Monday, November 10th, 2008...9:46 pm
Shrek the Twenty Fifth: Overkill
I just heard an ad of Shrek 4th the Movie on the radio. Blah de blah. Dreamworks, please steal some creative nerds from Pixar. Pay them some millions of dollars if necessary. You are lost.
I saw the second Shrek. Yes, it was still funny, but there are limits to fairy tales that you can parody without making it stale. The first one was quite fresh because it poked fun on fairy tales and spun all the stereotypes around. The second one was not as fresh but still ok. I didn’t even bother watching the third one. And now they come out with the fourth one?
Take a page out of Pixar. Somehow, they could come up with fresh and cockamamie plots all along. Take a look at the amazing line-up of plots: Nightmare monsters working in a scream-powered energy plant (huh?); A fish trying to find his lost son (wha?); Talking cars (ok didn’t watch this one); Family of superpowers struggling with daily life; A rat who wants to cook (um…).
Dreamworks could only copy. Pixar released A Bug’s Life? Dreamworks released Antz (only a month apart though). Pixar released Finding Nemo? Dreamworks released Shark Tale. And all of the Dreamworks release are choke full of pop-culture reference that will be lost to young kids watching in 20 years. You can watch Finding Nemo 100 years later and it would still be relevant, much like Bambi will. Shark Tale? Its characters are basically caricatures of their voice-actors. They could somehow make a fish act “black,” or “Italian.” blergh.
Just for fun, I checked out Dreamworks and Pixar on wikipedia to make sure I don’t make any weird mistake writing this. And lo and behold, in future movies reference below the page, they are going to have Shrek fifth in 2013! Augh!
To be fair, there are talks of Toy Story 3 now. But then Lasseter had stated that he’s open to sequels as long as they can come up with stories better than the original. He got it right. They should focus on the story to tell, not some amazing techno-gizmo 3D animation to show off. A movie is nothing without a compelling story.
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