As the Shrek franchise dwindled in popularity back in the 2000s, a process that began with the poor reception to Shrek the Third, DreamWorks officially spun of the franchise to center more around Puss in Boots, an anthropomorphic cat parody of Zorro introduced in Shrek 2. Puss, notably voiced by Antonio Banderas, first received a theatrically-released spin-off, Puss in Boots, back in 2011, then a perhaps lesser-known Netflix series, The Adventures of Puss in Boots, which ran from 2015 to 2018. During Puss’ time in the spotlight, effectively taking over the franchise, DreamWorks had announced a Shrek 5, which has yet to see a proper release, let alone any solid news on its development.
In the meantime, Puss in Boots recently received a sequel, The Last Wish, in late 2022. Considering the 11-year gap, the announcement came as quite a surprise and I initially didn’t have much interest, as I hadn’t seen the previous film out of a lack of interest. Its very positive reception, however, convinced me otherwise and I finally saw a theatrical screening after it received an Oscar nomination for “Best Animated Feature”. As it turns out, not only does The Last Wish live up to the hype, it may have actually surpassed the quality of most of Disney and Pixar’s own output from the last few years.
