Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3251
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
John Tui works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
John Tui appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without John. Moana is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, action. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for adventure, family, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Thomas Kail, Kiel McNaughton, David Leitch and others, John Tui helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Moana (2026) as Chief Tui · The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) as Bolg · The Legend of Baron To'a (2020) as Baron To'a
Career snapshot
Ranked #3251 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2012–2026
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Moana
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Most frequent director
Thomas Kail
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Thomas Kail
Most common genre
Adventure
5 titles
Average runtime
2h 6m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.5
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2020s
7.3 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Moana, The Legend of Baron To'a — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Savage, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Most productive era
2010s
5 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Action | 6.74 films | 6.81 film |
| Thriller | 5.91 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.81 film | 6.81 film |
| Crime | 6.81 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2012Battleship
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Chief Petty Officer Walter "The Beast" Lynch.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Moana
7.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Chief Tui.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
7 of 7 films
as Chief Tui
Directed by Thomas Kail
as Bolg
Directed by Peter Jackson
as Kal
Directed by David Leitch
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Showing 10 of 10 titles · 10 total credits · active 1993–2026
Moana
2026 · Chief Tui
Plum
2024 · TV · Brick
Young Rock
2021 · TV · Afa Anoa'i
The Legend of Baron To'a
2020 · Baron To'a
Savage
2019 · Moses
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
2019 · Kal
Solo: A Star Wars Story
2018 · Korso
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
2014 · Bolg
Battleship
2012 · Chief Petty Officer Walter "The Beast" Lynch
Power Rangers
1993 · TV · Doggie Cruger
The defining work
#1
Chief Tui
Moana (2026)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Chief Tui gives John Tui a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Moses
Savage (2019)
Performance score7.4
Savage asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Moses is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Bolg
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
Performance score7.4
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bolg is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Baron To'a
The Legend of Baron To'a (2020)
Performance score7.2
The Legend of Baron To'a asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Baron To'a is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Chief Tui
Start here. Moana is the clearest statement of what John Tui does — accessible, 128 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet John at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
Keeps the fantasy register of Moana but asks for a colder reading of it.
Savage (2019)
A deliberate change of key after The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Savage — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Legend of Baron To'a (2020)
Keeps the action register of Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Peter Berg
Director
1 film together
Notably Battleship
Peter Jackson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Solo: A Star Wars Story
David Leitch
Director
1 film together
Notably Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
Kiel McNaughton
Director
1 film together
Notably The Legend of Baron To'a
Thomas Kail
Director
1 film together
Notably Moana
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Dwayne Johnson
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Rena Owen
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Frankie Adams
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Jemaine Clement
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Emma Puahi-Shapazian
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Amaya Masoli
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Sam Puefua
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Sione Milford
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Kapeneta Te'o-Tafiti
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Eric Scanlan
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Moses Goods
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Thomas Kail
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MoanaPeter Jackson
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five ArmiesKiel McNaughton
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Legend of Baron To'aDavid Leitch
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & ShawRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Solo: A Star Wars StoryPeter Berg
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BattleshipSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Moana
as Chief Tui
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Moana
as Chief Tui
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Moana
as Chief Tui
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
as Bolg
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Moana
as Chief Tui
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. John Tui has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
| Nutevio Performer Score | 7.1 | 9.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Career ranking | #676 of 681 | #1 of 681 |
| Awards on file | Unknown | 3 recorded |
| Oscar wins | Unknown | 1 |
| Oscar nominations | Unknown | 5 |
| Average Nutevio score | 7.9 | 9.1 |
| Genres | Adventure, Family, Fantasy | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, History |
| Directors | Thomas Kail | Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese |
| Performance DNA | Emotional range, Screen presence, Rewatchability | Transformation, Drama, Screen presence |
| Career timeline | 2026–2026 | 2006–2026 |
| Most iconic role | Chief Tui — Moana | Odysseus — The Odyssey |
| Most rewatchable film | Moana | Interstellar |
| Filmography | 1 catalogue film | 4 catalogue films |
Films together
Nothing in common in the library yet.
Shared directors
Nothing in common in the library yet.
Shared collections
Fantasy Movies, Adventure Movies
Matt Damon edges ahead here — a higher floor across a comparable body of work.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in adventure, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Moana
as Chief Tui
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
as Bolg
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Moana
as Chief Tui
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
as Bolg
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
as Bolg
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Solo: A Star Wars Story
as Korso
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Moana
as Chief Tui
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Moana
as Chief Tui
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
Across the library
Every Nutevio collection this name turns up in, and how high they rank there.
Collection footprint
Appears in 2 Nutevio collections
Keep reading
From the magazine
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and fantasy
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Dwayne Johnson
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Rena Owen
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Frankie Adams
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Jemaine Clement
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
Which John Tui performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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