Apparently, the reason Sleeping Beauty is not named Princess Aurora is because of copyright with Disney. But the makers of the tie-in video game still named the Puppet Master Stromboli even though THAT name also belongs to Disney. So why didn’t the game makers name Sleeping Beauty Aurora in the game?
Since Doris in this film is on the heroes’ side, is she based on the nicer stepsister from the original Cinderella fairytale?
Probably
The girl in the red hooded cloak who was seen at the Poison Apple and later seen stealing money from a dwarf, is she Little Red Riding Hood from the fairytale of the same name or the Little Robber Girl from the Snow Queen? Because the Shrek Wiki identifies her as the former while people on YouTube think she’s the latter. Or is she based on BOTH?
Because Snow White is vain and boasts about being the fairest in the land in this film, what if someone surpasses her as the fairest? Would she be no better than the Evil Queen?
Perhaps. The original Evil Queen became evil because Snow White replaced her as the fairest in the land.
Well, this troper thinks that Rose Red (Snow White’s sister in Snow-White and Rose-Red) might surpass her as the fairest and Snow might get rid of her using questionable means.
When Donkey and Puss swap bodies, why do they still talk with their original bodies' voices? They have the other's vocal chords now.
It also means the filmmakers didn’t need to worry about Antonio Banderas having to learn to act like Donkey and Eddie Murphy having to learn to act like Puss for half the movie. It’s probably a lot easier for everyone involved if their voices just switch with the rest of them.
The scene where Shrek and Artie are having a heart to heart chat and discussing their bad childhood experiences is the first and last time we ever hear of anyone from Shrek's family. So what exactly happened to Shrek's parents?
Well, the clue is in that scene itself. Shrek's father tried to eat him. In examples of nature where this happens with animals (like the mako shark, for instance) the offspring perceives its parent as a threat and distances itself from them immediately, so that's probably what Shrek did. Ogres in Shrek's universe appear to be loners by nature, so it seems that there was never any room for a family dynamic in the way he was raised.
The musical also states that ogres have to leave their homes to find their own place when they're still young, and Shrek got kicked out of his original home by his parents for this reason. Maybe they're still alive.
Prince Charming demands that Pinocchio tell him where Shrek is, knowing that he would be unable to lie, therefore Pinocchio answers in Confusing Multiple Negatives. But, wouldn't it have been easier for Pinocchio to say that he could simply refuse to give Shrek's location away, which would not at all be a lie?
Because then Charming would torture him until he spilled the beans.
Shrek, Artie, Donkey, and Puss all wake up in Merlin's camp and have to fight these pirates and evil trees who end up capturing Artie, Puss, and Donkey in a net, leaving Shrek heavily outnumbered to fight the rest of the pirates and evil trees. But then Shrek flips over Hook's cannon so that it breaks his piano, which makes all of the villains run away. Why would they do that? The cannon shot missed Hook, so they still had their leader, and for Shrek to use the cannon again he would have needed another cannonball, a new fuse, more black powder, and something to light it with. Why didn't the pirates and evil trees just keep on fighting Shrek?
The cannon was how they were going to get rid of Shrek; they didn't have the strength to kill him otherwise.
First, Hook explicitly said that they weren't going to kill Shrek, they were just going to kill his friends and capture him. Second, if the cannon was actually meant for Shrek, then they should've aimed at him, and not his friends.
Shrek simply fought well enough to scare the minions into a retreat and Hook got stuck to a retreating tree.
It's probably part of a joke. Like because the piano's destroyed, they have no chance of winning - as if the piano was the deciding factor in the fight. Or maybe the pirates didn't want to fight without music.
Hook stated his dream was to become a concert pianist.
He did not. He says that he makes a hobby out of growing daffodils.
They got scared that piano got destroyed and the cannonball nearly killed Hook (at least that's how I interpret this scene).
Why couldn't The Queen have been ruler after her husband died? Some law that there MUST be a king at all times?
Fairy Land, it requires a king. It's almost a rule, or the Queen has to be uncanny evil.
There have been male-only monarchies in real life.
When you think about it, it's quite logical. Lillian must be about the same age as Harold, so she couldn't be that far off from death herself. And after her, who would rule? It's not like she could have any more children. So counting out Arthur, Shrek and Fiona would have to take over anyway. So why not just hand the crown straight to them?
Given that this movie takes place in The Middle Ages, it would make sense.
Why is it that Lil' Red had to become a villain just because the Big Bad Wolf turned good?
Didn't you know? After Alice, Red Riding Hood is the most popular female character subject to Grimmification. Point in fact, American McGee's planning a game around her.
