Dreamworks has shown us some interesting families over the years and the mother figures in these
movies have been especially memorable.
Even when in simple supporting roles, they leave a lasting impact on the audience.
With Mother’s Day upon us, we ask the question: Which of these mothers is truly the greatest?
I’m Kyle with WickedBinge and this is Dreamworks Moms: Good to Most Good.
Now, when it comes to Dreamworks, we really couldn’t think of any moms who would fall
in the evil category…
So this list is a ranking of pure goodness.
We’ll be ranking specifically based on these characters’ motherly skills and morals…
That said, we’ll be starting with the least good and working our way up to the most heroic…
Starting off with the least good, from Joseph: King of Dreams: Asenath Asenath became Joseph’s
wife in the latter half of the movie and was a likeable enough character.
The only reason we place her as least good on this list is because we’re ranking her
based on her abilities as a mother and we don’t get many interactions with her and
her kids.
We see that she’s supportive of Joseph in all he does, even getting the other women
of the home to help plant in the fields and aids her husband in designing where the grain
will be stored during the years of famine.
She was one of the few level-headed people of the film, having been the one to believe
Joseph's innocence and trying to sneak him food and trying to console her husband when
he saw his brothers.
But while we can only assume that she instilled that patience and insight in her children,
we can't be sure.
Next up, we have Janet Benson.
Much like her husband, she isn’t as accepting as some other parents on this list.
She nagged her son about being able to find a career, wanting her son to follow in her
husband’s footsteps and be a stirrer.
When Barry continued to be distracted, Janet had been the first of the couple to come to
the conclusion that it must have been a girl that was making a career so hard to choose.
After Barry stuck to his guns about the humans, Janet did eventually come around to supporting
Barry and being present during the trial.
The next spot goes to the top mother figure in Antz, the Queen.
We don’t see many interactions between her and Bala, but when we do, we see that she’s
a typical royal figure.
She wanted Bala to follow her footsteps and accept her place in the colony.
She supported the idea of Bala marrying General Mandible, even though her daughter clearly
had some issues with being with someone like the General.
We don’t want to label the Queen as bad, though.
She does express concern when she thinks Z is holding Bala hostage, demanding that the
General does all he can to find her and have her returned home.
When Bala reveals the General’s plan to flood the colony, rather than brushing off
her concerns, the Queen listens and tries to calm her people and keep them alive.
After Z swoops in to save the day, having the colony use each other to escape the rising
waters, the Queen allows Bala to choose Z as her partner and concedes to her daughter
forging her own path just as she had wanted.
Next up we have Penny the porcupine.
Like her husband Lou, she doesn’t have much of an influence on the story and just goes
along with whatever plan is being held in place.
Like the other animals, she’s impressed with RJ’s know-how and agrees on the idea
of stealing from the humans in order to gain more food for winter.
We don’t feel right about placing her lower on our list since she is protective of her
three sons and encourages their adventurous spirits, but we don’t feel we can rank her
higher since she also allows her children to be in harm's way as they gather food from
the humans.
Our next spot goes to fire-breathing and princess-keeping Dragon.
Though the story focuses more on Shrek and Donkey and whatever adventure they’re on,
we see more of Dragon in the third film.
She was present at Fiona’s baby shower, expressing that motherhood could be rough.
Dragon was the main caretaker of their children during the films and was clearly upset when
her offspring were ripped away to be gawked at through a window while Charming was taking
over Far Far Away.
Next on our list is Joseph’s mother, Rachel.
Now Rachel clearly adored her sons, but she had a special place in her heart for Joseph
and later Benjamin, with the other sons from Jacob’s first wife.
Since Rachel had such a difficult time conceiving, Joseph had been dubbed their miracle child
and it led to some bad blood in the family.
Like Jacob, Rachel had no issue showing favorites, and made Joseph a multicolored coat while
his brothers labored in the fields in drab well-worn clothes.
Even when the other sons complained about how Joseph was treated compared to them, Rachel
and Jacob didn’t take the complaints to heart.
We can give them some credit for wanting the best for Joseph, encouraging him to be educated
rather than spending every waking moment doing manual labor, but it led to the others becoming
jealous to the point that they sold Joseph into slavery.
Something that may have been prevented had they been more sensitive to the needs of their
other sons.
Next up we have the Queen of Far Far Away, Queen Lilian.
For those that have watched the Shrek films, you can likely guess why we had to place her
a little lower on our list.
While we understand that having a child that is cursed to become an ogre was likely not
an easy thing to come to terms with, Lilian allowed her husband to make the call to keep
Fiona away from everyone at night and eventually be sent to the dragon’s keep, waiting for
her to be rescued by some random prince.
However, Lilian doesn’t earn the title of evil or fall to a lower spot since she was
also the one that insisted they go to Rumplestiltskin, desperate to get her daughter back because
she didn’t feel the Fairy Godmother could be trusted.
When Fiona showed up with Shrek and was still an ogre, Lilian had been the one to try and
see the positive side, stating that they looked happy and she wasn’t going to risk losing
her child again just because Harold was being stubborn.
Not to mention that awesome moment where she freed Fiona and the other princesses from
Prince Charming by headbutting through a couple of brick walls.
Next on our list is the original dragon-rider Valka.
A brave warrior, she had tried to take a dragon on by herself in order to protect her son,
only hesitating when she noticed that Couldjumper was more curious than malicious.
The interaction led to her taking on a life of studying dragons and traveling the world,
freeing them where she could.
As noble as that is...it’s the main reason we can’t place her higher on our list.
Valka herself admits that she had regrets about not returning to Berk to be with her
family.
She explained that while she still loved Stoick and Hiccup, she knew that her views on dragons
wouldn’t be accepted by the other Vikings and so stayed clear of her old village.
