hero's journey shrek

Shrek Hero’s Journey

• Post author By Punit Thakkar
• Post date March 14, 2024

One of the most beloved animation movies, Shrek is a classic that captivates audiences with its humor, heart, and memorable characters. Behind the layers of fairy-tale parody lies a narrative structure deeply rooted in the hero’s journey archetype. In this blog post, we’ll explore how Shrek follows the 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey .

1. Ordinary World

Our story begins in the Ordinary World of Shrek, a reclusive ogre who enjoys his solitude in his swamp. He’s content with his solitary life until his peace is disrupted by the arrival of fairy-tale creatures, exiled to his swamp by the tyrannical Lord Farquaad.

2. Call to Adventure

Shrek’s Call to Adventure comes when he confronts Lord Farquaad, who demands that he rescue Princess Fiona from a dragon-guarded tower in exchange for reclaiming his swamp. Reluctant at first, Shrek embarks on the quest to save his home.

3. Refusal of the Call

Initially, Shrek refuses the call, preferring to return to his solitary life. He sees the quest as an inconvenience and is resistant to change. However, circumstances force him to accept the challenge, setting him on a path of self-discovery.

4. Meeting the Mentor

Throughout his journey, Shrek encounters several mentors who guide him along the way. Most notably, he forms a bond with Donkey, who becomes his loyal companion and provides support, advice, and comic relief during their adventures.

5. Crossing the Threshold

Crossing the Threshold occurs when Shrek and Donkey venture into the unknown, leaving the safety of Shrek’s swamp behind. They enter the fantastical world of Far Far Away, where they must confront numerous obstacles on their quest to rescue Princess Fiona.

Related: Use Hero’s Journey and create custom templates for your screenplay

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

As Shrek progresses on his journey, he faces Tests, encounters Allies, and confronts Enemies. Along the way, he forms unlikely alliances with characters such as Princess Fiona and Puss in Boots, while also clashing with antagonists like Lord Farquaad and the dragon.

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

The Approach to the Inmost Cave occurs as Shrek and his allies prepare to confront their greatest challenge: rescuing Princess Fiona from the dragon-guarded tower. This pivotal moment tests their courage, determination, and teamwork.

The Ordeal is the climactic moment of Shrek’s journey, where he faces his greatest fear and undergoes a transformative experience. In Shrek, the Ordeal occurs when Shrek battles the dragon to rescue Princess Fiona, ultimately revealing his true feelings for her.

Following the Ordeal, Shrek receives the Reward of his journey: the realization of true love and acceptance. He saves Princess Fiona, but more importantly, he discovers that he doesn’t have to hide behind his tough exterior to find happiness.

10. The Road Back

The Road Back marks the return journey for Shrek, as he and his companions leave Far Far Away and head back to their Ordinary World. However, their journey is not yet complete, as they must still confront Lord Farquaad and his army.

11. Resurrection

The Resurrection occurs when Shrek faces one final confrontation with Lord Farquaad, who seeks to marry Princess Fiona and claim the kingdom for himself. In a dramatic showdown, Shrek defeats Farquaad and asserts his true identity as a hero.

12. Return with the Elixir

In the final step of the hero’s journey, Shrek Returns with the Elixir: true love and acceptance. He marries Princess Fiona, breaks the curse that transformed her into an ogre at night, and discovers that he has found a family and a home in Far Far Away.

Related Read: Harry Potter Hero’s Journey

If you’d like to see the story analysis of any other movie, be sure to comment below!

• Tags heros journey , joseph campbell , shrek , shrek heros journey , shrek story

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Hero's Journey — Three Archetypes in Shrek: Hero’s Journey

Three Archetypes in Shrek: Hero's Journey

• Categories: Hero's Journey

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Published: Mar 20, 2024

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Shrek and The Hero's Journey

Short (1-4 activities)

This lesson will introduce learners to the story structure of the Hero’s Journey as well as key features of settings in stories within the fairy tale genre.

Learners will be tasked to plan their own design for a castle and to create this using recyclable materials. They will be encouraged to consider the use of the materials for creating a model that is structurally sound, as well as reproducing key features of castles, such as turrets, portcullises and drawbridges. Pupils can further develop their design and technology skills to include a mechanical feature in their model, utilising a pulley, a lever or a gear.

The optional filmmaking activity uses the finished castle models to feature in a short-form film clip to illustrate the Hero’s Journey using the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 storyboarding approach.

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Shrek (2001)

Stream on Into Film+

1,837 reviews

Animated comedy about a fat, green, bad-tempered ogre banished from his woods cabin home by an evil lord, which has become a modern classic.

Age group 5–14 years

Duration 87 mins

Fairy Tales

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A selection of films which explore the many worlds of fairy tales, from early interpretations to modern-day innovations.

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Home Essay Samples Entertainment Shrek

Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey in the Animated Movie Shrek

• Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press.
• Booker, C. (2004). The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Continuum.
• Vogler, C. (1998). The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Michael Wiese Productions.
• Pressfield, S. (2002). The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. Black Irish Entertainment LLC.
• Kim, E., & Lee, J. (2017). The Hero's Journey in a Multimodal Text: A Study of Animated Film. Language and Literature, 26(1), 66-82.
• Tuzlukov, V. (2018). A Structural Analysis of the Hero’s Journey Monomyth: A Comparative Study of Classical and Modern Heroes. The Journal of American Culture, 41(3), 293-305.

