DreamWorks Animation is best known for its hit series of Shrek movies based on a 1990 children’s picture book of the same name by author William Steig. In 2022, the studio took a page from its past success and dove back into children’s literature for its next great idea. The Bad Guys was a moderate boon at the box office and received favorable reviews from both critics and audiences, but it hasn’t garnered nearly as much attention as DreamWorks’ most titular ogre. The animation giant has had a lot of hit or misses since the premiere of the first Shrek movie in 2001. But they’ve also spawned a lot of franchises like Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon, and Kung Fu Panda.
With a plan for multiple movies, The Bad Guys was set up to be DreamWork’s next major investment. With a sequel on the way in summer 2025 and a TV short under its belt, it remains to be seen if it will have the same staying power as its predecessors. Still, it might just be that viewers need to take a second look at this genuinely enjoyable film.
DreamWork’s The Bad Guys Is Based on a Children’s Graphic Novel
The Bad Guys Book Series
First Installment
The Bad Guys (2015)
Most Recent Release
The Bad Guys: The Serpent And The Beast (2024)
Upcoming Release(s)
The Bad Guys: One Last Thing (2024)
Number of Issues
20
DreamWorks Animation is one of the best in the business, and since 2020 the studio has produced some major hits for all ages.
Like a great deal of animated movies, The Bad Guys isn’t entirely original material, but DreamWorks made good use of it. The roots of the movie can be found in a children’s graphic novel by Australian author Aaron Blabey. In 2015, he published the first two installments of The Bad Guys. The comic book follows the story of Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Shark, and Mr. Piranha, who try to go about changing people’s perception of them as bad guys by doing good things. In 2019, the series made the New York Times Best Seller list.
DreamWorks was not the only studio that had expressed interest in the property either. According to The Daily Telegraph, more than one conglomerate had wanted to option the book series. The publication stated that, as of 2017, it had sold “1.7 million copies and . . . there was a bidding war for the movie rights.” Due to production conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic, the release of The Bad Guys film was delayed multiple times. The movie finally hit theaters in spring 2022 with first-time director Pierre Perifel (an animator on Kung Fu Panda) at the helm.
But just one movie was never how far the filmmakers intended to go. DreamWorks released an original holiday special on Netflix in 2023 titled The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday. A short in which The Bad Guys look for a bank to rob on Christmas. Audiences were made aware of another follow-up special on July 10, 2024, The Bad Guys: Halloween Heist — mostly through the posting of the details for the companion book to be published by Scholastic. A full-length feature, The Bad Guys 2, is slated for a 2025 release, with the original cast returning to reprise their roles.
The Animation in DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys Was Inspired by Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
DreamWorks Animation has produced hand-drawn, stop-motion, and CGI animated films since its founding in 1994.
The techniques developed for Sony Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse heavily influenced the animation style of The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
Disney creatives in the late 1990s and early 2000s — tried its hand at multiple mediums in its early years. While Disney was still focusing on fairy tales, DreamWorks released the animated epic The Prince of Egypt (based on the Book of Exodus in the Christian Bible) in 1998. It had a star-studded cast and a memorable soundtrack with hit musical artists. Hans Zimmer and Stephen Schwartz wrote the soundtrack and songs, respectively, and the movie won an Oscar for Best Original Song for “When You Believe.”
The studio would go on for a few more years before totally transitioning to computer animation. After The Prince of Egypt came The Road to El Dorado (2000) and Chicken Run (2000). The latter was a stop-motion venture with Peter Lord, best known for his Wallace and Gromit films. Joseph King of Dreams (2000) would be another biblically inspired traditionally animated film with not near the success of The Prince of Egypt, followed by Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003). Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and Flushed Away (2006) would be the last stop-motion movies the studio would produce before its output became all CGI projects.
The Bad Guys would be DreamWork’s first venture into a new animation trend established by Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man:Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Spider-Verse creators crafted a singular look for the 2018 film that’s clearly modern with a nod to hand-drawn animation techniques of the past. Filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller stated they wanted a movie that makes audiences feel like they’ve “walked inside a comic book.” They used a technique that combined “line work and painting and dots and all sorts of comic book techniques.” A similar technique shows through in The Bad Guys and, most recently, in DreamWorks Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022).
DreamWork’s The Bad Guys Doesn’t Overcomplicate Its Main Message
The Bad Guys still had a lesson for audiences at the end of the film, but the main focus was still action and comedy throughout the movie.
The Bad Guys movie was a fairly loose adaptation of the graphic novel but still maintains the spirit of the source material. The additional heist element was “dreamed up” by DreamWorks as a nod to heist films of the past. It’s been described as aiming to have “a similar twist on the heist genre that Shrek did on fairy tales, and what Kung Fu Panda did for the kung fu genre.” And The Bad Guys certainly does deliver an action-packed thrill ride mixed with comedy and memorable characters. It’s a solid start to a multi-film franchise.
Unlike many animated films of the present day, The Bad Guys doesn’t try to do more than what animation was known for at its inception — entertain. Wendy Ide in The Observernoted it as “Looney Tunes meets the Ocean series.” And it’s true, there are quite a few sight gags that hearken back to the days of Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny as the protagonists execute their mad cap capers. Ide says it best when she states it’s “It’s deliberately preposterous . . . But there’s a kernel of believability where it matters: in the easy repartee and fully fleshed friendships. It’s sharp, silly and frequently very funny.” The Bad Guys ends with a lesson of friendship that goes down easily, but the antics and the comedy and the action are really what drive the film.
In a way, The Bad Guys attempted to do less than a lot of studios with their animated endeavors but was just as successful. With movies like Disney’s Encanto (2021) tackling the topics of generational family trauma through its main characters and Inside Out 2 (2024), even more recently, diving into the nuances of a changing mind as people age — it’s nice to come up for air with movies like The Bad Guys. Bad Guys brings animation back to its zany roots and, while it still has a “lesson” to take home, it’s still an incredibly fun watch. Even Pixar Animation Studios has noted that maybe it needs to take a step back from deep dives and start creating films for a more general audience again.
Audiences have yet to see if Bad Guys 2 will live up to the first movie. But if the success of the book series is any indication, all signs point to “yes.” Regardless, The Bad Guys looks like it might be part of a trend of animated movies getting back to their zany roots. And maybe it’ll inform other studios as to how to move forward with developing not just morality tales, but purely entertaining movies again as well.
The Bad Guys
PG
Animation
Action
Adventure
To avoid prison, a gang of notorious animal criminals pretends to seek being rehabilitated, only for their leader to realize that he genuinely wants to change his ways.