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Shrek and Donkey will forever be one of the best animated duo's in history. When Shrek first hit theaters audiences fell in love with not only the characters but the story and it's parody on fairy tales. Though the villain of this animated film, Lord Farquaad, may have been a parody of Disney's most powerful executive. Shrek will forever be a beloved children's movie, but as you peel back layers of the onion it seems there's a lot more behind the curtain than audiences realize.
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Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make
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This is Lord Farquaad. While he may seem like just another unserious character in an animated kids movie
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there's more to him than one might initially believe. Every aspect of Farquaad was crafted with meticulous intent
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from his insidious worldview to his perfectly maintained castle. Farquaad is a much more compelling villain than he has any right to be
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But perhaps the most interesting aspect of his character, and indeed the whole movie, is the spiteful real-world rivalry that allegedly motivated it
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Is that! It's hideous! Oh, that's not very nice. It's just a donkey
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At this point, we can all agree that DreamWorks' Shrek is more than the sum of its earwax-laden parts
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Based very loosely on a book of the same name, this gross-out kids' movie could have very
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easily crashed and burned. Against all odds, it turned out to have heart
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Not unlike the swamp-dwelling ogre himself, its message of acceptance and authenticity rings as true today as it did in 2001
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and its obvious parody to the Walt Disney Company is still relevant and funny
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The movie opens with our protagonist using Disney's tried-and-true storybook formula as toilet paper
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and things only ramp up in aggression from there. The sorts of fairy tales Disney bases their movies on are purposely mocked and mishandled in Shrek
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They're even made out to be the butt of racy jokes. Although she lives with seven other men, she's not easy
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Just kiss her dead frozen lips and find out what a lie why she is. If you're wondering why so much effort was put into this extended bit
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it all has to do with what went down at Disney in the early 90s. Due to some bad blood between Jeffrey Katzenberg and Disney's then CEO, Michael Eisner
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Katzenberg was passed up for a promotion at the company. In response, he left to co-found DreamWorks in 1994
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Trek was, in essence, a way for him to stick it to his former bosses
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As the producer he was able to unsubtly tell the world what they really thought of Disney And nowhere is that more clear than with the movie villain Lord Farquaad is a joke There no denying it
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He is almost certainly based on Michael Eisner, though DreamWorks' marketing chief vehemently denied it in a 2001 Chicago Tribune article
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His name is supposed to sound like a not-so-PG insult. Farquaad. And even the character's short stature is purportedly a dig at something the 6'3 Eisner once said about Katzenberg
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who is 5'4", cementing the idea that this was just a juvenile feud between two people looking
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to insult each other. Men of Farquaad's stature are in short supply. And before we even meet the
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man, we are shown the impacts of his newly instated initiative to clean up the land of
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Duloc. A mob shows up at Shrek's swamp with literal torches and pitchforks looking to capitalize off
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of Farquaad's offer of gold for the capture of fairy tale creatures. We later see many of these
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disenfranchised creatures being caged and carted away by indifferent knights as they openly sob
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and beg for mercy. While there are some clear authoritarian themes on display, the scene can also
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be read as a gag on Disney's apathy towards the public domain fairy tales they essentially hold
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hostage under their branding. Of course, it's played for laughs since this is a kids movie
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Still, the content of the scene is brutal, and it's all happening at the behest of Lord Farquaad
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By the order of Lord Farquaad, I am authorized to place you both under arrest
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and transport you to a designated resettlement facility. His introductory scene walks a similar tonal line
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and it does an exemplary job of demonstrating what kind of villain we're dealing with
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We're shown the grim interrogation of the gingerbread man at the hands of Farquaad
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and we aren't spared any of the gory details. The low angles dramatic lighting and uncanny early computer animation make for a genuinely upsetting combination And yet it all still rendered comedic through various lighthearted gags John Lithgow does an incredible job bringing both humor and gravitas to Farquaad lines It not easy to be taken seriously when quoting children rhymes
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Run, run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me
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I'm the gingerbread man! You're a monster! Jinji sounds believably distressed when he's being dunked into a glass of milk
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or threatened with the removal of his gumdrop buttons and his desperate No
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When he's being thrown into the trash, has been burned into the brains of many young viewers
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This scene is also where we learn the why of Farquaad's evil plan
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He sees fairytale creatures as deviant monsters who take a valuable space in his otherwise perfect world
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He wants to eradicate them from existence, which usually means rounding them up and exiling them to distant lands
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Though he's not opposed to sending his lackeys to end their lives when he deems it necessary
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Knights, new plan! The one who kills the ogre will be named champion
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How about him? In his quest for perfection, he also seeks an equally perfect bride so he can finally
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become king of Duloc. This is a man who wants peace and order by any means necessary, and he believes those
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means are justified because he has sufficiently othered an entire group of people
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He, his subjects, and the authority figures under his rule all believe the lie that fairy
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tale creatures are lesser and undeserving of basic rights. This is a harrowing prospect, and it's where we start to see the seams between the two separate halves of Farquaad's character
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There's the jokey Eisner proxy, and then there's something else. Later, when Shrek and Donkey finally make it to Disneyland, uh, Duloc
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we're treated to the best example of how the movie merges its lighthearted jabs at Katzenberg's former workplace with its more serious, villainous undertones
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Farquaad's castle is stark white, totally symmetrical, and massive. Do you think maybe he's compensating for something
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His flower beds are precisely manicured. He pumps pleasant background music out into the streets
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There even a shot of a ladder and paint buckets to indicate that he in the process of making all the buildings look cohesive Everything is in its rightful place The tongue references to the Disney theme parks keep the moment light and funny Everyone remembers the big
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mascot that runs through the queue and the hilarious spoof on It's a Small World. Yet
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when you stop to think about Farquaad's need for complete and total control, along with the
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atrocious acts he's willing to commit to acquire it, things start to get a little messy. He becomes
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less like a silly stand-in for an ex-co-worker and more like a proper villain. By this point in
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our story, we've seen what Farquaad's laws do to fairy tale creatures. We've seen him participate
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in the torture of a prisoner, and now we're finally seeing his definition of perfect
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Farquaad hasn't achieved peace, but rather domination. His version of order is rigid
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and oppressive. This supposedly unthreatening man the characters are meant to point and laugh at
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has successfully turned his kingdom into a dictatorship. The risk of him gaining even
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and more power is real and worrying. The unassuming sheep's clothing he adorns himself with
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only makes him that much more terrifying. And these are some intensely heavy themes
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to throw at a joke character in a kid's movie, but Shrek experiments with the boundaries
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in a surprisingly tactful way, especially when you consider that the movie
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also includes fart jokes and a romantic subplot between a donkey and a dragon
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I don't rush into a physical relationship. I'm not emotionally ready for a commitment of this
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magnitude. It's true that the characters in Shrek often find themselves in absurdist territory
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but Farquaad is not exempt from this. In more recent years, he's been turned into a meme
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and so we tend to overlook just how menacing he is on a base level, mirroring how the characters
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in-universe also don't take him seriously. This is further proof that the DreamWorks team knew
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what they were doing. They successfully walked the line. While Farquaad may just be a vehicle
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for Katzenberg's petty revenge on the surface, once you start peeling back the layers of the onion
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there is an unexpected rot at the center. And that's why, even after over two decades
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Lord Farquaad is still a great villain