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Kung Fu Panda 4 earned $US58 million on its opening weekend. Why is this franchise so popular?

After eight years in the wilderness, cinema's fluffiest martial arts warrior has returned for his fourth outing.

Following in the steps of Puss in Boots and Toy Story, the latest Kung Fu Panda adventure grapples with its central hero Po (Jack Black) growing old. Having once been selected as the Dragon Warrior, he's now straddled with the task of passing on the mantle, however reluctantly.

When a shape-shifting chameleon sorceress (Viola Davis, in her first animated role) hatches a plan to revive Po's greatest foes, he teams up with Zhen (Awkwafina), a light-fingered fox, to confront the latest threat to the Valley of Peace.

While Kung Fu Panda has become entrenched as a beloved action-fantasy franchise, with a whole generation of fans now sharing the films with their own children, it can be easy to forget how unlikely the original film's success was upon its release in 2008.

At the time, DreamWorks Animation had built its slate on Shrek's winning formula of breezy, CGI-animated comedy packed with stunt casting, talking animals and pop culture-heavy humour. Production on Kung Fu Panda had started out in a similar fashion, initially conceived as a parody of martial arts cinema via the title's self-explanatory premise — until co-director John Stevenson retooled the film into a sincere love-letter to the genre, which balanced both humour and heart.

As family-friendly animated films have increasingly relied on snark, gimmicks and meme appeal – Despicable Me also ventures into its fourth instalment this year – Kung Fu Panda has largely stuck to this ethos.

Among the films' many influences — which span the work of the Shaw Brothers to Jean-Claude Van Damme — the wuxia genre (popularised in the West by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has been central to the series' visual identity.

Rather than simply replicating gravity-defying stunts and epic elemental landscapes steeped in Chinese folklore, Kung Fu Panda pushes its fantastical elements and striking physicality to dazzling heights.

Painstaking attention is paid to interpreting how various members of the animal kingdom could believably engage in martial arts without the use of human limbs. The films are as thrilling as they are beautiful; characters gracefully soar between tranquil mountain peaks, float across a gust of cherry blossoms and pirouette into dazzling light formations.

Like Avatar: The Last Airbender , Kung Fu Panda demonstrates how animation is uniquely suited for expressive spectacle in elaborate otherworldly settings, and offers a creative re-imagining of Asian mythology in contrast to the medieval European backdrops that largely define the fantasy genre.

But, despite the success of its predecessors, Kung Fu Panda 4 proves that the franchise isn't entirely immune to the law of diminishing returns.

The rich visual design of the prior films has largely been scaled back under the direction of Mike Mitchell (The Lego Movie 2). Its expansive vision of ancient China is flattened into a generic postcard version of itself.

The action scenes, previously a stand-out of physical choreography and camera work, feel lifeless and bereft of imagination.

As Po neatly puts it: "Where's the skadoosh?"

There's also disappointingly little of the series' winning emotional through line, which cleverly repackaged "chosen one" tropes into a journey of self-discovery and belonging.

Much of Po's character growth organically grew out of his relationship to kung fu legends-turned coworkers, the Furious Five. Here, they've been jettisoned so that Po can pass on the torch to Zhen.

At least the film serves as reminder of Jack Black's enduring charisma. Few live-action actors acquit themselves to voice acting well (as evidenced by his latest co-star, Awkwafina), but Black's wacky comedic style and expressive voice have always been key to Po's jocular, sweet-natured appeal.

For all the film's flaws, it has the good sense to end with Jack Black belting out a Britney Spears cover.

Just as the first Kung Fu Panda film revealed that there was no secret ingredient to Mr. Ping's famous noodle soup, there's no mysterious X factor behind the success of these films, which have recently exceeded a total of $2 billion at the box office. This latest instalment debuted with a $US58.3 million ($88 million) opening weekend .

The key ingredients are as follows: an original adventure that isn't built off a pre-existing property; characters who are larger than life, but fundamentally earnest; tangible emotional stakes; an investment in artistry over short-lived trends.

Among the many talented artists who've brought the series to life, Jennifer Yuh Nelson is worth singling out as one of its key architects. Following her role as Head of Story on Kung Fu Panda, she went on to become the first woman to solo-direct a Hollywood animation feature, with its 2011 sequel.

More than a decade ago, the successes of Kung Fu Panda (as well as its Nordic sibling franchise How to Train Your Dragon) blazed a trail for fantasy-adventure storytelling in Western animation – a genre that even Disney has historically struggled to crack.

Yet DreamWorks Animation seems unlikely to reproduce this winning formula any time soon. Kung Fu Panda 4 arrives in cinemas amid sweeping lay-offs, internal restructuring and cancelled projects at the company.

The real tragedy isn't that there won't be another Kung Fu Panda. It's that the conditions to make original animated genre films with the same level of artistry feel increasingly rare.

Kung Fu Panda 4 is in cinemas now.

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