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| WHAT COMES AFTER
EVER AFTER?
shrek 2
WITH THE FAIRY TALE ENDING ALREADY BEHIND THEM, SHREK, FIONA AND DONKEY SET OUT ON THE ROAD TO FAR FAR AWAY. NICK RODDICK FINDS OUT WHAT - AND WHO - IS NEW IN SHREK 2, AND TALKS TO SUPERVISING ANIMATOR RAMAN HUI ABOUT THE THREE YEARS IT TOOK THE TEAM
TO MAKE THE
98-MINUTE FILM.
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When Shrek was selected for Competition at Cannes in 2001, a few eyebrows were raised. Not only was this an animated film (a cartoon!): it didn’t even come from one of Europe’s venerable artistic animation factories. Instead, it came from Hollywood. By the time the world’s critics had seen the film, however, there were few eyebrows still raised. Indeed, Shrek scored the highest of any film so far shown at Cannes that year in the unofficial critics’ poll conducted by the trade dailies.
True, it didn’t win the Palme d’Or (Juries! Who needs them?), but it did scoop up the first ever Oscar for Best Animated Feature some nine months later, by which time it had gone on to become a major talking-point - and box-office phenomenon - around the world.
All of which made it, admit producers Aron Warner and David Lipman, an especially hard act to follow. “We wanted to do something very different from Shrek by widening the scope,” says the former. “During the process, we were continually asking ourselves, ‘Is this funny? Is it as heartfelt? Does it have as much to say as the first movie did?’”
“We didn’t want to go back and rehash the same things,” adds Lipman. “We wanted to revisit this world, but have it be as fresh and exciting and fun as the original.”
The problem was not just that the first film had been based on a cult book, and had stuck reasonably closely to its genre-busting idea of a fairy tale in which the ogre is the hero and gets the girl. Shrek the movie had also widened the range considerably, adding a whole series of other fairy tale characters - including the Gingerbread Man (whose voice, incidentally, is provided by Conrad Vernon, who graduates to director alongside Andrew Adamson and Kelly Asbury on Shrek 2), Pinocchio and the Three Little Pigs - and taking careful aim at all the conventions on which fairy tales are based. But it did end happily ever after, with Princess Fiona embracing her inner ogre and forgetting Shrek’s swamp breath. So what was going to happen after ever after?
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