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Celebrating its 15th anniversary today is the beloved, not-so-perfect fairy tale (and my personal choice for best movie of all-time), Shrek.
2001’s Academy Award winning Best Animated Feature tells the tale of Shrek (Mike Myers), a swamp Ogre with bad attitude who must learn to peel back his layers in order to save Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from the evil and stout Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow). Reluctantly bringing along a talking Donkey (Eddie Murphy) as a companion, Shrek learns that everyone deserves a happily ever after, even him. This film is as funny as it is heartwarming, creating a look into the real world of the fairy tale characters we’ve read about in children’s books.
One of the top 15 most popular animated features of all-time, Shrek will still make you believe a decade and a half later. Go ahead and make some waffles to celebrate, dust off that old VHS (does anyone else remember how the videotape was green?!) or stream it. Below are ten fun facts you may or may not have known about the 2001 fantasy comedy.
There are thirty-six unique locations throughout the film.
Dreamworks Animation created thirty-six locations in the world of Shrek. At the time this was more than any other computer-animated film. You have Shrek’s swap, Dragon’s Keep, Lord Farquaad’s Duloc and many more unique places that brought the world of Shrek to life.
Smash Mouth's "All Star" wasn't intended to be the opening theme song.
Can you imagine a Shrek without it’s iconic opening theme song? Neither can we but Smash Mouth’s “All Star” was only placed in the film for test audiences until they found a new song to replace it. Test audiences loved it so much that it got to stay and the creators let the band sing the last song of the movie, “I’m a Believer.”
Chris Farley was originally cast to voice Shrek.
Mike Meyers’ Saturday Night Live co-star was cast as the original voice of the grumpy swamp Ogre, recording most of his dialogue before his untimely death in 1997. Meyers was recast as for the voice of Shrek shortly after. In August 2015, a story reel of some of Farley’s recorded dialogue was released.
The name "Shrek" isn't just a nonsense word.
The name Shrek doesn’t just come from anywhere. In Yiddish “Shrek” means “monster” and is derived from the German word “Schreck,” which means “terror” or “fright”. Given his name we do learn that Shrek is more than meets the eye.
The film saved Dreamworks Animation.
Producer Jeffrey Katzenberg gave an interview in 2007 where he said Shrek not only saved Dreamworks financially, but also gave their animation an image. This established them as a strong competitor to Disney’s Pixar and allowed them to make the Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda franchises.
Some say the film takes a lot of jabs at Disney.
Shrek is undeniably a parody of fairy tales, but many accuse it of taking direct jabs at Disney, which just so happens to be producer Jeffrey Katzenberg’s former employer. You can see just in the trailer how many Disney references pop up. Dreamworks and Disney’s legal team had to screen the film before release to make sure nothing was too close the Disney representations.
In 2001, 'Shrek' took home the very first Best Animated Feature Award at the Oscars.
Animated features had been nominated for Oscars before, but in 2001 The Academy introduced a separate category to honor these films. Up against Monsters Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius producer Aron Warner took home the first Oscar in this category for Shrek.
Mike Myers cost the studio about $5 Million because of an accent change.
Mike Myers initially felt a slight Canadian accent would best suit the voice of Shrek. After recording about half of his dialogue, Meyers had a change of heart and instead wanted Shrek to have a heavy Scottish accent. The change cost the studio almost $5 million, but compared to what the film made at the box office, it was a small price to pay.
It screened at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
For the first time since 1953, Cannes entered an animated feature into its festival lineup. Shrek was the first film since Disney’s Peter Pan to be screened at the festival. Shrek bears zero resemblance to the types of films that one generally associates with Cannes, but the star wattage proved too much to resist.
Shrek's "onion layers" is an actual communication theory.
All the communication majors out there (there’s a lot of you, we know) should already know this, when Shrek is comparing himself to an onion to explain his complexity to Donkey he is describing a metaphor used in Social Penetration Theory.
Shrek: Ogres are like onions.
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes. No.
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry.
Shrek: No.
Donkey: Oh, you leave em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs.
Shrek: NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
Donkey: Oh, you both have layers. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions.
The theory describes the process of building relationships as you move from shallow to intimate communication. Shrek starts off as a unpeeled onion and pulls back his layers throughout the film to reveal his tender and loving side. As a whole the film serves as a metaphor for not judging a book by it’s cover, or better yet, an onion for its exterior layers.