Also if we consider Shrek 2 the game as canon, then Little Red is a goody by virtue of being a playable character.
Who says she's a villain? Granted I've missed the first half of the Fourth movie and most of the mini-movies but the only 'villainous' thing I can remember her doing is picking a pocket in the Third. But that was after the villains took over and the whole kingdom went to crap.
What does the state of the kingdom have to do with anything? If you steal from someone, you're a bad person. Whether everyone else is looting and rioting has nothing to do with it.
If you live in misery and have to choose between starving (or allowing your family to starve) and stealing, then most of us would steal. This doesn't have to do with Little Red's case really, as the scene was obviously just added as a joke, but really, it isn't as simple as "you steal, you are a bad person".
She could be Little Robber Girl from the Snow Queen.
What exactly happened to Eclair, the red dronkey? She appeared all the time in merchandise but hasn't appeared outside of her first appearance.
Either Brother Chucked, added only for merchandise, or the writers forgot about her.
The boy becomes the king, to no one's surprise. Presumably, this means that he also wins his crush Guinevere's hand. So if the whole "King Arthur" bit of Arthurian myth is played straight, isn't Guinevere eventually going to have an affair with Lancelot - who, in this canon, is the guy who used to beat up her husband?
Considering that nothing about Arthur growing up or how he became king within Shrek world has had anything to do with Arthurian legend canon, I don't see why anything that happens afterwards would be the same either. Arthurian legends (the original) does not take place in a fairy tale world full of cartoon characters. So if nothing about his origins has been accurate to Arthur's origins in the legends, why would the eventual outcome follow it either? Nothing in Shrek is accurate, nor is it meant to be accurate. It just takes the basic character concepts from other stories and places them in an entirely different world doing entirely different things. Realize: he didn't even become king of Camelot, he became king of "far far away" which is a fairy tale parody of Hollywood
Not really. The characters are based off of fairy tales but do not always have the same endings. Charming didn't marry the princess, Pinocchio is still a puppet, and I don't remember Arthur ever pulling a sword out of a stone.
Who was running Far, Far Away while Shrek was out looking for Artie? And why couldn't he just send for a royal escort to retrieve him from school instead of having to journey there himself?
Fiona was.
And about the escorts?
Shrek wanted a good break from the royal lifestyle, and so volunteered to venture out. And of course, the trip was ruined for him by Fiona announcing her pregnancy just as he left.
After Charming and the villains take over Far Far Away, he seems to get recognition as "king" pretty fast. Sure Shrek was gone, and Fiona and her mother were hiding in the secret passageways under the castle, but the citizens and noble subjects DO ultimately serve Charming KNOWING he's not the rightful king. When Shrek returns, the guards try to kill him, despite him being the DEAD HAROLD'S HEIR! Charming has Fiona and her mother arrested, and nobody tries to defy him. Charming has the whole Kingdom attend a stage show where he's gonna kill Shrek and even though some peasants are intimidated, they attend anyway. How come NOBODY is trying to rebel against the obvious usurping King, even when he's threatening the rightful King?
Charming has an evil army at his beck and call. Everyone else's probably too afraid to mess with a cyclops, evil trees, witches, and pirates just to name a few.
Shouldn't Far Far Away's most elite law enforcement's take care of them though? If invaders wreak havoc on your city, your first instinct is to call the police/military. That's what Knights are for in medieval times. But even THESE knights serve Charming all of a sudden. Even if we assumed most knights got defeated by the fairytale villains and the survivors succumbed to Charming's conquest. You'd think some of them would be loyal enough to Lillian and her family enough to protest against Charming's claim to the throne upon realizing that they were alive.
Stuff that happened off screen maybe.
Why does everyone hate Artie at Worcestershire Academy? Nothing in the film clarifies anything about it let alone justify his apparent 0% approval rating. One would assume at first glance, a teenager like Artie would fit more in the average zone of whatever pecking order could exist within school grounds, not be so immensely unpopular that he would even get bullied by nerds.
Part of it is probably just due to the slightly jaded and cynical world these films take place in, but I personally have had classmates in school that were scrawny, didn't show much interest in clubs or extracurricular activities, and had troubled home lives. Sadly, those kids get picked on. Granted, not everyone did take part in humiliating them and then laughing over it, either - the number of students in the auditorium probably doesn't account for the school's entire student body
It might have something to do with him coming from a royal background. The school is possibly anti-monarchy, and when he announced that he's part of the royal line, the school turned on him and bullied him for it.
They probably never knew. They didn't take Shrek's proclamation seriously, after all.
