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1. What is Moana's home island called?
Motunui
Motunui is invented, assembled from research trips to Fiji, Samoa and Tahiti and checked by the Pacific advisers Disney called the Oceanic Story Trust. Te Fiti is the goddess whose heart was stolen, and Maui and Kauai are real Hawaiian islands.
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2. What is Moana's father's name?
Tui
Chief Tui is voiced by Temuera Morrison, Jango Fett in the Star Wars prequels. He bans voyaging beyond the reef because he lost a friend at sea as a young man, which Moana only learns late on. Tala is her grandmother and Tamatoa the crab.
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3. What is Moana's grandmother called?
Tala
Gramma Tala, voiced by Rachel House, calls herself the village crazy lady and dances with the manta rays, which is the form her spirit takes after her death. Sina is Moana's mother, and Lilo and Nani are the sisters from Lilo and Stitch.
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4. Which demigod travels with Moana?
Maui
Maui is the trickster of Polynesian legend, credited with fishing up islands and slowing the sun, and the film adds the theft of Te Fiti's heart a thousand years earlier. Hercules, Loki and Anansi belong to Greek, Norse and West African mythology.
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5. Who voices Moana in the original English-language film?
Auli'i Cravalho
Cravalho was a fourteen-year-old from Hawaii who had not planned to audition at all, and the film was her first acting job. Nicole Scherzinger and Rachel House are in the cast too, as Moana's mother and grandmother, and Alessia Cara sings over the credits.
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6. Who voices Maui?
Dwayne Johnson
Johnson's mother's family is Samoan, and his grandfather was the wrestler Peter Maivia, so the casting had roots. He did his own singing, and Mini Maui, the tattoo that argues with him, is hand-drawn in a film that is otherwise computer-generated.
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7. What magical object allows Maui to change shape?
A fishhook
The hook lets him become a hawk, a shark, a lizard or whatever the moment calls for, when he can remember how. He lost it the night he stole the heart, and it has spent a thousand years in Tamatoa's collection in Lalotai, the realm of monsters.
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8. What kind of animal is Heihei?
A rooster
Heihei is voiced by Alan Tudyk, whose entire performance consists of squawks. The character was nearly cut for being too stupid to work, until a rewrite made his stupidity the joke, and he still manages to swallow the heart of Te Fiti at one point.
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9. What is Moana's pet pig called?
Pua
Pua is aboard for Moana's first attempt to cross the reef, which ends with the canoe wrecked and both of them nearly drowned. After that he stays home, and the rooster ends up making the voyage instead, by accident.
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10. What kind of creature is Tamatoa?
A giant crab
Tamatoa is a coconut crab the size of a house, living in Lalotai with Maui's hook stuck among the treasures on his shell. His glam-rock number, 'Shiny', was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda as a deliberate homage to David Bowie.
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11. Who voices Tamatoa?
Jemaine Clement
Clement is one half of Flight of the Conchords, and his Bowie impression made him the obvious choice for the song. Bret McKenzie is the other half, Rhys Darby played their manager, and Taika Waititi wrote an early draft of the Moana script.
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12. What song does Maui sing to celebrate his own achievements?
You're Welcome
Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the songs while Hamilton was taking off, and Johnson sang this one himself. How Far I'll Go is Moana's song, the one nominated for an Oscar, and We Know the Way is the voyaging anthem sung by Miranda and Opetaia Foa'i.
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13. What must Moana return to Te Fiti?
Her heart
The heart is a small green stone carved with a spiral, which Maui stole so that humans could have the power of creation. The ocean gave it to Moana as a child, and returning it means getting past Te Ka, the lava demon who guards the way to the island.
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14. What do the Kakamora pirates resemble?
Coconuts
The Kakamora are tiny warriors in coconut armor who attack from a floating fortress of lashed-together wreckage. The directors modeled the chase on Mad Max: Fury Road, and the pirates are after the heart, which Heihei has just swallowed.
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15. Which directing pair made Moana?
Ron Clements and John Musker
Clements and Musker made The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Hercules, and Moana was their first computer-animated feature. Buck and Lee made Frozen, Howard and Moore made Zootopia and Trousdale and Wise made Beauty and the Beast.
