Shrek 5 Already Fails on All Fronts (Especially Compared to Puss in Boots)
The franchise is about to expand, but not in the way the fans wanted.
It seems that the success of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has breathed new life into the entire Shrek franchise.
The sequel to a Shrek spin-off from DreamWorks Animation came out of nowhere to become a surprise hit after its release on December 21, 2022.
It managed to surpass the moderately positive reviews of its 2011 predecessor, scoring an astounding 95 and 94% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and audiences respectively, and became a box office success.
Described as smart, sweet and funny, the computer-animated film was also praised for its visual style and characters, with its main antagonist, Wolf, becoming a pop culture phenomenon on the Internet.
And now the CEO and founder of Illumination, which is a creative partner of DreamWorks, Chris Meledandri, has expressed his desire to continue the fairytale franchise with... Shrek 5.
He also wants the cast of the original films to reprise their roles.
"It's not that dissimilar to the process that we went through with 'Mario,' where you look at what the core elements are that audiences have loved, and you do your very best to honor those core elements.
And then you're hard at work to build story elements and new characters that take you to brand new places. The original cast is a huge part of that," Meledandri said in an interview with Variety.
He then pointed out that although no deals have been made, negotiations are going well.
However, fans are not too optimistic about this turn of events. According to them, The Last Wish was a breath of fresh air compared to the extremely underwhelming Shrek 3 and 4.
Going back to the hackneyed story of the titular ogre and his family could end up being a very bad choice, as fans feel the iconic ogre has already told everything he could.
"Wow, I can't wait for Shrek to be bored and tired of his domestic life/ responsibilities again, so he goes on an adventure to alleviate himself only for him to realize family is all that matters again," Reddit user perrilloux said.
They say it would have been much better if the studio had taken notes from the last Puss movie instead of making sequels that no one asked for.
And the Donkey spin-off that Meledandri also mentioned is not a good idea either, according to fans, as the character would be absolutely "unbearable" in a feature-length movie.
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Huh, we wonder why fans think so little of Donkey...