‘Shrek’ creators embrace fractured fairy tales

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‘What is a hero, what is a villain?’
When “Shrek” was first pitched to Myers, he was charmed by the notion of telling a traditional fairy tale as a broad, modern comedy that inverts audience expectations.

The irritable loner Shrek, who simply wants to be left on his own in his swamp, turns out to be the bold romantic hero. The faithful sidekick is a motormouthed donkey.

And the damsel held captive in a tower is transformed from enchanting human to portly ogre.

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“I was so inspired by their pitch about the idea of an ogre girl who’s had a pretty-girl spell thrown on her,” Myers said. “That inversion. I just went boom! Whoa, that is for me. ...

“The point of the movie is to take this strange and sinister Euro-centric, judgmental and yet meaningful idiom, art form, and deconstruct it, and in its deconstruction, there is meaning,” Myers said. “So traditional heroes are villains, traditional villains are heroes. What is a hero, what is a villain? You can be the author of your own life. You don’t have to listen to what people say about you. ... People might say bad things about you, but I won’t say bad things about myself.”

Banderas signed on with the “Shrek” gang as the voice of Puss in Boots, the self-assured swashbuckler in the body of a cute little kitty who was introduced in the second film.

Though a fan of the first “Shrek,” Banderas said he had trouble accepting some of the deviations from fairy-tale conventions.

“Watching the movie, I’m thinking how wonderful Fiona was, how beautiful she was. She looked like a beautiful girl you would find on the street and make you fall in love with her,” Banderas said. “Then I had a certain resistance as a spectator for her to be an ogre. Even if she’s a nice ogre. I was thinking in the back of my brain, they’re going to end up being humans at the end of the movie. That’s what I had to break in myself. ...

“I said, ‘No, I have to accept this end. This is the right ending for a movie like this.’ I think many people went through this process when they were observing this movie. We are used to rejecting ugliness without reason.”

Would Walt Disney, who set the 20th century standard for fairy tales with his classic animated films, reject the new look and attitude of the “Shrek” realm? What would he think about seeing his stable of beloved princesses and other characters turned on their heads?

“I don’t think he’d mind at all. He was so far ahead of the pack, anyway,” said Andrews, who won an Academy Award for Disney’s 1964 musical fantasy “Mary Poppins.” “I think he’d be the first to recognize that it’s OK. We also should be very grateful, because if he hadn’t helped create all that, we wouldn’t have anything to tilt at.”

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