kind of atavistic recreation of indigenous art of our wayfinders. The interior panels offers a depiction of Moana on the beach. A digital copy is also included.

Moana 2 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As I probably cheekily got into in my Heretic 4K Blu-ray review , I was born and raised in Salt Lake City, where I was unavoidably surrounded by the predominant culture/religion there, and as many readers of my reviews know, I make a significant part of my living as a musician, and those two worlds kind of unexpectedly collided when I hired a company to repair a badly damaged concrete driveway at a house I had just purchased. In talking to the crew who showed up, it turned out they were all from Tonga and were all converts to Mormonism, and when they found out about my Utah connection and that I was a musician, they spontaneously broke into some of the most amazingly beautiful choral singing I've ever heard of some of their native folk music. Like the opening strains in this film heard as the Disney masthead appears, the songs were made out of "simple" triadic structures that hovered around the stalwart I, IV and V7 chords, but the sheer joy of the sound these men made will stay with me for a very long time. That same sense of joy, both aural and visual, is one of the abundant pleasures of Moana 2, and if some may understandably wish that the actual story had a bit more heft, there so much beauty to watch and listen to, that at times everything else hardly matters. Technical merits are solid and the supplements very enjoyable. Recommended.