"Fat raindrops began sizzling on Shrek's hot knob"

In 2001 there was a lot of buzz about Shrek. When I saw it in theaters I wasn't that impressed. It wasn't terrible, I just didn't think it lived up to the hype. Well the years start coming and they don't stop coming, and now here I am in 2022 and it still seems like there's a lot of buzz about how great Shrek is. Particularly in the form of Shrek memes.

I began wondering, did I miss something here? Why were so many people, still, still, talking up Shrek? Granted it is the flagship property of DreamWorks, but I just didn't get it. I decided to go back and give Shrek another try. And I was going to start with the 1990 book Shrek! that the movie is very loosely based on. I had seen memes of the book online as well.

It seemed hard to believe that such an outrageous book would be adapted for a big budget children's film. And that's because it's not true. These are images from the Shrek! book, but the text has been replaced. Here are the original pages:

The book is about Shrek going out into the world and taking delight in how his appearance and stench terrify everyone around him. He finds a princess as ugly as him and they immediately fall in love. He has laser eyes and breathes fire. The book is pretty weird, the title of this article is a direct quote from it.

Then I started actually watching the movie, checking some fan theories as I went. First there was this one that the story book at the beginning which foreshadows the plot of the film (tells of a princess in a tower waiting to be rescued by a knight) isn't actually Princess Fiona's story, but the dragon's. In this theory the dragon is actually also a transformed princess.

And just... no. A big crux of this one is that the princess in book is blonde while Fiona is a redhead. The dragon is intelligent, which is not unusual for fantasy, but that doesn't make her a princess. When the dragon falls in love with donkey she isn't transformed, and she isn't trapped in the castle--she's able to leave. The person making the book probably just didn't know what Fiona's hair looked like because no one could see her, cause of the dragon.

There's this theory that Shrek hesitates when donkey asks him his name because he doesn't have a name and is just making up "Shrek" on the spot. Also doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Shrek hesitates when Princess Fiona asks him his name too. Later when looking at the stars, Shrek names several orcs, indicating that they generally have names. Shrek just seems a bit shy about saying his name.

Next there's the theory that Donkey is actually one of the boys from Pinocchio who gets transformed into a donkey. All the other characters are from fairytales. Donkey first appears next to Pinocchio.

Except Donkey doesn't indicate that he ever knew Pinocchio before. He never says he used to be human. He's also next to the three little pigs when he first appears, that doesn't mean he's from their story. I have my own theory on Donkey's origin.

Yeah, there's a talking donkey in the book. That's why there's a talking donkey in the movie.

I didn't see it.

Last one: Lord Farquaad and Princess Fiona are married at the end and proclaimed king and queen. Farquaad is then eaten by a dragon. Fiona goes on to marry Shrek. Thus making Shrek king.

This one is possible, but we really don't know anything about the laws of succession in the Duloc. Consider that Charles III is the King of England. If he were to die, his wife Camilla, who holds the title Queen Consort, would not assume the throne nor would anyone she might re-marry. That's just not how succession works in England. The title of King of Duloc might go to some cousin of Farquaad, we don't know what their rules are.

I have my own theory about Duloc. It's largely remembered as a parody of Disney World, with the queue out front and singing puppets that would be at home on the It's a Small World ride. However take a moment to look at the castle.

That doesn't look like a fairytale castle. That's giant piece of brutalist architecture. Shrek suggests Farquaad is compensating for something, but I think it goes deeper than that. Farquaad is basically a fascist, he's a despot who seeks to get rid of all the races he deems inferior. His castle is a kind of a fascist building-- designed to impress upon people the power of the state and to be omni present.

What did I actually think of the movie though? Without expectations set so high, I enjoyed it. I laughed out loud at several points. The story is a bit sappy but the leads have satisfying character arcs: what Shrek wants is to be left alone, what he needs is to let other people get close to him, Fiona wants to be fully human, what she needs is her true love. They both get what they need by giving up what they want. The only part that made me cringe was the Matrix parody. I suppose they couldn't know how cliché spoofing bullet time would be in 2001, but riffing on a sci-fi film in a fantasy film is really out of place.

Shrek had cultural impact. Since it came out parodying Disney has become so popular that Disney does it themselves. I've also seen it claimed that Shrek popularized having a big musical number at the end of a film, but I feel like musicals have been doing that since... musicals existed. In the end though, Shrek was there when we needed him: