Disney’s Next Heroine: The Anti-Princess

3 minute read

Partway through Moana, an animated musical due out Nov. 23, the titular character’s traveling companion, a tattooed demigod named Maui (voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), refers to her as a princess. “I am not a princess,” Moana says. “If you wear a dress and you have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess,” he counters. But Disney’s latest heroine, a 16-year-old Polynesian voiced by newcomer Auli’i Cravalho, puts an end to this mansplaining–not with a witty retort but by navigating the ocean, defeating a pissed-off lava monster and saving the world with a dim-witted pet rooster in tow.

The newest Disney heroine to join the ranks of Belle and Ariel is, in fact, just what she says she is. That’s the point, say directors Ron Clements and John Musker, who helmed such classics of the genre as The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. “We saw this as a hero’s journey, a coming-of-age story, in a different tradition than the princess stories,” says Clements. Adds Musker: “I don’t know that any other princesses we’ve been involved with we’d describe as badass.”

Unlike many of her predecessors, Moana has no love interest. Nor is she a strutting waif, since she must believably “hold her own in the demands of this physical environment,” Musker says. All of these departures from princesses past help turn Moana into a model for anyone who’s ever asked, as she does, “What’s wrong with me?” The answer? Absolutely nothing.

–E.B.

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Write to Eliza Berman at eliza.berman@time.com