In traditional fairy tales, ogres are man-eating beasts. The prince usually rescues the princess, they marry and live happily ever after. How do the makers of 'Shrek' use presentational devices to reverse this tradition, to reveal the ogre as good, and the prince as evil? Throughout this essay, I intend to analyse the characters of Shrek and Lord Farquaad and analyse how the filmmakers use various comical devices to create an unusual fairy tale. In the film 'Shrek', the prince is perceived to be the 'baddie' and Shrek as the 'goodie', this is untypical of a traditional fairy tale...
It is controversial because they both come to hate each other when in fact they only dislike the personality of their own characters stereotypical role. The end of the film reverses our own expectations of the characters and I personally believe this is what the makers deliberately set out to achieve, so by the end we love Shrek and the Dragon and hate Lord Farquaad and hate Robin Hood and his merry men.

Perhaps the message of the story is that you can't judge a book by its cover and its what's on the inside that counts.