Film Theory: Shrek's Donkey was SECRETLY a Human! (Shrek Movie)

[Music] and now I shall awaken her with true love's kiss name and wanna kissing of sleeping women is a federal offense but she's my one true love Joe Olivia welcome my true love's kiss tell it to the judge you creep watch the crown hello Internet welcome to film theory the show that turns your favorite bedtime stories into nightmare fuel today we're diving back into the Shrek franchise because well honestly I wanted to do something on an animated movie but didn't really feel like writing another prediction theory for frozen - and Shrek is well he's always relevant and I've been thinking about the franchise a lot thanks in large part to the excellent analysis videos on the channel Schaefer Ellis Productions which if you've never heard of does awesome videos analyzing all sorts of classic animated movies but more on him and his work later so what else is there to say about Trek nearly 20 years after it was first released well how about we finally put a definitive solution behind the mysterious origins of its most iconic character I mean as most of you know the Shrek universe is chock full of fairy tale and Nursery Rhyme characters who when the movie begins are getting rounded up and turned in for a reward all the big name fairytale characters are their Seven Dwarves the three bears Tinkerbell no key Oh a talking donkey three blind mice but in the words of Sesame Street but one of these things just doesn't belong here a talking donkey have you ever really stopped to think about that I mean all these other fairy tale characters are super famous and easily recognizable even the generic characters like witches and ogres and princesses trapped in towers are tropes from countless other fairy tales but a talking donkey where is he from that my loyal theorists is the question that we explore today what is the origin of Shrek donkey because I think I have an answer one that is provable beyond a reasonable doubt and let's just say that the conclusion to this one is not giving us a happy ever after if you search through fairy tale Lord there's really only one famous talking donkey to note the titular character in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale the donkey it's not one that most people know but basically it goes a little something like this a rich king and queen are upset that they can't have a son but then one day God blesses the couple and she suddenly gives birth to a donkey she wants to kill it because you know don't baby but the King refuses and so the couple raise it as their son so we have ourselves a donkey who learns to speak and have manners he even teaches himself how to play music and this is starting to sound a lot like our donkey from Shrek right he speaks English he sings all the time he could have decent enough table manners when he needs to and is one of the few fairytale characters who knows the way to lord farquaad's castle suggesting a possible royal backstory who knows where this Farquaad guy is oh I do I'm hilarious does anyone else that's not all there's one really suspicious quote from the fairy tale that seems to lock this in as our donkey quote the young lordling once went out walking full of thought and came to a well he looked into it and in the mirror clear water saw his donkey's form he was so distressed about it that he went out into the wide world and only took with him one faithful companion one faithful travelling companion it's an especially weird detail for this fairy tale to include because that is all we ever hear about this other mysterious character but using context please we can clearly identify this as someone who's a loner is also comfortable travelling with a donkey so that pretty much points to someone like Shrek right this is absolutely the origin story for our talking donkey isn't it it would be until you get to the big twist at the end of the story you see the donkey and his companion go to another Kingdom and make friends with the king who marries his daughter off to the donkey because you know the donkey is depressed you know times were different back then okay anyway just as the donkey and his bride are about to you know celebrate their marriage night the donkey takes his skin off to reveal himself to be a real boy King doesn't believe it so the next night he sneaks into his daughter's room and watches the proceedings there's a lot of reasons you weren't told this one at story time at night or reasons why people don't choose to adapt Grimm's fairy tales accurately anyway suffice it to say the king is impressed with what he sees all the old people in the story die and the donkey gets himself a wife and two kingdoms but you can start to see our problem as far as this theory is concerned right the donkey in the fairy tale isn't real donkey it's just a human disguised inside of a donkey's skin but one glance at donkey and dragons offspring and Shrek the third is all the proof we need that Shrek's donkey is a hundred percent donkey and zero percent human those are drawn keys and dongjun's no doubt about it so the grimms donkey out of the picture we're back at square one which honestly kind of sucks because that would have been the best title and thumbnail ever which means a return to the drawing board so we know donkey is a fairytale character otherwise he wouldn't be getting rounded up with all the others or worth any sort of reward so is he one just made up for the purposes of these movies or could there be another explanation for what's really going on here well two years ago in a now-deleted reddit post a user named year me vee proposed a different possibility that donkey did indeed