Despite having been released 21 years ago now, Shrek has remained in the pop culture zeitgeist, aided by the nostalgia and a variety of memes that have poured forth from the quotable source material. Some of these memes have taken on a life of their own, becoming Dadaistic takes on the film that twist its meaning into something far more nonsensical.
As it turns out, however, the creative direction of DreamWorks' Shrek was a tangled road before becoming the iconic franchise with irreverent takes on fairy tales that it became. Based on a children’s book entitled Shrek!, which was first released in 1990, the story was fairly basic, which left the creative team a lot of leeway to come up with a theatrical-length plot as they saw fit. According to Vice, the film’s production featured two factions that sought to take creative control of the story.
Ruben Hickman, a concept artist who worked on the film, spoke to Motherboard (following the recent viral footage of a very early version of Shrek singing James Brown's “I Feel Good”) and discussed these two factions. Hickman says that initially he met with the new directors of the film and ended up “taken in by the new directors, and they showed me their vision for Shrek. They showed me a lot of Wizard of Oz, and some other things like that.” This Wizard of Oz-inspired art was recently posted to sources such as Reddit, lending credence to Hickman's telling. However, upon meeting with three artists led by Barry Jackson, he was presented with an art direction that was “much more underground comic, edgy, a lot darker. The color scheme was much more experimental. I realized I was in a tug of war immediately.”
Ultimately, the production of the film fell more in line with a toned-down version, mostly because of technological limitations that existed at the time. Hickman expressed satisfaction with how the film turned out, calling it “one of the biggest movies of all time.” The final film itself is not quite dark, with some colorful visuals, but it’s definitely not in line with The Wizard of Oz. Shrek ended up being a parody and satire of children’s films and fairy tales alike, absolutely filled to the brim with pop culture references.
Perhaps other footage and concept art from Shrek's early production cycle is still out there, just waiting to be released. It was in production for a long time before it finally hit movie theaters. Though Mike Myers ended up voicing Shrek with a Scottish brogue, originally, the character was portrayed by the late, great Chris Farley.
The majority of the film’s dialogue had to be re-recorded due to Farley's passing, and then again because of Myers' insistence on a Scottish accent for the character, which further led to alterations to the film. Animation is a long process, and it’s possible that some truly disparate ideas were thrown around during production. Still, it’s a testament to the legacy of Shrek that audiences are still curious about the film’s production two decades on.
Shrek is available to stream on Peacock.
Source: Vice