Nobody’s saying Maui, that most rascally of Polynesian demigods, isn’t strong. He once beat the sun into submission with a jawbone and yanked the Hawaiian Islands out from the bottom of the ocean. So yes, Maui’s strong.
But big? Not so much.
“It was definitely a shock when I saw him,” said Preston McNeil, director of the animated short Maui and the Sun. McNeil, who is of Maori descent, grew up reading the Gossage books in New Zealand, where the books are familiar favourites. “Maui’s got these four big brothers, and he’s constantly hiding and sneaking around,” he said. “He’s the youngest, and cheeky, so you don’t think of him as a big man.”
And then there are those, including a New Zealand member of Parliament and a professional rugby player from Samoa, who say the depiction perpetuates offensive images of Polynesians as overweight.
So how did Disney’s Maui get that size (and that hair)? Slowly. “In early versions of the film, he was smaller,” said David Pimentel, the film’s head of story. “He was shorter and bald. He wasn’t the most beautiful person.”
But then he grew. And grew. For five years, Disney consulted scores of people on research trips throughout the South Pacific, specialists in fishing techniques and tattoos, ancient navigation and traditional dance. These experts formed the film’s Oceanic Story Trust, and it was members of this group who pushed the filmmakers for a bigger Maui. “They were telling us that he needs to be a hero, almost like Superman,” Pimentel said.
“Even in the myths where he’s small, he’s larger than life,” said Osnat Shurer, the film’s producer. “And in animation, we’re not literal. You’re trying to find the essence of the character. We always felt that the audience needed to know right away, visually, that this guy is stronger than anybody else.”
The larger canvas was a boon to animation supervisors Mack Kablan and Eric Goldberg, though it posed a major technical challenge as well. The movement of human skin is much tougher to render in computer animation than clothing; since Maui is one of the most underdressed Disney characters in recent memory, Kablan’s team had its work cut out for it. “We looked at football players, pro wrestlers and ‘world’s strongest men,’” he said. To further complicate things, Goldberg (the supervising animator on the Genie in Aladdin) was enlisted to add a two-dimensional animated tattoo — “Mini Maui,” the demigod’s conscience and constant companion — onto Maui’s enormous CGI body.
Disney did upsize Moana as well. But while Moana has been celebrated for her extra heft and more realistic body shape — compare her thicker frame to, say, Sleeping Beauty’s or Ariel’s — Maui has taken flak for his weight gain. “I totally get it,” said David Derrick, a Moana story artist who is of Samoan descent. “But I think a lot of those things come from people being very nervous and scared that a big company is portraying this beloved cultural character. I believe that when they see the whole thing, they’ll be won over by how we treated him.”
Don’t miss it
Moana releases in the UAE on November 24.
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