I haven ' t seen the movie yet , but I was from the understanding that the movie is a story about Maui , the shitty fisherman and trickster . He is present on all of the major Hawaii , Tonga , New Zealand , Samoa , Tahiti islands of Polynesia . Not to say that the other islands are not important , but those are the ones that probably have influenced the world the most in what is defined as Polynesia , since they were the biggest and most populated islands . Though Maui being . well fat could probably be seen as an issue , since the folks from Polynesia are usually depicted as being fat . That isn ' t helped when Polynesians in popculture back east are more likely to look like Bruddah Iz and Rikishi instead of Dwayne Johnson .