Project Geekology
Embark on an epic journey with Anthony and Dakota as they delve into the vast realms of geek culture, from cherished classics to cutting-edge creations. Join us for an exhilarating adventure of exploration and nostalgia, as we unearth hidden gems and reminisce about the moments that have shaped us. Welcome to the ultimate celebration of all things geeky!
Project Geekology
Shrek (2001)
Ever wondered how a fabled ogre’s swamp can be the perfect metaphor for personal space? We kick off our 98th episode by reminiscing about the cherished 2001 hit, "Shrek," tapping into its enduring appeal and surprising layers of depth. As we chat about the film’s clever humor and satirical spin on fairytale tropes, we also sprinkle in some personal tidbits—like Anthony's impending trip to Tennessee and Dakota's potential solo adventure on the mic. Anime fans, get ready for a rundown on the intriguing series "Dan Da Dan" and the industry's new trend towards brisker seasons and cinematic adaptations, à la "Demon Slayer."
Our journey continues with a nostalgic look back at our own ambitious Lord of the Rings series and the lessons learned from producing epic-length content. This time, we’re gearing up to tackle the Rings of Power series with a more streamlined approach, ensuring each episode is a digestible chunk of lore. We then rewind to DreamWorks' early animation days, spotlighting "Antz" and the groundbreaking success of "Shrek," which captivated both kids and adults alike. From terrifying initial designs to the magic of "The Prince of Egypt," we celebrate the studio’s significant contributions to the animation landscape.
As we frolic through "Shrek's" forest of clever parody, we highlight how the film playfully pokes fun at Disney’s fairytale realm with its cheeky use of public domain characters and iconic soundtrack choices. The film’s nods to real-world themes, like urban clean-up efforts paralleling Lord Farquaad’s fairy tale eviction plan, offer those hidden layers we all love. In wrapping up, we hint at future topics, including a chat about the underrated gem "Atlantis," ensuring there’s always something exciting on the horizon at Project Geekology.
Welcome to Project Ecology such a perfect podcast. Here we have some rules. Let us lay them down. Don't make waves, stay in line and we'll get along fine. Project Ecology is a perfect podcast. Please keep off the grass, shine your shoes, wipe your face. Project Ecology is a perfect podcast. Guys, thank you for joining us for our 90,. Is it 8th podcast? 98th podcast?
Speaker 2:Yes, we're on 98th.
Speaker 1:My name is Dakota, one half of your host, and I'm joined, as always, with Anthony.
Speaker 2:I have a question. Okay, don't you hate it when you're just trying to live alone in your swamp and then all of a sudden, you got all these podcasts that are trying to encroach on your swamp and you just want to be a podcast all by yourself in your swamp, but now you have this sidekick that won't leave you alone, and then now a whole bunch of other podcasts that will just keep swarming around Like, do you not have that feeling? I mean, what about the listeners? Do they have this feeling? No, well, shrek knows If he had a podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, shrek is unbothered, moisturized, happy in his lane, focused, flourishing. Shrek is unbothered, moisturized, happy in his lane, focused, flourishing. He's good to go in his swamp. That's how I want to approach every day in my personal swamp. You know, I just want to be left alone. Guys, today we're talking Shrek, the movie from I actually don't know. I'm going to guess it's 2001. It just seems like a 2001 movie. Dude, I'm right, 2001. I did not know that. Off the top of my head, I just had that feeling. You know, it feels like a 2001 movie. We're going to be talking all about the early DreamWorks movie. Is it the first DreamWorks movie? I think it might be.
Speaker 1:Is it the early DreamWorks movie. We're going to look this up during the podcast.
Speaker 2:But before we get into any of that that guys, we gotta talk about what we've been up to for the past. Well, it's only been a couple days. For us now usually it's a week. Anthony, what have you been up to this past couple days? Well, I've been prepping for my trip. I have a trip in not I'm not leaving this upcoming Saturday, but the following Saturday I'm going to be going up to Tennessee to be visiting some family. So I'm pretty stoked for that. I think that in that time that I'm kind of like on vacation. Dakota may or may not be I think we're trying to still work out the logistics of that but dakota may or may not be doing a mini sode or some sort of episode that I mean we're gonna work something out.
Speaker 1:We're gonna work something out yes, yes, but yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's mostly what I've been into right now. I mean, I have been watching some anime. Also, I've been watching some newer ones. There's this one called dude like I always like it, it's dan dan, dan and oh, I've heard.
Speaker 2:I've heard good things about it yeah, yeah, it's about like this's about this guy and this girl One can see ghosts and the other one can see the undead, or something like that. If I remember correctly, I've only seen one episode, but it's really interesting. It's kind of crazy, but it is interesting, and I'm looking to watch it a little bit more.
Speaker 1:You're looking forward to watching it more. Okay, cool. I mean, is it going to be like full season length? What's the current projected episode length? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a show, normal show, okay. Because I think they're adapting Izumaki, which is like a horror manga and it's only going to be like four episodes or something like that.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so I mean a lot of anime nowadays aren't really all that long. My hero still does about like 20 something episodes. Demon slayer doesn't really do that many, or they don't do like long seasons, or seasons are like 10 to 13 episodes long. But yeah, there's quite a bit of anime out there that are opting for shorter seasons. I think this last season of demon slayer was like the last full season that they're gonna do and then the rest of it's gonna be broken up into movies. So the last season of demon slayer is the last actual tv show or anime show version of it. We're just gonna be getting movies, so okay.
