Tom Kaulitz and Heidi Klum show up dressed as Shrek and Princess Fiona (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

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The original Shrek may be one of the most beloved movies of all time, but that might not help the latest film in the series. Since the trailer for Shrek 5 dropped, people sprinted online to poke fun at the upcoming picture.

Swathes of people are mocking the animation style and the content they’ve seen so far, leading to a deluge of memes about the movie:

The backlash shows how companies using nostalgia can backfire, as well as how social media deals with sequels to beloved properties.

To begin, let’s talk about Shrek 5.

This is upcoming animated movie is produced by DreamWorks and distributed by Universal. Unsurprisingly given the name, it’s the fifth main film in the Shrek franchise, with the latest being 2010’s Shrek Forever After.

Shrek 5 sees much of the main cast return, with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz playing Shrek, Donkey, and Princess Fiona respectively. On top of this, Zendaya was cast as the daughter of the eponymous character. You’ve got to market to the kids, after all.

The release date is penned in for Christmas 2026—but some of the online reaction to the trailer suggests few are excited by that. Have a little watch:

What Are People Saying About The Shrek 5 Trailer?

Currently, there’s a swell of people online creating memes and making jokes about how distasteful they find the Shrek 5 trailer. They’re pretty wide ranging, including referencing a scene from The Simpsons:

Trying to organize a tongue-in-cheek movement to force the studio to alter Shrek 5’s animation style:

Or using popular meme formats to express their dislike of the trailer:

One thing is clear: lots of people are making fun of Shrek 5. The question, as always, is why?

Why Are People Mocking The Shrek 5 Trailer?

The Shrek movies are huge. They’re some of the most successful films of all time, with Shrek 2 earning $441 million when it was released in 2004, which is roughly $666 million in today’s money.

This success made the movies a cultural touchstone. Swathes of people across the world grew up with the Shrek films—and that can make sequels released decades after the original (like Shrek 5) a touchy subject.

In a paper entitled ‘The Effects Of Childhood Nostalgia On Brand Loyalty,” researchers found “empirical evidence on the correlation between childhood nostalgia and brand loyalty.” In other words, when people are exposed to something young, they develop a deep attachment to it that lasts through into adulthood.

This goes for television and movies too, or even just art in general. They shape us. They become part of us, so we become protective over them.

When something like the Shrek 5 trailer drops that seems like a break from this tradition, a sense of wrongness arises, it’s as though a memorable bit of childhood is twisted and altered.

And the creators of Shrek 5 are aware of this risk. The movie is being made, to some degree at least, to take advantage of nostalgia. The point of creating a sequel—rather than making some entirely new—is trying to leverage people’s connection to the earlier movies so they pay and see the latest one.

But when a trailer appears like Shrek 5 that is perceived as too far away from the original brand, it can feel like a betrayal. A negative use of nostalgia, if you will.

Thankfully, there’s a rather simple way to deal with this emotion: head online and make a meme about the Shrek 5 trailer. Crack some jokes. This helps shift the reaction from one of frustration into an entertaining pile on.

In the end, Shrek 5 is a mass-market movie that’s being advertised to a new generation of young people. Expecting a franchise like that to stay the same simply isn’t realistic.

Despite that, though, the childhood connection many feel to the Shrek series can make this sort of update feel particularly egregious. Mocking and making memes about it as a natural and somewhat harmless way of channelling this emotion.

Will Shrek 5 be any good? There’s no way of knowing. But, at the very least, we have some funny posts to amuse ourselves until then.