hail from a fairy tale in fact one that is far more popular than Grimm's the donkey ever was good donkey be one of the kidnapped boys from Tokyo is it possible that donkey started as a human child one stolen off of the street and shipped off to Pleasure Island where he like so many others before him would transform into a donkey and eventually be sold off into slavery no admittedly that's a pretty dark backstory for a main character in a PG rated franchise about an ogre who farts a bunch but it would help explain why in a movie full of celebrity cameos from history's most iconic fairy tales we would spend so much time with an otherwise out-of-place talking donkey and the rationale here doesn't just boil down to throwing up our arms and saying well they're practically the only other fairytale donkeys of note so he must be one of them the clues pointing towards a Shrek Pinocchio crossover are ogres are like onions Oh curse have layers onions have layers you get it so let's start peeling them back first let's look at what few details we can actually learn about donkey's backstory based on some of the things he says throughout the movies he says this in Shrek the third registan to feel nauseous for memories of wedgies and swirlies as Puss in Boots points out moments later donkeys don't wear clothes so this would suggest that donkey was a human at some point in his life when he was a child how else would he have been given a wedgie donkeys don't wear clothes but human children absolutely do or at least they're supposed to know screaming naked babies around here later on and that's a movie donkey and puss swap bodies and we get ourselves this short conversation but that we're maybe much played by the finest oh you'll learn to control that this seems to suggest that donkey learned to talk as a donkey later in life I mean after all who can remember what it's like learning to talk as a baby if donkey was a school-age boy who got himself turned into a donkey and Pleasure Island however he would remember how hard it was to talk normally following his transformation and how when it first happened his normal patterns of speech started to get interrupted by uncontrollable donkey Bray's and wouldn't you know it that's not just me speculating here it's exactly what we see happen in Pinocchio when we watch lamp-wick transform on Pleasure Island we see two key things one that he is indeed able to continue speaking like a human despite being fully transformed into a donkey and to his normal speech starts to get interrupted with donkey noises in fact based on the scenes we know one additional detail here boys who are transformed into donkeys but still able to talk fluently are sent back to Pleasure Island for a little bit longer until they fully lose that ability this scene also demonstrates another key feature of how the donkeys get treated on Pleasure Island they're allowed to keep their clothes until they're ready to be sold off to the salt mines here we see a child who's gone full donkey gets stripped of his clothes by the coachman and sent to the crate where as Alexander our boy from earlier is allowed to stay dressed now this is important because donkey in Shrek clearly has memories of being both a donkey and wearing clothes this donkeys still allowed to wear clothes detail not only opens up the possibility of him getting called donkey dumpy drawers we know that Pleasure Island is specifically full of bullies the boys are all trapped there because they misbehave so another half turned a child making fun of donkey for being scared and soiling his donkey drawers totally within the realm of possibility here and lastly it probably goes without saying but it's definitely worth pointing out it's clearly established that both Pinocchio and Shrek share the same universe heck the first time we see donkey he's standing behind Pinocchio in line could this be DreamWorks his way of slyly suggesting that the two characters are linked maybe maybe not but if nothing else it verifies that trek pulls from the Pinocchio lore so it would make perfect sense for a Pleasure Island donkey to be walking around somewhere in this world so the Pleasure Island Theory gives us a source for donkeys who wear clothes used to be human and have learned to talk as donkeys all of which line up with a few small details that donkeys let slip about his own pass throughout these movies but I just wish that there was something more like one final clinching piece of evidence something that's a little less lore based and a little bit more I don't know design based scientific brain blast I got it look at their species donkey appears to be the exact same breed of donkey as the boys turned donkey enoki oh look at this in Pinocchio it seems like the Pleasure Island boys turn into one of two types of donkeys either all brown or all grey no colour at the tips of the ears a lighter color along their stomach and a little tuft of either black or brown hair on their head and down into their neck and now look at donkey in Shrek same design great tall ears with no colour at the tips a lighter color of grey along his stomach and a little tuft of black hair on his head neck this seems really important to point out because there are over a hundred and forty different donkey breeds and these breeds all have very different hair lengths very different hair colors and very distinct markings till the fact that donkey is matching up to the exact type that we see coming out of Pleasure Island feels like The Smoking Gun that we were missing before so at this point I have little choice but to stamp this theory as matpat certified fresh' really considering all this evidence how could donkey