Speaker 1:So from from now on, we're only getting movies with that right, right, right, literally. Yeah, how do you feel about that?
Speaker 2:I mean as long as they do it well enough. I mean the. When I covered the demon slayer episode with my friend, it was season three that had just finished up, and even even she was saying that the anime was pretty much almost done, that they had like a little bit left over and that was it. So pretty much that last season was gearing up for Last season was like really short. It was like eight episodes, I think. Okay.
Speaker 1:So is it just a matter of they caught up to the manga and that's all?
Speaker 2:they produced. No, the manga's done. Yeah, I think it ended in like 2020 or something like that, right? Yeah, I think it ended in like 2020 or something like that, right, yeah, so it's pretty much going to be like done with. The entire series is about to be done you know.
Speaker 1:So past that point it's just extra material that they've decided. You know, this is really popular thing. We can make money off of this. Let's continue it via movies.
Speaker 2:No, no, no.
Speaker 1:Like these movies are gonna be capping off the the entire series. Oh okay, so there's really not much left. It's just, you know, okay, exactly, you know, I respect that. You know that that's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they're gonna finish that off, but yeah, no, I haven't been doing much since the. You know we last recorded. But how about you? I have you had a lot going on. I know that you had some projects that you were working on. Do you have any updates on those updates?
Speaker 1:on the products that I'm working on, not not, not like crazy updates. I finished reading the lore section of the avatar legends role-playing game core book and now I've jumped into the wanchi tongs library core book where it basically tells about like the history of the wanchitong library in avatar and, oh nice, it gives like five extra adventures for player characters to run through in like five different eras. So I'm excited to like just see if that's of interest I I have learned a little bit of lore stuff from that already. It's only been a couple pages since I've opened it, but that's been cool.
Speaker 1:Going back to like the anime side of things, one Piece fans who are caught up to current day One Piece are kind of grieving this past week because it was announced that the One Piece manga was going on a hiatus which is like the second hiatus this year because it went on a four-week hiatus for the first time in years earlier this year and then now I think it's an indefinite hiatus right now because, like I don't know, maybe the author just needs a break well, I know that the anime they said that it's gonna be, so the anime is gonna be six months on hiatus which is a long time.
Speaker 1:It's probably the longest it's ever been.
Speaker 2:I mean, dude, six months, that's half a year. I know that's a long, I mean, which is fun for me because I still have quite a bit to catch up with. So maybe, dude, maybe I will be able to catch up between now and then and be able to enjoy the show with the rest of the fans, you know.
Speaker 1:The ones that are caught up. What I'll say about that is that even if you haven't started the show, you got six months you can definitely do it, it's. It's not an impossible task, it's right right it's a it's not an easy task either. You have to be dedicated.
Speaker 2:It's a thousand plus episodes exactly, and I'm the kind of person that, like I stop like periodically because there's other things that I want to watch. There's other tv shows dakota and I were talking about, you know, like we want to do episodes on rings of power, so like that's another thing to watch. So imagine, like trying to watch a bunch of one piece while you're trying to, you know, kind of watch and dissect another tv show, while on top of that, you know, it's a little bit harder. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So while I'm not a particular fan of the anime just because I haven't really given it too much of a shot I am a particular fan of the manga. I'm still. I'm looking at my One Piece manga collection right now. It looks like I'm on volume 22. I haven't really read it in the past couple months. I've taken a little break as I've jumped into rereading and reading for the first time a lot of the avatar tie-in material that I've just never gotten around to or I needed to like write notes on for my timeline, so that's been kind of put off to the side. But I'm excited to like jump back in and get a jump start on like catching up on I mean, I'm not gonna catch up reading. I still got like what 90 volumes to get up to before I need to catch up honestly, like you know, I feel like you're gonna be getting a hold of like a lot.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of manga out there.
Speaker 1:Man for oh, I know, I know, but it's fun. I I do like collecting the actual like soft cover manga volumes and they, they look amazing next to each other, so I'm hoping I would love too.
Speaker 2:I would love to be able to to like collect stuff like that, but man, it's so cumbersome it's cumbersome.
Speaker 1:It's spacious. You need a good like wall or a good shelf to like. Really express your love with all that.
Speaker 2:But I mean, dude, you need it's cool, you need that's just a room on its own just stacked up books, but yeah, so I know. But that's cool, though that you're kind of. I know that you're working on some sort of avatar timeline, so I feel like a lot of this stuff is gonna it's really almost like you know research for it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I'm like I dude, I'm having a lot of fun. I know I told a lot of people that I was gonna have a mcu timeline out by february. It start. You know, that's four months away now will it happen?
Speaker 1:that's wild to think about will it happen, I don't know, but I'm I'm really happy with what I'm working on right now. I'm excited to continue working on that and I think that's ultimately like what I want to do with, because I'm kind of tired of the YouTube grind. I'm tired of, like chasing for likes and subscribers and all that. I don't care anymore. I don't make enough money off of that to like make a dent in, you know, my tax returns. It's not, it's not doing anything for me like that, but it is really fun making big projects that people respond to, and that's what I want to live towards, you know, or work towards. You know. It's just big projects that I can be proud of, that I can look back on and be super excited about, Like I was thinking about some of the products I did recently.
