Shrek might live in Far Far Away, but he looks like he just came back from somewhere even Farther Away: Turkey. In a newly released trailer for the highly anticipated Shrek 5, Shrek, Fiona, and their daughter (voiced by Zendaya), and Donkey all gather to scroll through ogre-thirst-trap memes with mister Mirror Mirror on the Wall. There’s no time to discuss how on the nose this is, because Shrek and Fiona have visibly undergone radical, off-putting facial reconstruction. I don’t care that these ogres are a mere amalgamation of zeros and ones inside some DreamWorks animator’s computer. This is serious.
Donkey somehow looks the same level of goofy as before, but Shrek’s and Fiona’s new faces are … jarring. Their noses are shaped differently, their philtrums are less pronounced and longer, their lips and smiles curve in odd ways, and both of them have seemingly larger eyes. It’s like they both got processed through Alix Earle’s favorite TikTok smoothing filter, or as one user on X wrote: “rhinoplasty, lip filler, cheek implants, jaw shave, chin reduction, face lift, blepharoplasty, buccal fat removal, botox, eye lift, cheek filler.”
Animation aficionados are telling us this was inevitable — that Shrek’s look is “outdated.” But I think the studio could have given us more pixels per inch without making the whole family look like they need third-revision rhinoplasties.
Maybe it’s the era we’re living in. Changing your face is the norm and everyone, including animated characters, are gunning for tweakments or “facial harmonizing.” A little filler here, a little Botox there, maybe a stitch or two if need be. The movie isn’t set to release until 2026, so there is still time to bully the studio into a redesign à la Sonic the Hedgehog. Everyone contact your local fairy godmother.