1/30/2024 0 Comments Shrek pictures![]() ![]() “I grew up with the Disney movies Shrek was having a go at, so I was ready to see them lampooned. “I was nine when Shrek came out, which was a good age, because I liked fart jokes, but was also pop culturally savvy enough to get a lot of the more adult jokes,” says Summers. But it wasn’t just Katzenberg who was ready to rip into Disney. “It doesn’t take much to read into the surface-level of parody,” says 28-year-old academic and self-determined “world-leading Shrekspert” Sam Summers, referring to the speculation that Shrek’s pint-sized antagonist Lord Farquaad was a dig at Eisner. Shrek was released by DreamWorks, a company co-founded by former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had left the company in the mid-90s in something of a strop, after CEO Michael Eisner – a long-time friend of Katzenberg and, more importantly, his boss – failed to promote him following the death of the company’s president, Frank Wells. And perhaps the peevishness and underdogism of this inverted fairytale has something to do with its origins. The ultimate “mood” for an era in which the nihilism and the carefree optimism of the previous decade no longer applied. Shrek rapidly became the poster-beast of 21st century fatigue. He’s kind of a grouch – there’s something quite relatable in that.” The vibe he gives off is ‘CBA’, and he just wants to be left alone. “In Pixar films, the hero is usually likeable or stupid or excitable,” says Cook. Instead, this “anti-fairytale” takes place in a sordid universe – a literal swamp – and is led by an unsociable and gassy protagonist. Arriving at the tail-end of Disney’s 1990s heyday, this brash computer-animated comedy – starring Mike Myers as a Scottish ogre who’s constantly beset by misfit mythical creatures – was about as far from the childlike worlds of Beauty and the Beast or Toy Story as you could get. It’s been 20 years since the smash hit first premiered at Cannes Film Festival (!) and won the first ever Oscar for Best Animated Feature (!!), beating Toy Story (!!!) in the process. “Like, wouldn’t it be funny if you were really into Shrek? And you did that for a decade?” “The whole idea of being a Shrek mega-fan is a joke, right?” Cook continues. ![]()
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