A happy ending?

Is the ending of Moana a happy ending?

Yes and no.

Obviously it is a happy ending when the darkness spreading across the world is stopped from destroying everything.

But what about the people of Moana's island becoming seafarers again? Is that a happy ending?

Again the answer is yes and no.

The people in a number of Polynesian Islands deforested them and thus ran out of wood to make new canoes to trade with other islands. This caused their societies to decline and in some cases the people died out.

So resuming exploring and trade will enable Moana's people to avoid such a decline. But that good will come at a bad price.

My family went to Cape May, New Jersey for summer vacations for decades. In 1988 the Cape May Fisherman's memorial was created, a monument to 75 local fishermen who died at sea form 1893 to 2009.

It may have been inspired by the Gloucester, Massachusetts Fisherman's Memorial to 500 Gloucester men lost at see from 1623 to 1923 and up to 2001. But a mural at the Gloucester City Hall has the names of 5,000 lost Gloucester sailors.

An estimated 800 people drowned in the worst maritime disaster in this decade, on 19 April 2015. In the previous decade there were two maritime disasters with over a thousand people killed.

Large oil tankers, container ships, and other commercial vessels sink every year, some with the loss of all hands.

And the large Polynesian outrigger canoes seen in Moana were a lot more fragile and easier to sink than modern ships. So if the ending of the movie doesn't result in many Polynesians drowning at sea in the following years, decades, and centuries, Moana really will be a fairy tale.