Shrek The Turd - Page 2

It's a thin story to begin with, but then the whole second act is them wandering through sunflowers, having an encounter with Robin Hood that has absolutely nothing to do with the story, and then features an unbelievably contrived misunderstanding to force a conflict. "I turn into an ogre at night! Therefore, the ogre I'm falling in love with will hate me! Now, let me phrase that in the most awkward way possible so that Shrek will overhear me and think I'm insulting him!"

Except that Shrek 2 beat Pixar's highest grossing film by over $100 million, so that statement's a little ill-sighted.

It's not a thin story at all. Everything proceeds as a normal flow to the opening act. A hero, a sidekick, a quest, and a twist. An ironic take on the hero's journey. And the misunderstanding works fine, since the moral is all about 'you are who you are on the inside', the characters have to learn precisely that the hard way, and it sets up the final act and feelgood ending.

Sarah Michelle Gellar actually looks hot for once.

How does having Robin Hood swoop in and Fiona engage him in bullet time combat accomplish anything but kill a few minutes of screentime? Seriously, after they rescue Fiona, the only significant thing that happens is: Shrek and Fiona start to fall in love, there's a misunderstanding due to Fiona hiding the nature of her curse, and things get resolved when the characters are actually honest with each other and talk things out. There's literally nothing else. Even Lord Farquaad hardly does anything. It's a ten minute story, stretched out to feature length with random incidents. Hence my complaint that the story is thin.

The misunderstanding makes no sense. She's concerned Shrek will hate her because she's an ogre. How the fuck does that work? "He'll hate me now that I'm the same species as him!" The writers have to carefully construct a scenario where everyone misinterprets everything just so, and Fiona is an idiot besides.

And at this point, the hero's journey is a tool for very lazy and unimaginative screenwriters, so bringing it up doesn't really help your case.

I meant, Pixar films make money compared to the old "princess" Disney 2D films, not compared to Dreamworks. My point is that Dreamworks made several attempts to cash in on Disney's fairy tale flicks, found they couldn't make money with that genre, and turned around and "boldly" made fun of it. I always found that a little hypocritical.

What classic fairy tale isn't? If you read any of the Grimm's stories (based on European folktales), they're all about 2 pages long. It's amazing that Disney has been able to make feature length versions of some of these stories (doing it since 1939). Actually, Disney manages to do it by taking the ultra-short tale and padding it with an hour of filler (musical numbers, hijinks with animal sidekicks, etc.). Sometimes it's there to aid the story/characters, other times it's to sell toys. And mostly it's to stretch the short tale into movie-length.

It really sounds like I'm defending Shrek, but you have to look at what Shrek is lampooning and it follows the genre pretty well. It just takes the Zucker Bros. direction with its non-sequitur instead of cloning Disney precisely. Sure it's possible to do it without all the pop-culture references (Airplane has aged much better than Scary Movie 4 ever will), but the "Princess Cartoon" genre is notorious for being packed with FLUFF. Sure it's cute to see the mice in Cinderella help her out (make a dress, get turned into horses), but there's a good 1/2 hour devoted to just them tormenting/escaping that cat. I don't remember any part of the classic written story resembling Tom&Jerry-ish escapades.

And the hypothesis in my original post has some evidence right here.

How does having a squadron of TIE Fighters swoop in and Luke and Han engage them with laser cannons accomplish anything but kill a few minutes of screentime? You could easily take any film and cut out scenes that don't directly move the narrative forward and make the thing about 45 minutes long, but why would you? The Fiona/Robin Hood fight was a funny bit that also showed that Fiona was strong in her own right.

And I liked how the first Shrek didn't go the Beauty and the Beast route (preaching how it's what's inside that matters but then having the Beast turn into your generic handsome prince) and how the second film pushed that even further away (they both have the chance to live as beautiful people but choose to be themselves instead).

First Shrek was funny,Second was not very good,and I agree the hatred for these films is just out of hand.
I think the huge sucess is why they are hated.
That said,the third looks lousy.

Come on, man, can you seriously not see the difference? The assault on the Death Star is what the entire movie was building to. I suppose it could have been shorter, but you can't argue that it's not a major part of the story, and since it's the climax, it makes perfect sense to build it up into an elaborate action sequence. We're watching characters we supposedly care about achieve a goal which has been set up throughout the movie.

In Shrek, it's "while wandering around, Shrek and co. get attacked by [something]". It's literally like one of those cheesy fantasy movies from the mid-80s where the characters had a bunch of episodic, random encounters in between the setup and the climax, just funnier. Robin Hood wasn't part of the story before he appears, and he's not part of the story afterwards. The Riverdance shit and the bullet time are just further examples of how desperate the filmmakers were at this point.

Ironically, if they'd woven in a few more characters like that, Robin Hood wouldn't have seemed so out of place. The problem is that it's stuck in a part of the movie where the filmmakers have apparently run out of ideas for the plot. There's nothing else happening to them except their wacky romantic misunderstanding and the arrival of Farquaad, who, again, doesn't really do anything except lead Fiona off (voluntarily!) The strain is really showing at that point. There's no urgency to anything.