Speaker 1:I did the Monsterverse timeline, I did a Frozen timeline, I did a One Piece live action timeline. All of those are like products. I learned a lot while making. I learned, you know, it was fun exploring those worlds in ways that most people don't ever get the opportunity to do so, and it's just a good experience for me. It's fun and I want to keep doing stuff like that, so I'm enjoying what I'm working on with Avatar, the Last Airbender and Korra, and you know all the other eras of the Avatarverse, so I'm excited to just keep staying in that world for a little bit. Dude, let me tell you, I have enough notes where I can envision in my head, like I have enough notes where I can make, like you know, a reasonably sized guide to the timeline of this world. You know, like a physical book. If I were to want to make that and I had the legal rights to do so, I think I could do that, you know, and I think that that would be fun. So I'm, you know, I'm just enjoying the space while I'm here.
Speaker 2:That's cool. I mean, you know, honestly, it's kind of like with what we do with the podcast. You know, the podcast, you know we're not. This is not like a source of income really for Dakota and I. It's, you know, and we've spoke about it before, it's two friends getting together and we talk. We're talking about topics that we really enjoy and we really do enjoy the feedback from the people who do listen to us.
Speaker 2:Dakota has told me a couple couple people have made certain inputs about different things and we definitely listen and we put that stuff into perspective and honestly, it really gets us to want to sit down and to watch some of these things that, like we had mentioned about rings of power. To be honest, at least for me, rings of power I never even finished the first season, so to cover rings of power is going to give me the chance to actually sit down and like kind of give me a reason to watch it. Not that I didn't really have a reason to watch it before, but I really didn't have too much of a desire to watch it. But maybe now that I'm going to be doing it to cover an episode, maybe I'll find that I enjoy the show more than maybe I think that I will you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a really good kind of segue into, like, what our plans are moving forward. While we don't necessarily know what we're doing for our big 100 episode, we do have big plans in terms of series that we want to do, Like we we recently wrapped up you guys probably know we recently wrapped up on a big X-Men series. It was like 14 or 15 movies all together.
Speaker 2:Dude. Yeah, yeah, that one was a crazy series.
Speaker 1:That was a crazy series. That was a long one. A couple years ago we did a Lord of the Rings series where we broke up the extended editions into six podcasts. But those were like extra long podcasts, like two hours plus each, and if you chose, we beat the movies, like two hours plus each.
Speaker 1:And if you, if you chose movies dude, if you like, add up all the lengths of the movies and all the lengths of our podcast. I think we add out, we edge out the movies just a little bit more. Yeah, it's, it's a too much, it was too much. We're happy doing one hour podcast at this point, just because it makes it so much easier to find the time to record first and foremost and to get it out to you guys, because editing two hours plus of podcasts takes dude, it's even even just doing an hour podcast episode.
Speaker 1:Takes a while, but yeah, those two hour ones were brutal yeah, but so, when it comes to rings of power, let's talk about our plans for that a little bit, because we talked about it off show. We didn't talk about it on show. Right, we are hoping to cover this series in depth. We're not going to give you two hour podcasts. We're going to give you one hour podcast, but we're going to give you four of them and we're each episode is going to cover four episodes. Each of our episodes is going to cover four of the rings of powers episodes. That's what I'm trying to say. We're going to break up up season one into two episodes and season two into two episodes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a good idea and I think that with series, maybe ones that are lore rich, like something like Lord of the Rings, I think that maybe in the future we could continue to do stuff like that, you know, covering TV shows. I wish we kind of thought about this when we were covering Shogun. You know, shogun, we only gave it an hour and maybe giving it a two-episode breakdown would have, you know, we would have been able to do a little bit better.
Speaker 1:We would have been able to talk about it a little bit more and gestate on. You know, the first half of a season versus the second half of the season, right? Right or more episode-by-episode, like breakdowns, instead of just like a whole season vomit of, just like appreciation.
Speaker 1:You know exactly which you know we love, we love shogun and I loved it so much that today I downloaded a couple weeks ago I told you guys about it that I downloaded the first part of the shogun audiobook. It's like 29 hours or something. I started listening to that today and it's very, very good. It's very close to at least the beginning of the first episode of the show where you know like they're adrift at sea for a long period of time.
Speaker 1:Everyone hates the pilot, john blackthorne and uh yeah, so I'm, I'm having fun with that, but yeah, so anthony, should we? Should we get back to the swamp? We should. You know, I mentioned earlier that I thought shrek was the first DreamWorks film and I was totally wrong. So, dreamworks, you have to put this into perspective of the time period that these early animated films were taking place, at least the turn-of-the-century films, or turn-of-the-millennium films, I should say. So DreamWorks jumped onto the scene with a film called Ants.
Speaker 2:That was in 1998.
Speaker 1:I remember Ants. I remember that they somehow got wind that Pixar was working on a film called A Bug's Life and they jumped into production of a movie called Ants, which was a little bit more adult themed and it released a couple months before a bug's life, just to get the the upper hand on pixar right and and honestly ants, is not that? Bad of a movie.
Speaker 2:You know, I kind of went back and revisited it because I hadn't seen it in such a long time as a kid, since it is a little bit more geared towards adults, you don't?
