«Puss in Boots: The Last Wish» is an American computer-animated adventure film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures.
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- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a 2022 American computer-animated adventure film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures.
- The sequel to the spin-off film Puss in Boots (2011) and the sixth installment in the Shrek franchise.
- The film was directed by Joel Crawford and co-directed by Januel Mercado.
- During the montage where Big Jack Horner assembles his Baker’s Dozen, the horses pulling their carriage were actually unicorns whose horns were cut off
- Goldilocks has details that reflect her being raised by the Three Bears: her hairdo resembles bear ears, she has two different earrings just like her mother, she has blue eyes and a necklace like her brother, and gains two scars at her left eyebrow that matches her father’s missing left eye.
- The film employs a stylized animation similar to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and The Bad Guys (2022). The filmmakers decided to move away from the realistic animation style employed in Shrek (2001) and Puss in Boots (2011) in favor of a more creative, larger-than-life style to showcase Puss in Boots’ adventure.
- The filmmakers cite the Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) as an influence on the film: “They’re all after the ultimate fairytale prize. Everybody feels they have to have the wish, which really just leads to a great kind of action adventure with great momentum.” In one scene, the protagonists and the antagonists are also involved in Mexican Standoff and their faces are shown with extreme close-ups as a nod to Sergio Leone’s movie.
- At 1 hour and 42 minutes, this is the longest film in the Shrek franchise.
- In the fight with the giant, during the sweeping crowds shot, one can find the wolf in a shadowed alleyway.
- When the Wolf reveals his intentions at his first appearance, Puss was drinking his 9th cup while the rest are on the table. The empty cups represents the lost lives of Puss and the last one represents the one that Death wants to take personally.
- There are several call-backs to the first movie. Puss and Kitty dance together again to take the map from Goldilocks. A cat in Mama Luna’s home says “Ooh” like in the first movie. And Humpty’s name is in the fairy-tale book that Goldilocks reads.
- During the fight with the giant, Puss is flung into a bakery store sign. Freezing the image before he hits it shows it’s a Jack Horner bakery, foreshadowing his presence later in the film.
- Many nods to Disney films are seen when Jack Horner collects magic items to start his mission to collect the map including: Mary Poppins’ magic bag, Aladdin’s magic carpet, Cinderella’s glass slipper, Captain Hook’s hook (from Peter Pan), Triton’s trident (from The Little Mermaid), poison apples (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), the Eat Me cookie and Drink Me potion (from Alice in Wonderland), the pumpkin that turns into a stagecoach (from Cinderella), a spinning wheel (from Sleeping Beauty), a walking broomstick and a sorcerer hat with stars on it (both from Fantasia). It is fair noticing, however, that many of these items were already present in the original source materials (stories and fairytales) these Disney films are based on.
- When Jack Horner first rides off on the stagecoach with the Baker’s Dozen, he says, “I’ll get you my kitties… and your little dog, too!”, referencing the famous line from The Wizard of Oz when the Wicked Witch says “I’ll get you my pretty… and your little dog, too!”. Jack Horner is also looking into the crystal ball, as the Witch does throughout The Wizard of Oz.
- The Ethical Bug’s voice sounding like actor Jimmy Stewart is a nod to the name “Jiminy” Cricket in Disney’s version of Pinocchio.
- Jack Horner’s bag is clearly Mary Poppins’ magic carpet bag as evidenced by the umbrella he pulls out of it that makes his baker float away, its ability to hold anything he puts inside of it, and when he refers to it as a “magic nanny bag” later in the movie.
- The location of Goldi’s true family is hidden in the first letter of each line in her favorite fairytale. It spells out “you already have it”.
- Jack Horner (John Mulaney) says he hates talking animals. Mulaney had previously voiced talking animals in his prior films: Peter Porker / Spider-Ham in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Chip in Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022), the latter of which also released in 2022. He was also set to play a mouse in Cinderella, but he had to pull out and was replaced by James Acaster.
- Goldilocks’ favorite book “a collection of Fairytales: Vol. 1” was actually a property of the orphanage she stayed previously and was borrowed by other fairy tale characters like Hansel, Gretel, and Humpty (character from the previous installment).
