Disney Just Announced Something Huge About Its Next Princess
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The upcoming animated Disney film "Moana" shares something noteworthy with other recent movies featuring female protagonists, directors John Musker and Ron Clements told an audience at Comic-Con last week. They unveiled a surprise preview of "Moana," which chronicles a teenage heroine's ocean voyage with a demigod voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Entertainment Weekly reported.
Musker and Clements also said something surprising about the film's plot: It doesn't include a love story.
Instead, the film focuses on Moana's journey to find herself, according to its directors.
It's refreshing to see Disney buck the Prince Charming tropes that dominated its fairy tale movies for many years. This also isn't the first time the studio has done so: In the hit animated film "Frozen," Elsa didn't have a love interest either, Bustle reported.
Disney movies aren't the only ones that aren't playing matchmaker with their leading ladies.
The recent, female-fueled "Ghostbusters" reboot was praised for declining to feature any of its female protagonists in a heterosexual love story, The Huffington Post reported.
Feminist author Roxane Gay praised the film in a tweet.
Other Twitter users agreed with Gay's assessment and voiced appreciation for a film that elevated female friendship over a tired romance story.
Disney may have a love-story happy history, but it's not just them — or Hollywood.
"It’s hard to find female-driven movies, much less films not about women and love: The female protagonist is looking for love, she lost love, or she doesn’t want love," the Artifice opined.
Young women often also struggle to find books about self-discovery that aren't driven by romance, The Atlantic reported.
Recent films such as "Frances Ha" and TV shows such as "Broad City" have been lauded for stories that primarily focus on individual women and their friendships, rather than on their relationships with men.
It's encouraging to see that Disney — with its massive, young female audience — is also beginning to tell stories that empower girls without ending in wedding bells.
