Shrek/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

* The second contract Shrek sign and use to free the other ogres is supposed to be "The Deal of Your Life", and thus implied to be a really "you got what you really want and nothing else, no unwanted consequences" kind of contract. Two things:

** Why Rumple would create something like that is mind screwind, especially since he establish himself as quite the trickster. I mean, such a contract has a huge probability of litteraly blowing up in his face. What if random peasant #123 did capture Shrek and was like "Dude, what I want is your kingdom and all your contracts."?

*** Because Shrek would then be no better than Rumplestiltskin. Sinking to the villain's level is something that the hero doesn't do, and even though Shrek can be quite amoral at times, he's still the hero in a family film, and I can't see him willingly erasing the guy from existence.

*** From an in universe perspective, it's also psychological for Shrek. At that point, he knew with certainty that Fiona wanted no part in him, so he wanted to win her back. Granted this is an alternate universe version of Fiona who shouldn't be expected to love him, but you can chalk it up to pride. Or love in that Shrek loves Fiona no matter what universe she's from and wants her to love him back. And the only way to get that was to do something selfless.

* In Shrek Forever After, the biggest problem is WHY DOES NO-ONE READ THE CONTRACT BEFORE SIGNING IT?! Seriously, Fiona's parents, Shrek - there's a lot of um-ing and ah-ing over whether they should do it, but none of them ever check to see exactly what they're getting themselves into, or, if they do, rely entirely on Rumplestiltskin telling them the truth.

** [[Truth in Television]].

*** also shrek was to drunk to care about little things like ''reading the contract'' and what not

* In Shrek 4, I was always bugged by the conga line initiated on the ogres by the Pied Piper. All of the ogres were defeated, but Puss and Donkey (who had tagged along) were clearly not affected by it, and they could still move of their own free will. Plus, they had a cart. So why didn't they make an attempt to distract the Pied Piper instead of going for Shrek and Fiona as they ended up doing? They likely could have rammed the Piper in an attempt to distract him, and if it was successful it could have caused him to stop playing long enough for at least one ogre to separate the piper from his tool of the trade. Take prisoner, destroy tool of craft, boom, battle over.

* Okay, going back to the first film. I never got exactly was going on with Farquaad. I know in a satire a villain's motives can be two-dimensional, but I didn't get what was the ultimate goal. He tells Gingerbread Man that the fairy tale characters are a threat to his "perfect kingdom". No rationalization on that one. Everything is imperfect, but Farquaad picks on the fairy tale characters for some reason. So then we see scenes of fairy tale characters led off in chains, likely to prison camps and such. At least one character (Mama Bear) is put to death. Okay, it makes sense up until this point. Then we see that dozens of fairy tale folk have taken over Shrek's swamp, including Pinocchio, who was clearly seen being handed over to the guards earlier. (I guess he could have escaped during Donkey's distraction, but they could have mentioned that at some point) The pigs say that Farquaad was ''evicting'' them, which contradicts what we've seen up to this point. So Shrek goes to Duloch to complain. He tells Farquaad that his swamp is full of fairy tale folk, and Farquaad wears a pleased smile and says "Is it?" This ''should'' be an indication that Shrek has unwittingly betrayed them to certain doom, but nothing comes of this. After Shrek returns his swamp is cleared out and the fairy tale folk aren't seen until the wedding at the end, where they happily celebrate their best friend Shrek, who, um, betrayed their hideout (or refugee camp, or whatever) to an evil dictator and then was only indirectly involved in said dictator's death. Was there some stuff cut out of the movie, or am I missing something?

** I just assumed that Farquad put them in Shrek's swamp because he knows an Ogre lived there and assumed Shrek would eat them all.

** Gonna try and answer the original question here- 'Why Farquaad picks on the fairy-tale creatures?/What does he mean by perfect world?'- I'm of the opinion that he's pretty speciest and to go one step farther in the 'why' department, something of an adherent to order. Humans follow natural, physical laws and can be governed pretty tidily (in fairy tales, anyway). [[Du Loc]] is highly ordered- everything is regular, clean, and the introduction song at the info booth is all about how in [[Du Loc]], you follow the rules. Creatures from fairy tales break natural rules. Animals talk, various and sundry things fly (donkeys, fairies, little boys), you have magic and witchcraft, and that's not going into accounting for all the different cultures of these different species. Human mindsets and customs make sense to Farquaad and he can impose order on people who, on a sheer biological/general cultural level, thinks like he does. He can't necessarily make a unicorn or ogre or witch follow his rules, he interprets that as a threat to his bastion of order, and so he goes on a crusade to get rid of the beings that threaten his way of life. Alternatively/in conjunction with that, he sees other creatures as subhuman, and when 'subhumans' get uppity about silly little things like 'equal rights' and whatnot, trouble always happens... *cough*

** They were all on Shrek's swamp because Farquad dumped them there. When he says, "Is that so?" it doesn't mean he didn't know about it. Shrek is treated as a hero because all of the fairytale creatures were at the swamp under Farquad's orders when they didn't want to be. By rescuing Fiona, Shrek freed them from the swamp. I don't know where they went afterwards.