Speaker 2:it doesn't really resonate as well for kids, but like when you get a little bit older and you watch it, you're like, okay, you know what, this isn't bad. So I will say that shrek is kind of like the first big computer animated movie for adults. It is also targeted towards children, but it really did a lot in that time for other studios. It's okay to make a movie that is also for the parents too, because I mean who?
Speaker 2:who's bringing these kids to go see these movies? It's a guardian, you know. It's a parent, it's a grandparent, an aunt, whatever. And coming back and watching shrek, I dude, I laughed I love shrek.
Speaker 2:And especially when you get to an older age and you start to understand the adult jokes, you're like, wow, they really got away with that one. Yep, like the whole song that you quoted in the beginning, right, that whole part where, like the little puppets, like they're like, wipe your face and but they're bent over like and you think that they're gonna say something else.
Speaker 1:It it was so funny so doing a little research on the origin of shrek, apparently, like even before ants was a thing, dreamworks was working on shrek at least as early as 1996 and like early animatics of it came out, or you know, like an early like footage of it was animated and shrek looked horrifying like he did.
Speaker 2:He did so.
Speaker 1:So in earlier on in the the production they wanted to go with a scarier looking ogre right and it was so horrifying that the ceo of dreamworks basically immediately laid off like a bunch of people from that project. It was just like no, we're not doing this. No, but they were so far in production that they continue going on. Also, in 1989, after Ants, they released the Prince of Egypt which that's a different type of animation style.
Speaker 1:It's not 3D, but it's not CGI. It's 2D animation and that's. That's a fantastic movie. We should we should cover prince of egypt at some point.
Speaker 2:It's it's one of my favorites, prince of egypt is really a solid film. Especially like when you're watching it. As a kid it was like such a spectacle, dude like oh my gosh, there's so much going on. It really is a cool film. I do like Prince of.
Speaker 1:Egypt. So if anyone was working on the Prince of Egypt in 1998 and they got relegated because these studios they move people around from film to film so if you got pushed from the Prince of Egypt to a film called Shrek, it was considered like a curse. You know like, oh, I wasn't doing very good on Prince of Egypt so they moved me to Shrek. They called it getting Shrecked.
Speaker 2:Getting Shrecked.
Speaker 1:Yes, so they didn't have any faith in this movie, and I think that that's hilarious, because it ended up being a huge success, a huge success that has, like so many spinoffs from it.
Speaker 2:It's so like I mean like we, we got a spinoff not that long ago, man, it was like. Puss in Boots the Last Wish, which actually was a really good movie.
Speaker 1:Dude, we should work our way up to that, because Puss in Boots, last Wish, I was floored by. It was tremendous. It was a tremendous movie. So, anyway, after Prince of Egypt, they had three movies that came out in 2000, and then it was Shrek, so it was the Road to El Dorado.
Speaker 2:I remember that too. That was another one that had a lot of adult themes in it.
Speaker 1:Chicken Run. I remember that one too, which is more kid-friendly. And then they had a direct-to-DVD prequel to the Prince of Egypt called Joseph King of Dreams. I've never even heard of this.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think I've seen that actually.
Speaker 1:I did not see that. But anyway then it was Shrek and then, you know, the world changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So Shrek had an interesting development, as you had spoke, but Mike Myers wasn't even the first pick for shrek oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:Chris farley, oh, that's, that's kind of so so chris farley was.
Speaker 2:He was originally supposed to be shrek. Yeah, they even there's. Actually, if you go on youtube and you look up chris farley shrek, they have him doing dialogue for shrek really across from eddie murphy.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know like it's a very rough, vaguely iely. I remember this, I remember hearing this somewhere in my twisted past?
Speaker 2:Yes, His Shrek definitely has. The moment that he recorded was one of the sadder moments about really not being accepted and stuff, and so his depressed Shrek sounded very like depressed, you know, and so it was interesting. Also, donkey was offered to chris rock okay, but it was, but he had turned it down. Fiona was originally also pitched to.
Speaker 1:I wonder, I wonder drew barrymore really quick? I wonder if that, you know, the success of shrek is is what led Chris Rock to sign on to Madagascar. Oh, maybe, probably, probably.
Speaker 2:He was like, yeah, because he had turned it down Drew Barrymore. I don't think she had outright turned it down, but it just didn't work well with her schedule.
Speaker 1:So hold on. When was Charlie's Angels? Was that before or after this? Because with her schedule, so hold on. When was charlie's angels? Was that before or after this? Because that's two of charlie's angels being offered this role.
Speaker 2:Yeah and then, yeah, we ended up getting cameron diaz yeah, what's up with that?
Speaker 1:okay, so yeah, it was a 2000 film, so 2000 was before 2001, obviously. So, yeah, so clearly. Someone watched charlie's angels and was like, well, we can't get true barrymore, let's get cameron diaz well, and yeah, I'm pretty like.
Speaker 2:Well, like you said, that development on that movie was like since the 90s, so it doesn't surprise me. I mean they probably wanted to get that movie out like before then, and that's just the reason why it came out in 2001, but it's because of all the I mean pretty much development hell.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was in development hell and it's one of the few examples of something being in development hell and it actually being successful. You know, yeah, but yeah, no, I thought that was like really cool, like kind of looking at the casting options like could you imagine in another distant, alternate reality there was a shrek that had chris farley, chris Rock and Drew Barrymore. That would have been completely different.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, I mean, what could have been? You never know how that would change everything. Dude, I don't want this to become some sort of philosophical what-if podcast, because I could totally see it coming, dude, that's exactly what's happening. Like maybe he'd still be alive. I don't know. Yeah, I don't want to get, I don't want to go there. But yeah, dude, what if?