Here, completely off the top of my head, are some suggestions for stuff that could have happened in the second act: the dragon chases them from the castle and hounds them throughout the countryside. They decide to escape from Lord Farquaad into a neighbouring kingdom. They do something related to Fiona's curse. Maybe she has a fairy godmother. They go visit her and she gives them the prophecy crap. That's a way more organic way of presenting the plot than the exposition they deliver in the movie. I literally just came up with that in two seconds. Have something related to the overall plot happen!

That's exactly why it bothers me. You have the seed of a good movie, and its heart is in the right place.

The two aren't easily comparable, but the Robin Hood sequence is both funny (which is important in it's own right, giving the audience a laugh beat) and informative as to Fiona's independant spirit. Throughout the second half of the film, that spirit is fighting against the 'normal way of things - in that the princess must marry the prince, and the human Fiona is the 'normal' Fiona.


Oh man, the riverdance and bullet time together take about 5 seconds of screentime, and are both as funny as hell. You might as well complain about the puppet-animated shot at Disneyland earlier on. The thing I like about Shrek is that the characters aren't just wandering around, they're specifically travelling from one place to another, for very specific reasons. The encounter with Robin Hood is part of the story of Fiona changing as a person, just as yanking the arrow is part of Fiona's and Shrek's relaitionship.


It's a sad part of the movie, so it dwells on that sadness, contrasting the two sad characters while the song plays. Shrek needs to be alone again to realise he doesn't want to be alone, and Fiona needs to be in the palace with the prince to realise she doesn't actually want that. The urgency is brought back quite well by Donkey into the final sequence.

I was actually refering to the TIE Fighter attack as they escape the Death Star with the princess.

I don't think story is really the problem. Many of the characters are annoying, and the humor rarely works. These films have little heart compared to their Pixar counterparts, and feel very commercial.

But that makes sense too--they just escaped the Death Star, of course they're going to be pursued.

Look, my point about the Robin Hood sequence is that it feels incredibly random. It's not something that is set up properly or has any bearing on the larger story. Robin Hood's not even a fairy tale character, for crying out loud. It wouldn't be so bad in and of itself, but to me it highlights how little is going on at that point in the story.

But isn't that the absolute bare minimum that has to happen for there to be a plot at all? What movie doesn't have that? The characters are HERE and they need to get THERE. The point is that there's no urgency or any "off-screen movie" (to use a term coined by the film's writers themselves). Nothing is happening that isn't right there in front of us. Very little is at stake. The only thing keeping the movie going at that point are the gags, which just didn't work for me.

Nevermind the whole bit about having to deliver Fiona to Farquad and Shrek and Fiona falling in love on the way, they're just walking....

To use another writer term, it's called the "Quest" Plot. As far as the "off-screen" movie, there aren't many kid's flicks that get that complex. To follow a storyline and connect the dots, kids usually need to see what's going on. Kids aren't dumb, but that isn't a common device used in their entertainment.

Not every kid's movie can be Pixar. Pixar raised the bar so high that everyone will fail in comparison.

Yes, that's the objective. But what's at stake? Shrek's hut? Whoop.

The happiness of the two characters the audience has become invested in up to this point?

They're falling for each other, Farquaad or no, and even the writers seem to have realized that "Do I hook up with this girl, or SAVE MY HUT?!?" is a hella lame choice on which to hang the plot. So they come up with an incredibly contrived misunderstanding so there can be a (tiny) bit of drama. And that's it--that's the only dramatic tension at that point. Farquaad is a completely ineffectual villain, so it's hard to imagine Shrek and Fiona would be in trouble if they just ran off together. The only thing standing between them, as I say, is an incredibly hackneyed misunderstanding that would have insulted me even when I was 6.

That's not it at all. They're falling for each other, and that scares both of them for different reasons. (Fiona because she thinks ugly=ogre=herself, Shrek because he's used to everyone hating and fearing him.) And because of that, the misunderstanding provides a welcome relief and escape from the scary option of being in love. Which then gives both of them time to think about it.

I get it. I just think that's a pretty thin story to fill half the movie, when there's nothing else at stake.

It sounds like a romantic-comedy genre plot in fairy tale dress. Simple doesn't mean bad necessarily. Arguing that the pop-culture references aren't your bag, is one thing... Trying to criticize a kid's silly fairy tale for not being complicated enough just sounds like a personal hangup, not a fault with the movie. Again, I'll ask you to read the entire Bros. Grimm and try and locate a story that's more than 4-5 pages long. Not only are they exceedingly simple, but often times nonsensical and non-sequitur...

I like the dynamic between the ugly cursed princess and the billigerent hermit ogre and I think the 3's Company moment works fine. The story isn't as rich as a Pixar flick, but I think the true villain in Shrek is the stubborn feelings/discrimination of the 2 leads. Shrek & Fiona have huge hangups and hurdles to get over (much like in any rom-com) before they can live happily ever after. Farquaad is just a catalyst.

I'm not sure why people are arguing over the plots of these films. Good or bad, they only serve to provide joke opportunities.