- This film was the first DreamWorks Animation film that used the assembling system named “PipeX”.
- In the fight against the giant, the bell rings a total of 8 times, and the 8th time the bell rings is when puss loses his 8th life, the bell rings represent how many lives puss has loss.
- A reference to the Wizard of Oz is the Wicked Witch of the West among the waiting patients of the Del Mar village’s Doctor. In fact, her skin is green unlike the witches working for Rumpelstiltskin in Shrek: Forever After, whose skin is instead grey.
- The Ethical Bug that accompanies Jack Horner is based on the Talking Cricket from the Pinocchio fairytale but more from the Walt Disney’s animated movie adaptation of the same story, considering his role as conscience and moral guide and not as a minor and marginal character like in the Carlo Collodi’s version. Pinocchio got two adaptations in the same year as this film, Pinocchio (2022) and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022).
- Puss’s fight with the giant was originally part of the first film, Puss in Boots (2011), with much of the choreography lifted directly from the deleted scene’s storyboards. These included the beast kidnapping citizens in a hollow log, the Spanish Splinter, and Puss messing with the villain’s eyepatch right before hitting them with their own swinging weapon. The biggest difference is that the original monster would have been a giant ogre, to relate back to Shrek and Puss’s fairy tale origin.
- The first animated feature film of Harvey Guillén, Wagner Moura and Florence Pugh.
- During their final, epic battle, Puss in boots says “say hello to my little knife” this seems to be a nod to the famous line in Scarface when the lead character says “say hello to my little friend”
- The film was released eleven years after Puss in Boots (2011), exceeding the seven and a half-year gap between The Croods (2013) and The Croods: A New Age (2020).
- Some main elements of the movie are taken directly from the Walt Disney’s animated classic 1940 film Pinocchio, iconic animated movie adaptation of the Italian Carlo Collodi’s novel with the same name. The entire concept of the Wish-Granting Star. The magic phrase “Star Light Star Bright First Star I See Tonight”, is the same poem recited by Geppetto when he wished upon the Wishing Star in his film for his still lifeless puppet Pinocchio to become a real boy. The Ethical Bug is a parody of the character Jiminy Cricket, who acted as Pinocchio’s conscience in the Disney’s animated film, unlike the Talking Cricket in the original Carlo Collodi’s story, who acted as a minor and more marginal character. In the flashback scene showing how “Little” Jack Horner became envious of Pinocchio and magical creatures in general, Pinocchio is performing similarly to the “I’ve got no strings” musical scene in the Walt Disney’s animated film, this doesn’t happen in the Carlo Collodi’s novel, the only differences to the Disney film (except for the lyrics, of course, that is “No strings attached”, parody of “I’ve got no strings”) are the absence of other marionettes and Geppetto as manager instead of Stromboli.
- The film is helmed by the same head creative team of The Croods: A New Age (2020): director Joel Crawford, producer Mark Swift, editor James Ryan, and screenwriter Paul Fisher. Like that film, this one was also in development for a long time, changed directors, and took a fresher approach to its animation style (although The Croods: A New Age (2020) still used photorealistic computer animation, unlike this film, which uses stylized CGI to mimic the look of fairy-tale illustrations).
- The second movie in the DreamWorks Shrek-verse to use Smash Mouth’s song All Star, the first being Shrek (2001) in its opening credits.
- The film’s title was announced as Puss in Boots 2: Nine Lives & 40 Thieves in June 2014.
- John Mulaney’s third time voice acting in a feature-length film, after Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022), the latter of which was also released in 2022.
- Heitor Pereira composed the film’s score, replacing Henry Jackman from the first film.
- A cat’s normal body temperature runs anywhere between 99.5 to 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is why Puss tells the doctor he runs hot when attempting to take his temperature.
- Olivia Colman’s fifth animated film, after Arrietty (2010), The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021), Ron’s Gone Wrong (2021), and Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022), the latter of which was also released in 2022.
- It was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film and numerous accolades, including at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice Awards, and British Academy Film Awards.