Speaker 2:you know, and then I was looking at so. So we know what the, the inspiration for for shrek is. It was based off of a book by william steig or steig, probably, steig, yeah, and it's so it was pretty much like a book about an ogre learning about, you know, friendship and happiness, that kind of thing. So that pretty much was like the, I guess the seed that eventually became shrek, you know yeah, so let's let's talk about the movie itself.
Speaker 1:You know we've talked about the background quite a bit. I was speaking to my wife about it earlier and we were just going back and forth about all the times that it was clearly making fun of or playing jokes at the expense of Disney. Quite a few times throughout its runtime they made plenty of deprecating jokes at Disney's expense, starting with the whole fairytale-esque sort of thing. There's a tinkerbell joke, there's a cinderella joke, there's a snow white joke, there's a lines at disney world joke.
Speaker 1:You know, like 45 minutes from here, oh yeah, when, when you're entering duloc there's a it's a small world, like the whole duloc song is like meant to like be a joke on it's a small world you I mean there, dude, there's Pinocchio in there.
Speaker 2:There's Pinocchio, yes.
Speaker 1:So they clearly take a lot of liberties at Disney's expense and they do so with such a fine line because these are all public domain things. Maybe not Right, it's a small world, but you know, they play on it in a way where it's parody and that's really fun. I like that a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you get a lot of fairytale creatures in here, and even like fairytale creatures that they're not really fairytale creatures. They're just creatures from the kids' nursery rhymes, like the three blind mice.
Speaker 1:Right, which you know I really love that. I really think yeah, I did too. I think that that was a really fun way to just incorporate all of those little stories that you heard from when you were a kid into. What's crazy to me is that you know these days kids will most likely hear about Shrek before they hear about most of those stories, but when we were kids we knew about the three blind mice, we knew about the big bad wolf Right right we knew about the three pigs.
Speaker 2:We knew Pinocchio, we knew Cinderella, the Three Pigs, we knew Pinocchio, we knew Cinderella, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we knew all those stories, just based on the culture that we live in, you know. Yeah, so I think that that's an interesting change, because we've become such a culture-driven machine of like consumption and entertainment that, like it's it's almost hard to keep up with stuff that came before that machine, you know. So, yeah, exactly. But yeah, the three blind mice, specifically, I found really, really funny, just ridiculously. You know, like shrek's having a nice dinner for himself where he uses his own earwax as a candle and then the three my three blind mice just come and like ruin everything seriously, they just start like stumbling around on his table and stuff.
Speaker 2:But yeah and and so yeah, he like stumbles out to see that, like all of the fairy tale creatures are were put into a swamp, and yeah, no, shrek's not happy about that.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about that a little bit like what was lord farquaad's plan. Like Like he, I guess he was trying to clean up his kingdom. I almost think about. New York in the 70s and 80s was known for rampant homelessness and a lot of sex workers on the streets, and then, through efforts of some mayors and politicians, they basically pushed all of these individuals elsewhere. And then there were several decades where New York was a relatively safe and clean place relatively Emphasis on relatively.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I kind of assume that was part of the idea or inspiration for removing the, the fairy tale creatures, and putting them elsewhere right, well, like pretty much he, he was just taking whatever was not status quo, right.
Speaker 2:Like you know, these are like weird kind of creatures. I mean, you have these anthro anthropomorphic I can't even say that animals that can talk anthropomorphic. There you go. That's what I was trying to go for, but my mouth did not want to say it. So, yeah, you had animals that could talk, weird talking puppets, blind mice, you know, just yeah, like a bunch of weird like magical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, gingerbread men. So things that weren't considered, like you know, we wouldn't consider normal and just putting it together with the scary ogre, you know, I love how the movie begins, though, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's such a perfect entrance to a film. You know they have that Smash Mouth song playing as Shrek just lives his life in his swamp and occasionally trolls the local villagers.
Speaker 2:It really is like when you watch that intro, it really encapsulates that time because Smash Mouth was like huge around that time. Yeah, I remember as a kid dude I loved smashmouths when I was a kid especially and that that movie like made it even more. So you know, yeah, I mean, because you got a couple of them in there. You got their, their rendition of I'm a believer, so so I didn't even realize that was their cover, yeah yeah, that was their cover.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cool, that's really cool. So so, yeah, even realize that was their cover?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was their cover. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:That's really cool. So so, yeah, I thought that was really cool and just like a bunch of the other songs that were like sprinkled in, they were like very smart with like they had their own soundtrack for the film but like they had fun with adding music to it and they do that for the rest of the movies. And dude, like I don't know, I loved shrek as a kid but like I I still as an adult, like I had I had so much fun watching it again. I was like dude, I love this movie.
Speaker 1:It's so ridiculous and, as and as an adult, like some of the jokes are like wow, not him with that one-liner so I I think even the music aspect is a play on Disney and Disney films, because for the longest time Disney movies had musical entries to get the plot moving from A to B. You know like you think of Aladdin or Lion King or any movie that Disney released at that time. Hercules had musical numbers, the Hunchback of Notre Dame had musical numberslantis did not. But anyway, right, right, we should cover atlantis at some point anyway. I feel like that.
