The newest animated Disney movie Moana is creating waves with its take on its latest princess. Unlike classic Disney movies with young women who seemingly solve all their hardships by meeting their “Prince Charming,” Moana is more comparable to the other more recent Disney movie Brave.

Both movies focus on action-hero female leads that overcome their problems in unexpected ways, but Moana takes it a step further. Not only does she does not have a male significant-other, like most Disney princess movies, but in order to save her family and friends she must rescue a man who caused the problems in the first place.

Another movie comparable to Moana is that of Mulan because both movies broke racial barriers by not featuring caucasians, which follows the historical and geographical context of the movies.

For the sake of excluding spoilers, it can be said that in the end, Moana must succeed by fixing her problems by herself, without the help of anyone, even a man.

Besides the fact of Moana demonstrating Disney’s progress of focusing princess movies on female heroines instead of love stories, the company has also leveled up on the music front.

The Emmy, Grammy, and Tony award winner, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has recently topped his already successful career by creating and originally performing in the Broadway musical Hamilton, wrote all the English songs in the Moana.

In his musical, Hamilton, Miranda used the elements of American history focused around Alexander Hamilton by creating rap songs, which is unexpected to say the least. With rap also present is the new Disney movie, Miranda adds creativity and spirit in the songs, like always.

Miranda incorporates the Polynesian culture and the emotions of Moana in his unique way of writing songs that uplift and catch the audience’s attention. Along with Miranda’s melodic voice on the Moana soundtrack, another star song writer helped make this movies sound.

Opetaia Foa’i, a New Zealander and member of the band Te Vaka, was the main man for creating the songs that featured the Polynesian language. Helping sing and write, Foa’i enlivens the Polynesian spirit by incorporating the languages; not only is this rare, but it is done beautifully and authentically.

Moana expressed a grand culture appreciation with its musical numbers and its general authenticity of characters and language. Having only been released less than a month ago, Moana is already a major success and has been predicted by some to rival the former most recent Disney animation, Frozen.

It may be winter on this side of the world, but everyone is running past the winter wonderland of Frozen to the Polynesian seas of Moana.