The first film (and none of the others) had Roger S.H. Schulman as co-writer, who had co-created the "ALFTales" Saturday-morning series, that was the hilariously hip-referenced fairytale parody that Shrek 1 wanted to be, without the hostility-issues ex-Disney-employee bile.Ben wrote:As much as I've liked the Shreks, I've kind of not "liked" them either. They make me laugh, but it took me ages to finally find the first one entertaining (it seemed just like a lot of shouting to me, and it was only in repeat viewings that I knew what was coming and switch off and on to the good stuff), while the second one was almost genius.
I think possibly it should have ended there: two perfectly fine films that said what they needed to say and got JK's Disney funk out of him (even if Shrek ended up being the very thing it wanted to poke a stick at).
(The "Dating game" magic-mirror scene, for one, plays so exactly with the deadpan comic rhythm of a classic ALFTales cartoon from '88, you can almost hear the character voices.)
After that, Katz basically realized that only the future Frozen-girl feminists were the one who responded to all the anti-princess jokes, and pitched Shrek 2 and onwards to the chick audience who didn't mind a little immature gender-card schoolyard "Disney corrupts our free daughters!" meanness once in a while....Doted on it, in fact.
Once the series believed it had a "message", it careened downhill fast.
, but honestly, even though I guess it still sort of exists within the framework of Universal, I’ve lost interest in DWA since JK left with the acquisition. It’s not DreamWorks anymore and never will be. From what Ben has said, it definitely seems like the powers that be want to maintain some connection to the Shrek of old, but with the very likely lack of a true creative vision and the undeniably tired extension of a 20-year franchise that’s still somehow wheezing along. Regardless of how amazing three out of its four films were, I’m so not tuned into this.