Speaker 1:That's like a underrated gem dude. Everyone, everyone says that. But what I love is that there's a scene early in the movie where shrek is trying to get rid of donkey, right after he's basically dumped and or he, he like bumps into shrek and shrek kind of like shoes the guards away that were chasing donkey, and he starts singing I'm all alone, there's no one here beside me and and shrek's like no singing and that is kind of like the joke at disney's expense because, like no, we're not doing musical numbers in this movie he's done that.
Speaker 2:He did it a couple times too. Yes, yes, he did it a couple times. It, it and and on top of that, like dude, some of the jokes were so funny and, like some of the quotes that they had, like one of the most iconic quotes is the whole ogres are like onions, they have layers. Yes, dude, I love that. And then, like, one of one of my favorite jokes was when shrek and donkey get recruited to go save fiona from the castle that's being guarded by a dragon, with the hopes of, you know, lord farquaad getting rid of all of the fairy tale creatures. So one of my like favorite jokes for when they actually go to save fiona is that he goes and saves fiona but like donkey is taking care of the dragon and then fiona's, like you know, trek goes to go somewhere and she's like where are you going? He's like well, I have to save my ass.
Speaker 1:Oh, but he's talking about donkey I love it.
Speaker 2:it was so good. I was like, oh my gosh dude, and they had so many jokes like that in the and throughout the movie. And it was so good. I was like, oh my gosh dude, and they had so many jokes like that throughout the movie and it was so smart Right.
Speaker 1:There's another one shortly after that where Shrek is saying something kind to Donkey and then Donkey's just like don't be a kiss ass. Like don't be an ass, donkey.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's really funny. Yeah, yeah, it's really clever. Yeah, that's what I really loved that they had jokes like that. When they walk up to lord farquaad's castle and they're like wow, it's large, he must be compensating for something. And then like lo and behold, he's like really short dude. All the jokes that they made about lord farquaad were so funny, man.
Speaker 2:Like you know, like maybe I don't know if he'll measure up or something like that dude, him and donkey were just like laughing. Like I could imagine like if I was like in that recording session that would have been like a genuine laughter because, like those jokes were, yeah, really funny because they didn't like they knew what they were talking about, but like fiona was just like.
Speaker 1:My favorite visual joke there's a couple, but my favorite is at the tail end where he finally rides in on his cavalry up to Fiona, who's just woke up, whatever, and he looks like a normal person on the horse. But when he has two guards, lift, lift him up. The leg guards that are on the sides of the horse are just like sheaves for his very small legs, dude I was dying laughing at that.
Speaker 2:That is really good yeah, they, they did really really good with that. That was, oh man, the movie was so good. And then fiona's secret was like a really cool like added layer to that, like onions dude Like onions. Yeah, man and man like the casting they did really good. Like Mike Myers knocked it out of the park as Shrek Especially he added like that accent, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then, like Eddie Murphy, he gave it a very like.
Speaker 2:Scottish brogue, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, and then they gave it a very like scottish brogue, yeah, yeah, like. These were all stars that were, like you know, pretty big at the time eddie murphy, mike myers, cameron diaz like, honestly, to tell you truth, the fact that they got big name talent like that in a movie like this was like pretty, like you know, like you said, like it was kind of like in it was a curse, but the fact that they got that talent in and the movie became what it did, I mean it really paid off, man.
Speaker 1:No, and it's a fantastic movie and it changed the genre. Yeah, it opened up so many doors as to what's possible to showcase through CGI animation, Because at this point there's only been a handful by 2001,. There's only been a handful, you know, by 2001, there's only been a handful of these and it's not the norm. Even like Walt Disney Studios would have a couple more years before they would commit to fully CGI, like animation. And you know, I hope that changes. I hope they go back to 2D at some point.
Speaker 2:Right, right, like at some point as a callback. It would be nice Because there is definitely an appreciation for that like hand-drawn art. You know that hand-drawn animation?
Speaker 1:I know it's tough.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful, but it's hard work, you know? Yeah, yeah, it really is. But you know, Shrek, honestly it holds up pretty well. It still looks pretty good.
Speaker 1:Now this is one area where I think I will agree with the caveat that it's showing its age Like, if you're being honest with it, you can see that it's aged, not as good as a couple titles after it. You know, it's a good film. It made huge waves in the animation industry. It's a good film, it made huge waves in the animation industry.
Speaker 1:But I do think that most of the sets, or like the scenes, are very bare, and that's on purpose, because computing power just wasn't there Right, right, right, you know like if this very same movie, like you know, same actors, same locations and everything was created today, the sets would be much more dynamic, you know, like there would be a lot more going on, and I think that, just, it's a limitation of the time, but they did what was best and what was possible at the time. If you go back to Toy Story a couple of years earlier than that, it didn't look great At the time. It looked great because there was nothing like it, right right. But going back to it, it's very limiting.
Speaker 2:Hair doesn't move, Everything is very plastic looking, the character models still look pretty decent, you're right.
Speaker 1:I will agree. Yeah, the character models looked probably the best of everything there. I think Shrek looked best, Then Ogre Fiona, then Human Fiona and then Donkey, in that order, if I was you know.
