What’s the best music-related scene in any movie ever released?
If anything except for the visual of a giant gingerbread man Godzilla-roaring and flaming-gumdrop kicking his way into a castle popped into your head- you’re wrong. I’m sorry, it’s scientific. The finale of Shrek 2 is honestly a masterpiece not only from a writing perspective but also an imagination perspective and it is for this reason that the accompanying version of “Holding Out For A Hero” earns its place as one of my top writing inspiration songs.
First let’s breakdown the scene from a writing perspective because it’s technically wonderful. The stakes are clear: stop Fiona from kissing Prince Charming by midnight or the love potion she’s been slipped will take effect. Two movies of Shrek and Fiona’s relationship we’ve watched and it all could be taken away like that- those are some stakes. We also have a gorgeously theatrical villain orchestrating the entire plot and a castle of armed guards ready and waiting to stop our heroes from progressing. That’s a problem that requires a worthy answer.
My God does this movie deliver.
The writers sat around in a dimly lit room looking at the scenario at hand, took giant shots of liquor, threw their notes aside and declared: “Hold up! We’re in a fantasy setting. We can do literally anything we want. You know what…”
Begin the scene of a giant gingerbread man attacking a castle, and then for some reason a castle garrison FULLY PREPARED TO HANDLE THIS THREAT.
Both within universe and from a writing perspective how else are you going to defeat a giant roaring cooking but with hot milk?
It makes perfect sense!
(The “More Heat, Less Foam” line is my favorite of this sequence. I mean, it’s a sound military strategy in this situation.)
And of course the flaming gumdrop button is an effective weapon- have you even been burnt by hot sugar? That stuff’s awful.
The scene also includes so many significant character moments from Puss in Boot’s distraction of the guards and “self-sacrifice” moment to the soggy farewell to our doomed gargantuan baked abomination to the king’s visible regret at his role in all of this. Charming’s over-the top romanticisms are as grating to listen to as they are to watch and it’s so perfect for him. Fairy Godmother’s declaration of “Hit It!” sets the entire thing off on such an epic note. Shrek bursting through the door, a mirror of his act in the prior movie, caps the entire sequence off and sets the final bits of the movie into action. All set to a song about waiting for and needing a hero in a movie that’s done such a good job of subverting all those old hero/Disney/fantasy tropes because why not? It’s tight, tied-together, and wholly entertaining.
That’s the second thing about it all… it’s fun. Can that be a reason to love something as much as I love this movie scene? Fun? I think fun is undervalued in so much of today’s gritty ‘realistic’ dramatic movies and television shows. Have you ever looked out a window? I spent an hour the other day at work, it was a slow day, watching people parallel park. Life’s hilarious! Don’t take it so seriously sometimes.
This movie set out with a premise and leaned into it 100%. The internal consistency of this entire finale set piece is what makes it at once so entertaining. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I can’t help but feel the passion and joy the writers, animators, and whoever else worked on this thing when I set out of myself and think “I’m watching a giant gingerbread man named Mongo attack a castle set to a song from the 80’s and honestly I don’t even care how I got here.”
I think it’s because this scene at once does and doesn’t take itself seriously. It knows what it is and it stands on its own two feet. So much of humor even tries to impress itself upon you how clever it thinks it is, or what message is hiding behind the thing making you laugh. It takes you out of it for a moment, that kind of thoughtful laughter, or at the very least it fails to do what epic, ridiculous comedy should- it puts you back in yourself and the world you were trying to escape from.
I’ve a board of quotes I’ve printed out over the years above my desk at home- or at least I did before they got packed up like everything else and then I mislabeled my boxes and now I don’t know where it is. At the very top of it, spread out in all caps was a simple message to myself, wading through the joys of the wine industry.
IT’S SPOILED GRAPE JUICE, STUPID
Scenes like this and messages like that are reminders that even the topics we hold most passionately and close to our hearts and identities deserve to be taken lightly, sometimes. It’s a reminder to not be as hard on ourselves and others, our works, trials, and tribulations because sometimes life sucks and sometimes life’s downright hilarious because of how much it sucks and because of how much meaning we put on things like comedy, like writing, like wine and food, like movies.
The fun and the difficulty of writing fantasy is the level to which you can expect to be taken seriously. There’s less genre-ism than there used to be, sure, and I’m an avid fan of the genre but you still have those moments when you’re asked what you write or when you talk to someone and you get that pause and that comment.
“Oh, fantasy.”
Suspension of disbelief is as important here as anywhere else in writing and in making art, and I suppose if there’s a third lesson to be taken from this scene, it’s that. We all, in the stupefied, dazzled, totally bamboozled crowd of watchers that piled into see Shrek 2 and helped it become, at the time, the highest-grossing movie of 2004, were okay with the fact that we were listening to “Holding Out For A Hero” set to a scene of a giant gingerbread man Godzilla roaring and kicking his flaming gumdrop button at a castle.
We let the world go for a moment and were lost in the absurd splendor of it. There’s something weirdly hopeful about that.