Disney’s new live-action Moana is extraordinarily faithful to the studio’s 2016 animated film… sometimes to its own detriment.
Among the scenes reproduced is a brief wayfinding lesson in which Maui tells Moana to place her hand in the ocean and feel the temperature of the current. The water begins getting warmer, leading Moana to believe she is learning how to determine the canoe’s direction. She then realizes that Maui is relieving himself into the water and that the resulting warmth has reached her hand.
It is a crude joke in both versions. But in animation, the moment passes as exaggerated cartoon gross-out humor. In live action, with Dwayne Johnson physically portraying Maui opposite the much younger Catherine Laga’aia, the same joke acquires an awkwardness that the filmmakers should have anticipated. It’s a basic movie storytelling rule that nobody has ever thought necessary to say: don’t go number one on a young lady from a Disney Legend who is nearly 60 years old!
In the 2016 movie, Maui and Moana are stylized digital characters. Maui is an enormous, fantastically proportioned demigod covered in animated tattoos. Moana is a cartoon heroine traveling through a world populated by living oceans, coconut pirates and giant luminous monsters.
READ: Disney’s Live-Action ‘Moana’ True Budget Revealed — How Much Does it Have to Make?
Nothing about the presentation asks the audience to process the scene as a realistic physical encounter.
The joke is also constructed indirectly. The audience does not see anything explicit. Moana feels the supposedly warm current, notices Maui’s suspiciously relieved expression and realizes what has happened. Her disgust becomes the punchline.
That sequence can still be criticized as unnecessary bathroom humor, but animation places several layers of unreality between the audience and the act. It feels like one cartoon character pranking another cartoon character.
The live-action version does not enjoy that distance.
Moana in the live action movie – YouTube, Disney
Disney’s remake places recognizable human performers inside the same staging. Johnson once again plays Maui, while Catherine Laga’aia takes over the title role. Although the film remains heavily dependent on computer-generated imagery, the principal characters now have real faces, real bodies and unmistakably human physical presence. Several reviewers have observed that interactions copied from the animated film become more awkward when performed by actual actors rather than elastic digital characters.
The urination joke may be the clearest example.
Laga’aia was born on December 17, 2006. Johnson was born on May 2, 1972.
What registered in 2016 as an immature demigod playing a disgusting trick on a determined animated heroine can now appear to show a visibly middle-aged man allowing his urine to wash onto the hand of a teenage girl. Even when viewers intellectually understand that nothing real occurred, the live-action imagery makes the premise substantially more concrete.
That difference matters.
Young Moana in the Moana live action movie – YouTube, Disney
A recreated joke must still function within its new visual language. In this case, the remake asks the audience to overlook the realistic implications of a scenario that animation previously kept safely abstract. Rather than making Maui seem playfully obnoxious, the scene risks making him appear invasive and strangely oblivious to basic boundaries.
It also places an unnecessary burden on Johnson’s performance. Animated Maui’s extreme proportions, constantly moving tattoos and elastic facial expressions help frame him as a mythological clown. Live-action Maui is much closer to Johnson himself, regardless of the costume, wig and digital enhancements. The actor’s celebrity and unmistakable real-world identity make it harder for viewers to see only an ageless supernatural being.
Laga’aia, meanwhile, was deliberately cast to embody Moana’s youth. The contrast between her youthful appearance and Johnson’s age is visible whenever they share the frame. Most of the film can use that contrast productively, emphasizing Maui’s role as an ancient demigod reluctantly accompanying a young future leader. During the urination joke, however, the same contrast becomes a liability.
Hei Hei in the live action Moana – YouTube, Disney
Disney had every opportunity to recognize that this particular joke would not translate cleanly from animation. The studio changed performers, production methods, visual textures and numerous practical details in bringing Moana into live action. It could have changed one disposable gag.
Instead, the remake demonstrates the danger of treating the animated film like a sacred template. The closer live action moves toward physical reality, the more carefully filmmakers must reconsider jokes involving age, bodies and personal boundaries.
In 2016, the scene was a fleeting and childish cartoon gag.
In 2026, it’s 53 year-old Dwayne Johnson’s Maui tricking a teenage Moana into putting her hand in water he has just urinated into.
The screenplay may regard those as identical moments. Many viewers will not… and they should not be expected to. While there’s no malice or ill-will with anyone involved, this is just one of those icky moments that could have been avoided if only someone said, “Hey, I don’t think this works in live action.”
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