Speaker 2:You know I'm ranking it clearly as, at this point, right but but you know I will say yeah, like you said, there is the, the caveat. I mean it. It is an early 2000s film and part of it is gonna show that. Yeah, but the thing is you can always find the age and really like any film that's like older, but for what they had and for what they did it holds up pretty well. And the fact that, like, when I went to go back to watch it it didn't feel like I was like oh, like this, just this just looks like crap, like you know, I don't really want to watch it. It looked well enough to enjoy visually and then just everything else made it so much better the acting, the jokes, the music. Really what they did was something special and that holds up.
Speaker 1:I think also knowing that it took years for them to create the final product, years of trial and error, probably years of whole scrapped content for them to like create the final product. Years of trial and error, probably, you know, years of whole scrapped content. You know there was probably like many, many iterations of this film that just didn't work until they nailed down what ended up working. That in itself is awesome to me. I love the idea of working on something until it works. You know, and it definitely does work with Shrek and you could tell that they used everything they had at the time to make it look and feel and sound as good as it does, because it worked back then.
Speaker 1:And I remember vividly, you know, going through the DVD menus of the Shrek movie, there's a couple other like scenes that I don't know if they cut from the movie or if it's just like a DVD extra. There's a whole scene where they have like the cast from the movie singing Stayin' Alive and I thought that was the best. But there's scenes in the documentary where they're talking about this was state of the art technology at the time. There was like more pixels per image than anything that had been done prior to that point and I totally, totally, 100% agree with that, because there was nothing like it. I think in this industry of, you know, exponential growth in terms of, like, computing power. It's a hard thing to weigh, you know, based on like what we have nowadays in terms of we haven't, we haven't excess or we haven't like an abundance of good CGI looking stuff today.
Speaker 2:Because it's easy. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look at some of the video games that we get. Man, like the cinematics, square Enix, man, like what they were able to do back then also was crazy Dude. Yeah, so you know, but yeah, no, I agree it's tough and that's why, especially like during that time, disney opted for the traditional 2D animation rather than that 3D animation, because, yeah, it was just the computing power was not 100 there and it was just it was hard to gamble. I guess at that time, you know, dreamworks gambled in that moment and it really paid off because that's like one of their biggest characters, that's one of their faces, you know yeah, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1:Is there? Is there a shrek 5 coming out?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think so actually I think there is another shrek movie coming out, shrek 5.
Speaker 1:I got to find this out. Yeah, okay, 2026. There is supposedly a Shrek movie starring Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz. So Wow, that's like pretty far off, I mean we still got a whole year. It's the end of 2024 at this point, so we'll probably get trailers for it next, next year, maybe even super bowl true, true.
Speaker 2:I know that we've got some animated films coming up soon, like moana is coming up moana's coming out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, moana 2 rather yeah, moana 2 what I really want to see is the wild robot. That's dreamworks latest movie. Everyone is saying that it is potentially not only like animated film of the year, but like one of the best animated films ever. Like. People are saying that, like you know, they they like cried numerous times while watching. It's just like a beautiful movie. It's from the same, it's one of the same directors from how to train your dragon.
Speaker 2:So oh nice nice, I know I I really do miss the days of of, like, a lot of studios coming out with, you know, animations like I mean, you have illumination that comes out with stuff, you have dreamworks that comes out with stuff, but you know, dude, there used to be so many like studios other than disney that would come out with different animations. Man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so nowadays it's what Pixar, disney, dreamworks and Illumination, that's pretty much it right.
Speaker 2:And you could really put Pixar and Disney in the same as one, because they're practically one studio now.
Speaker 1:They're under the same umbrella, that's true. They are run differently, differently, and their films do feel different. For the most part, you can't watch luca and feel like that's, that's a disney movie. It doesn't feel like a disney movie, even though you know it does fit under the disney umbrella. Thematically it's definitely a pixar movie. You know, like there's certain vibes that you get with certain companies that only they can produce. Would you say that Raya so Raya was a Disney movie, not a Pixar movie?
Speaker 2:I don't think that Isn't Luca tagged as a Disney movie.
Speaker 1:It's tagged under the Disney umbrella but it is Pixar. It is like a Pixar studio. So Raya was Disney animation studios Raya. It's very different than many Disney movies. It does have the typical like heroine character that Disney tries to present with most of their movies. I don't, that's just what they do.
Speaker 2:Have you ever watched Raya? Yeah, I watched it with you, actually, when I don't even remember that. Yeah, at your grandparents' house you had put it on. That's hilarious. I mean, that was a while ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good times. I like that movie a lot. Yeah, so I think that the different animation studios do have a vibe to them. Dreamworks was specifically going for a child-friendly but geared towards your parents type vibe at this point in their history, you know, like with Ants and Shrek. Yeah, so I appreciate that. I told you last week that I had never seen any Illumination films Like period. I have never seen an Illumination film Right right dude. You really have to.
Speaker 2:You know what?
Speaker 1:I'm going to look up Illumination films because I actually don't know if I've ever seen it.
Speaker 2:They do Despicable Me and Minions. Yes, I have not seen any of those. Despicable Me is good. I actually really like Despicable Me. They're pretty funny and dude, come on, you have Steve Carell doing a villain turned kind of-kind-of-good-guy, you know.
