I have brought forth your theory before and was told it wasn’t because of his height but because he was a prince who put on airs/jerk.
So, it is not that “outward appearances don’t matter - except for height”…it’s just that short guys should know their place and that the prince should KNOW that he is completely undeserving of the hot princess and should know better that he shouldn’t be ruling over people. If he’d only be a little taller though it would have been fine.
It’s ok for Shrek to be a jerk though and not be laughed at.
As for ‘Shrek’ as an answer to this thread? No. He didn’t get the hot princess, he got the ugly, dumpy one. Sure, he LIKED the one he got but wouldn’t the story have gotten its point over better if the princess had stayed attractive and CHOSE SHREK ANYWAY?
Hell no! That would just be wrong! Ugly guys should know they don’t get hot women!
Egad, I hate Shrek. The fact that everyone LOOOVVEEESSS Shrek and calls it a movie about ‘acceptance’ and ‘appearance doesn’t matter it’s what is inside’ just makes my eyes roll out of my head.
I’ve long since given up expressing my contempt for this movie with others IRL because they look at you like you took a dump on Jesus or something.
I haven’t seen Shrek I, so I hesitate to comment directly. But given that Shrek is a natural ogre (or so I assume; he’s not under a charm, is he?), it would be natural for him to find the ogrefied Fiona more attractive than the human one. Yes?
Is Shrek presented as being attracted to blonde-Fiona because of her Aryan beauty, or in spite of it?
He’s obviously attracted to her when she is human form. However, he gets to know her and likes her no matter what form she is. I imagine he finds the Ogre-Fiona attractive as well.
However, that is beside the point. The movie is about acceptance of what is inside a person, not their outside. That point would have been made much more eloquently if Fiona would have stayed as the attractive Princess/human and chose Shrek. OR, she should have been offered a choice between the two forms and chose Ogre so she could be with Shrek.
I suspect the writers didn’t do this because it would have been ‘icky’ and the audience wouldn’t have accepted it. However, involuntary Ogre/ugly Fiona choosing Shrek is fine.
Hard to say, since he spends most of the movie with no particular interest in romance at all. His main quest is the preservation of the land he lives on, which the crown is trying to confiscate.
The summary I read upthread seems to indicate that Fiona consciously chose to remain ogrish (does she celebrate the high holidays, I wonder? Abstain from cooking with blood and fat in the same pot?) for love of Shrek, and that her birth form was the blonde. I’m not sure why that doesn’t make the point you seem to want made. She chose her genuine love that would condemn her to a non-human appearance to an alternative that would allow her superficial beauty.
I didn’t see later movies, just going on the first one.
Maybe I am misremembering but I do not remember he chosing her final form. In fact, I remember her being horrified/embarrased by it and so Shrek had to comfort her by telling her she was beautiful.
I think we should stop as this is not a Shrek thread
As the OP, I rule this not a hijack. Anyway, I’ve only seen the later movies (actually just the second, which I didn’t much like, which is why I haven’t bothered with the first).
IIRC, the “curse” is lifted so Hal sees her true form. But he decides that her true form is attractive anyway. So it fails on the she-was-pretty-all-along criteria.
Hmm…I’m going to say it doesn’t. From the Gwyneth Paltrow perspective, nothing about herself changes; she’s a beast who wins without the makeover. When I wrote “pretty all alone” in the OP, I was thinking of movies like, um, She’s All That, when a hot chick seems unattractive because she wears glasses or has bad hair.
A book I read called The Witches Boy obliquely fills the OP. the main character is seen as horrible by all. He falls in love with a blind girl. At the end he is given the chance for his deepest wish to come true. He wakes up to find himself just as ugly but his love has had her sight restored - and tangentially still loves him just as much.
It’s been ages since I saw Shallow Hal (I didn’t care for it and have never watched it again) so I may mangle some of the details here, but Hal has an attractive neighbor or coworker who he’s been pursuing for a long time but who has consistently rejected him because she thinks he’s shallow and only interested in her for her looks. Later in the movie she tells him that she’s realized she was wrong about him, because she’s seen him (under the influence of his “curse”) going out with various nice but unattractive women. Hal tells her thanks but no thanks, IIRC because he has realized that he’s truly in love with Rosemary. I can’t remember if he knows what Rosemary really looks like at that point, though.
A brief scene that definitely does happen after the “curse” has worn off involves Hal running into the first woman he’d met while under its influence. He’d perceived her as looking like a supermodel, while in reality she’s rather mousy and has bad teeth. However, she’s still more conventionally attractive than the 300 pound Rosemary. In fact, this other woman is really just an extreme makeover away from being the glamorous woman Hal originally saw, since both roles are played by the same actress. But although this woman is interested in Hal, he turns her down because he’s hoping to win Rosemary back.
Incidentally, I felt sorry for that other woman. We know she’s supposed to be a truly good person, as she appeared beautiful under the “curse”. She meets a guy who seems to find her really attractive, clearly an unusual experience for her because she suspects he’s putting her on, then when she runs into him later he’s suddenly totally uninterested. From her perspective this must seem like yet another encounter with a guy who thinks she’s too plain to bother with, and Hal’s previous interest probably seems like an act he put on because he was desperate to get laid or something.
There was an episode of *Taxi *with a similar plot. Louis is dating a blind woman. She has an operation to restore her sight. He’s afraid she won’t like him when she can see him. But she does.
Back when I was teaching theater to children, I directed a version of Cinderella with two princes: a handsome and athletic Prince Charming and a shy and unattractive Prince Myron. Even though Cinderella was pursued by Charming and everyone thought she should be with him because of his good looks, she eventually chose Myron, simply because he was kind and really paid attention to her. I wish I could remember the author of the play.
One of my ulterior motives in teaching was to create an army of 12-year old feminists who thought objectifying anyone was silly. All the plays I picked has “lessons.”