Artie seems to be avoidant and to prefer being alone from what little we see of him early on. It is a fact of life that quiet, shy kids who don't mess with anyone are often targeted by bullies because quite simply they aren't perceived as a threat and so are basically a safe target.
Why were Donkey and Puss at Harold's deathbed? Harold had no significant interaction with Donkey and his main interaction with Puss was hiring him to kill Shrek. They may be friends with Shrek and Fiona, but why would they be allowed at a private moment?
Donkey did help Shrek rescue Fiona from the dragon in the first movie, and he and Puss both contributed to stopping the Fairy Godmother's "Make Fiona love Charming" plan in the second movie, both of which Harold would've been on board with. That seems enough for him to grant them whatever special status might be necessary.
There has been a time jump, perhaps they've gotten to know each other in the interim.
This film seems to suggest that Pinocchio can never lie without giving himself away (by his nose growing). But lying to protect someone could actually a good thing since you're trying to help them by doing it, and his nose growing is supposed to be a punishment for lying. (As lying is wrong most of the time.) So it seems crazy that his nose would grow if he claimed he didn't know where Shrek was when Prince Charming asks him.
Because the Shrek franchise is supposed to be a satirical take on fairy tale characters, tropes, and conventions, Pinocchio's nose doesn't have to take into account the reasoning or moral justification behind his lies even if other works say that it should or does. In this universe, it's just an indicator of whether or not he is lying, not a punishment for attempting to wrongly do so.
Related to that, how does Pinocchio know Shrek will fall for Prince Charming's tricks (since his nose grows when he tells him he won't)? Does he know how dumb Shrek is or something?
Could be that his nose is prophetic and is capable of deducing future events, or that it considers what Pinocchio says a lie if he doesn't actually believe what he's saying — such as there being any hope of Shrek and Artie avoiding Charming's trap even if it was possible for them to have done so.
I always assumed it was just Pinocchio having secret doubts about Shrek. That is, Pinocchio believes Shrek might fall for Charming's tricks but lied about it.
The statement may be considered a lie as it's implying that it's an objective fact that Shrek will never fall for Charming's tricks under any circumstances, which is something that he probably knows could happen under the right circumstances, thus his statement would be considered false.
How the heck did Charming end up as a destitute stage actor between the end of Shrek 2 and the beginning of this film? It was established that his mother, the Fairy Godmother, had amassed quite the personal fortune from her work, and had that potions factory as her business seen in the previous movie. So what happened to them? Why didn't Charming take over the factory following his mother's death, and what happened to their personal fortune?
Charming must have been bad with money.
It may be that the factory disappeared after the Fairy Godmother's death, as often happens in fantasy (when the witch, evil wizard or whatever dies, their spells and creations tend to crumble shortly after). Or it may be that the King and Queen punished Charming for his involvement with the plot by stripping him of his fortune. Or maybe even the elves who worked for the Fairy Godmother refused to work for the childish, spoiled, egotist Charming (they were already unhappy working under his mother anyway), leaving no one to work the factory. It wouldn't have been easy for Charming to find new workers considering the whole kingdom despised him.
Why is Puss still a part of Shrek's team in this film? He repaired his life debt at the end of Shrek 2 (even said so himself during "Holding Out for a Hero". Yeah I can buy Puss would still be friends with Shrek and Donkey but Puss already had a successful job as a mercenary. So why is he still calling Shrek "boss" hanging out at the castle, and joining him on the quest for Artie. Shouldn't Puss be focused on doing hired hits?
Puss was doing hits for money. By becoming part of Shrek and Fiona's close circle he basically became royalty by extension, living at the palace and having everything he wanted. Why would he want to go back?
What does “Royalty by Extension” mean?
In the first film, Shrek mentions to Donkey that he would be dead if he smelled one of his farts. This is perfectly shown at the beginning when Shrek farts while bathing and a fish behind him dies because of it so it wasn't just Shrek being hyperbolic. However, at the end of the film, during the sequence in which Shrek and Fiona along with their family and friends take care of their newborn triplets, one of the baby ogres farts in front of one the Dronkeys after said Dronkey burps fire and that combination lights the chimney. Shouldn't the little ogre's fart have killed the Dronkey?
Either baby ogres flatulence is less lethal than that of an adult, or dronkeys are more resistance to such strong smells since the ability to exhale fire would clearly give them a stronger respitory system. Or maybe both?
How is Charming even running around free at the start of the movie? Did people forget that he played a none-too-small part in his mother's plans? Shouldn't he have been arrested, or at least banished from Far Far Away?