not be a now grown boy from Pleasure Island the theory has an answer for pretty much everything we know about the character we've established one that it make him one of the very few famous fairytale donkeys to that he was once human three wore clothes as a donkey four learned to control his brain but can still talk in English five was bullied in donkey form six comes from a lore that also exists in Shrek and seven just so happens to be the exact species of donkey coming out of Pleasure Island there is simply no other fairy tale or nursery rhyme out there that covers the spread the way the Pleasure Island Theory does not even close but if this is true which it certainly seems to be it opens up one very dark reality about donkey his personality and what he wants to keep hidden about his past shortly after that Shrek the third clip I played earlier to get ourselves these lines where it seems like donkey admits to his tragic origin story when you are clearly not aware of the underpants let's just say some things are better left unsaid and leave it at that what first appears to be a joke about donkeys wearing underwear according to this theory actually becomes donkey not wanting to address the horrific way he became a donkey in the first place some things are better left unsaid he doesn't want to talk about his trauma which is totally fine until you consider the timeline of events Pinocchio story begins with him as a lifeless toy let's call this stage one he then becomes a living toy which we'll call stage 2 stage 3 is when it becomes a partial donkey living toy for a while before finally entering stage 4 at the end of the movie when he's turned into a fully grown human boy now throughout the Shrek movies Pinocchio appears exclusively in his stage 2 living toy form meaning the events depicted in Shrek occur after Pinocchio comes to life but before he's sent off to Pleasure Island and becomes a weird partial donkey creature so in the Shrek films Pinocchio has no idea that Pleasure Island even exists but donkey does he's already been there in fact we know that he managed to escape like we see in that Alexandre clip might your name be Alexander so you can't all take it back we know donkey has turned but hasn't gone full donkey yet like all the other kids that are being shipped off to the Salt Mines meaning that he managed to escape before that happened the long and short of what I'm saying here is that donkey knows full well that the evil Pleasure Island scheme of kidnapping boys and selling them as donkeys into the salt mines is in full swing even as the events of Shrek are taking place the criminals running the Pleasure Island scheme are very careful not to ship off any boys turned donkeys off the island till they can no longer talk because donkeys who can talk could feasibly tell people on the mainland about their criminal enterprise and shut the whole thing down but here we have ourselves donkey the lone fairytale creature who could end all the suffering of so many boys but does donkey step up to the challenge of being a hero does he tell anyone about the ongoing horrors of Pleasure Island does he do anything to stop these atrocities let's just say some things are better left unsaid and leave it at that he does not said he just follows Shrek around for a few movies living it up banging dragons in the morning I'm making waffles he was turned into a donkey because presumably he was a bad kid it seems like he hasn't improved with age orphaned boys are getting kidnapped and sold off by the boatload and donkey is letting it happen does this make donkey a complete ass I don't know but in the end there's definitely blood on donkeys hands or I suppose hooves but hey that's just a theory Oh film theory and if you want to see more Shrek I suggest you watch our other video on Shrek's deadly farts there is an actual scientific explanation for why his farts are so dangerous and we go into that on the video to the left or you know what do me a favor and check out that channel I mentioned earlier Schaefer Ellis productions his analyses of classic animated movies coming from Disney and Pixar he's incredibly insightful in his observations and it's just funny to boot it's not the best but it's my favorite which is a pretty impressive feat considering how generic the story is I first discovered him through his videos on Trek and I've been watching him ever since but I don't think anyone ever takes a look at it and says oh yeah now that's one of the greatest sequels in cinematic history why am i Luigi he's doing great work out there he's only got 500,000 subscribers go out show him some love give him some of that valuable watch time that YouTube cherishes so much and tell a mad mad Sencha and shaffer list if at some point you wanna do something together let me know I would love to talk to you about that you're doing great work out there man hopefully this gets you a bit more attention so anyway that's it for today I need to start working on some scary theories for October I'll see you then [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 5,288,934

Rating: 4.9161024 out of 5

Keywords: shrek, shrek movie, shrek 2, shrek retold, donkey, shrek donkey, donkey origin, pinocchio, shrek pinocchio, lost boys, shrek reboot, shrek meme, meme, fiona, shrek song, hallelujah shrek, shrek is love, shrek is life, shrek full movie, film theory, film theorists, matpat, film theory shrek, horror, scary

Id: 5JRDi5m2l-U

Length: 16min 5sec (965 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Idkm3m3s]

HOLD THE DOORS THE FUCCBOIS ARE COMING

[u/[deleted]]

At what time?

[u/[deleted]]

Ew matpat.

Finally now I can have negative karma