Speaker 1:Okay, no, I made a mistake. I have seen the Super Mario Bros movie. I have also. I think I saw the Lorax back in 2012, but I don't really remember.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I saw that. I saw the Lorax also.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I actually really like the Super Mario Bros movie. We should talk about that someday. We got so many movies. Should talk about that someday.
Speaker 2:We got so many another dreamworks movie another dreamworks movie that you need to see is mega minds I love that, that one's, that's another one, that's like really good illumination and adult no dreamworks is that dreamworks? That's dreamworks, oh okay. Yeah, I gotta watch that one. I I did not know. Illumination also did the sing movies. I actually never saw those, yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's, before we close out, let's talk about, like the big twist of Shrek, specifically that she's not just a princess in the castle or a princess in the tower that needs to be saved. She's not like a Rapunzel, she's not a Sleeping Beauty. She's, you know. She can fight for herself, but she's also secretly cursed by a witch, you know, which is very Sleeping Beauty-esque. But her curse, specifically, is that at night she turns into a hideous ogre.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and the mirror actually tried to warn Farquaad of that too.
Speaker 1:Yes, I really like this specific twist because it emphasizes Shrek's insecurities about being someone outside of the norm.
Speaker 1:You know, at the beginning of the movie he's very comfortable with his existence, he's very happy to be alone.
Speaker 1:And then, when given the opportunity to save Fiona from you know her, her fate, being alone in a tower with a dragon, and then you know, eventually, like learning to really appreciate this person and potentially even love this person, shrek realizes that Fiona could never love him while he's an ogre, because he's an ogre and that's it's almost a twist on Sleeping or not Sleeping Beauty, beauty and the Beast.
Speaker 1:You know, you have this beautiful young lady who you know you have fallen deeply for, but because you look the way that you, that you do, you will never be able to woo her in the way that you specifically want to, right, right. So, yeah, I think that is a really fascinating twist on the. It twists, twists, a couple stories all together. You have that Rapunzel-esque tower, you have that cursed by a witch sleeping beauty, you have that Beauty and the Beast aspect of the film, but then it flips itself on its head where she's also potentially ugly in her own eyes because she doesn't meet a certain criteria, unless X happens during the day. You know, fantastic, I think that's really cool, right.
Speaker 2:And then I like the way the spell was. So it was true love's kiss, but the way that it was worded was that it would be broken and like I don't remember if it was like they would take the image of their true love. But it was worded in a way that it made sense that she stayed as an ogre when her and Shrek kissed at the end.
Speaker 1:Hold on. This is the quote. By day one way, by night another. This shall be the norm until you find true love's first kiss and then take love's true form.
Speaker 2:Take love's true form, trickle. Take love's true form right there. So that, so that really honestly opened up the door for that to happen. The way that it was worded. You know, shrek saw the beauty in in her other form and he appreciated her in her regular form too, like he honestly loved her as a whole. Like either or you know, yeah, and so, yeah, when they kissed she stayed in the form of an ogre and it made sense for it to happen, not just because she was an ogre, he's an ogre, but because of, yeah, the whole thing, the way that it was set up and you know this is 2001 body standards weren't the greatest during, you know, late 90s, early 2000s media so the the idea to like flip the norm on what is normal, you know, within relationships, I think was a powerful one.
Speaker 1:I think they did a really good job with this movie and, anthony, I think we should cover shrek 2 at some point. I agree, because shrek 2 was awesome. I think most people think shrek 2 is the best.
Speaker 2:I remember it as being better than shrek 1 yeah, yeah, no, I, I would agree with those people. Trick 2 was you and you. You get some amazing characters in that one. You know you get puss and boots in that. Prince charming, yeah, prince charming, yeah I I.
Speaker 1:I think some of the jokes in Shrek 2 are actually even better now that I think about it. One of them is I think it's Donkey. Somebody barges in on Shrek and Fiona in an intimate scene and he's just like Somebody better be dying. And then it's a frog on its deathbed, like a king saying I'm dying.
Speaker 2:It's like a frog on its deathbed like a king saying I'm dying, dude, yeah, yeah, no, definitely, I think that would be awesome.
Speaker 1:We gotta cover it yeah, and hopefully we can cover up to the second puss in boots movie because, like dude, that was so good I could not believe how powerful that movie was. I was blown, blown away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that one had lessons that everybody could learn.
Speaker 1:Guys, thank you so much for listening to us here for our 58th episode of Project Geekology. We've been doing this for a very long time perhaps too long, but you know what we're going to keep going Next week. We are not sure what we're going to be doing because Anthony's going to be away and I'm going to be just talking into the abyss with you guys, so we will see what shape that takes. If you want to check out any of our socials, you can find all of that. You know Twitter, youtube, twitch, not Twitch. Oh yeah, twitch, anthony's on Twitch. You can find all that in our show notes down below. And, anthony, is there something you want our listeners to do? You know, if they're able to review our podcasts, do you have any special requirements for them?
Speaker 2:Yes, we require you to, if your podcast platform allows you. If at all possible, give us a juicy, five-star review to help push us up in the algorithm, because it really does help us out a lot it needs to be juicy, nothing less than medium rare. You know it's got to be like it needs to be juicy and nothing less than five stars I like, I like that, guys.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much yeah, you stay gold you stay. Golden pony boy, the wolverine adios.