- The second DreamWorks Animation movie that starts with “Universal Pictures Presents” in the beginning. The first one was The Bad Guys (2022), which was also released in 2022.
- Plans for a sequel to Puss in Boots began in November 2012, when executive producer Guillermo del Toro shared plans to take the titular character on an adventure to a “very exotic locale”, who also stated a couple of drafts for the screenplay were completed.
- DreamWorks Animation’s second film to be released in December, after The Prince of Egypt (1998), twenty-four years prior.
- The second theatrically released sequel to an animated prequel and an animated spin-off, after Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022), which was also released in 2022.
- This is the first animated film that’s not from Illumination to be executive produced by Christopher Meledandri since Horton Hears a Who! (2008).
- This is the first DreamWorks Animation film to be executive produced by Christopher Meledandri.
- It was announced that the film would be helmed by Bob Persichetti, the head of story of the first film and one of the three directors of Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), in February 2019. Crawford was later announced as the new director in March 2021, along with Mercado. The majority of the new cast members, along with Pinault’s return, were announced in March 2022.
- The location of Goldi’s true family is hidden in the first letter of each line in her favourite fairytale.
- Released 11 years and two months after Puss in Boots (2011), this marks the longest gap between a non-Disney animated film and its sequel, surpassing the record set by The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015), released 10 years and three months apart.
- The Birthday Wish rule states that if the people seeking the Wishing Star reveal their wish to others before they make it, the wish will never come true. And as seen in the film, no one gets their wish because they told it to someone else before they could make their wish: Puss and Kitty told each other, Goldilocks told her bear family, and Jack Horner told his to the Ethical Bug.
- Jack Horner’s death scene is an homage to the Terminator’s death in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), except he gives a thumbs-down instead of a thumbs-up.
- One of Puss’s deaths is by a shellfish allergy. Some cats actually do suffer from an allergy to shellfish.
- Goldilocks dress starts off blue/multicolored and eventually changes to brown to symbolize her character arc. As she starts to fit into and accept her bear family as her real family, her dress changes color to fit in better with their fur color.
- Puss in Boots loses one of his nine lives when he is caught cheating while playing a game of poker with dogs. This scene is an homage to a series of paintings by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge; “Dogs Playing Poker”.
- There are various signs of the Wolf being Death, before he actually reveals his identity: The Wolf bears sickles and a hood, and a skull-shaped patch on his face Skull motifs surround the Wolf in his appearances The Wolf puts two coins over his eyes during Puss’s getaway, which was an ancient Greek funerary practice The title card for each of Puss’s eight deaths has the Wolf on the border. At the bar, when Puss claims he “laughs in the face of Death”, the Wolf’s claw scratches the bar surface in a moment of anger before he removes his cowl and shows his face to Puss.
- The bell tolls faintly in the background 8 times. The bells represent each of Puss’ 8 lives he previously used up before Wolf (Death) appears to take his last.
- When the Wolf appears during the riverside battle inside the Black Forest, his immediate surroundings look like a skull, foreshadowing his true nature.
- The numbered cards during the Death Montage have the wolf and his sickles on the four corners.
- Body Count: 23 (15 not counting Puss’s 8 lost lives)
- When Goldie and the 3 bears are in their house and reminiscing, Goldie is seen looking through a cherished book of fairy tales. When looking at the first letters of each row on one of the pages she’s looking at, it spells out ‘YOU ALREADY HAVE IT, implying that the family she’s pining for is already right there with the 3 bears.
- The town Puss saves from the giant is called Del Mar, implying it’s near the ocean. At the end of the movie, the heroes have stolen the governor’s ship from Del Mar’s docks.
- When the Bears break-in to Jack Horner’s house, Baby crashes through the window and smashes another window that has a vanity portrayal of Jack Horner. Then, when the family are all gathered together, they are in front of the same spot said portrayal was broken. This foreshadows how the Bears’ next venture would be to take over Jack Horner’s pie business now that he’s dead and it was Baby who suggested the idea.
- Goldilocks wish was foreshadowed when characters ripped part of the wanted poster of her and the three bears.
- This is the first DreamWorks Animation film since Abominable (2019) where a character is revealed to be the real villain of the movie.
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