Do a degree, we can sympathize with her.
But it’s hard to rank her higher as a mother when she basically chose dragons over helping
to raise her son.
Next on our list is the mother from the movie Home, Lucy Tucci.
Mother to Tip, we don’t see a lot of her in the film, but we’re also taking the series
on Netflix into consideration with her placement.
She encourages her daughter to strive for the best both in school and at home, and allows
Tip to express herself through various creative outlets.
When she and Tip were reunited at the end of the film, she was shown to be just as frantic
to find her child as Tip had been to hunt down her mother.
We can only imagine how hard it must have been to scour the countless homes and families
trying to find her child and Lucy had every right to be hesitant about Oh and the other
Boov.
Instead, she trusted Tip’s judgement, giving Oh a home when all was settled.
We see as the series goes on that she treated Oh like a son, always showing him affection
and making sure he knew he was family.
Next on our list we have Rita's mother from Flushed Away, Mrs Malone.
Like her husband, she was patient with her many children and while she expressed concern
for Rita’s safety when trying to help the family, she also trusted her daughter when
it came to Roddy.
She tells Roddy that she knew another mouse that had been a pet, making a comment that
he had been horribly lonely with no family or friends to speak of, showing that she may
have thought Roddy had a similar situation despite him insisting that he was happy where
he was.
She wasn’t shown long in this interaction, but it expressed that she was pretty intuitive
and nurtured everyone around her, be them her children, her husband, her mother, or
a mouse that was trying to get back to the surface she had never met before.
Next is the woman who mothered Ramses and Moses, Tuya.
Wife to Seti the First, she was seen as the more patient of the two, but still held the
same cool composure as the other royals were expected to.
She clearly sided with Moses on giving Ramses a chance to prove himself worthy of the throne,
hinting that the celebration held in Ramses' honour had been done with her encouragement.
When Moses initially meets Zipporah and humiliates her in front of everyone, Tuya is seen expressing
disappointment for her son’s actions and leads to Moses actually wanting to make peace
with Zipporah.
Later in the film when Moses finds out that he was taken in by the royal family, Tuya
expresses that she had always seen Moses as her own and loved him as she did Ramses.
We don’t doubt that for a second seeing as how she immediately took to Moses when
she found him in the basket.
Next on our list is Princess Fiona.
When Fiona became a parent, she was far more up to the challenge than Shrek was and was
happy to celebrate the occasion with her own mother and the other princesses while Shrek
was looking for Arthur.
When she was given a dwarf from Snow White, Fiona expressed disapproval at the idea of
not being able to do anything for her baby.
In the last part of the third film and the beginning of the fourth, Fiona is patient
and loving, taking to parenting quickly and laveshing her children in love and making
sure they had all they needed.
When Shrek is about to fade due to his contract with Rumpelstiltskin, he tells Fiona about
the life they had together, and Fiona lights up at hearing she had children, revealing
that she had daydreamed about the life she wanted in the dragon’s keep and that included
the offspring she got with Shrek.
Next up we have Alex's mother in Madagascar 2, Florrie.
The first to recognize Alex as her son, she and Zuba celebrated Alex’s return and helped
their son adapt to the life that he had been torn away from.
We learn that Zuba had blamed himself for losing their son, and that the two of them
had to face the cruel chance that Alex was likely killed by the poachers.
When Alex was unable to defeat Teetsi and faced being exiled, Florrie and Zuba gave
up their status and home to stand by their child.
When Zuba lashed out at Alex for not being a real lion, Florrie had been the one to get
Zuba to stop being stubborn, reminding her husband that they just got their son back
and they shouldn’t risk losing him again over a fight.
Next on our list is Spirit's mother, Esperanza.
A leader among her kind, she raised Spirit to follow in her footsteps so he could eventually
take over and care for the small tribe of wild horses.
As Spirit is growing up, we see that Esperanza is a little embarrassed by some of his antics,
but overall encourages Spirit to try new things and try to approach things in his own way.
When he’s captured by the humans, we see Esperanza trying to reach her son and aid
him.
When Spirit warns her to stay back so as not to put herself or the rest of their kind at
risk, we see the heartbreak Esperanza feels at having to leave him behind to care for
the others.
Luckily, they are reunited in the end and she gladly welcomes Rain to their fold.
Our silver medal of most good goes to Yocheved.
Mother to Moses, Miriam and Aaron, she is seen at the beginning of the Prince of Egypt.
She leads her children away from the soldiers hunting down the newborn sons, going to the
river to send Moses off in hopes of saving his life.
Now, the Nile River is nowhere near being the safest place on Earth.
Teeming with life, including crocodiles and hippos, we see first hand that Moses nearly
didn’t survive the trip down the river.
But we conceded that it was a desperate situation and that Yocheved felt like she had little
choice.
And for her other children, Yocheved clearly cared for them, encouraging them to stick
to their morals and raising them that though they were slaves, they could never be robbed
of their hope for freedom or their integrity when it came to their community, as oppressed
as it was.
It was an incredibly close call, but we have to give the gold medal of most good to Po’s
mother.
Like Yocheved, she hid her son away so he had some chance of surviving the attacks that
were taking place.
But what gave Po's mother some extra hero points was the fact that after she calms Po
down, she's seen attracting the wolves and Shen to her in order to be sure she was steering
them away from Po.
The act cost her her life and if that's not love, we don't know what is.
Yeah, self sacrifice is an easy way to earn a Gold medal of good, as far as we’re concerned…
and Po’s mom deserves that title.
But what do you think?
Who are the most good mothers among the Dreamworks universe?
Let us know in the comment section.
Don't forget to hit that notification bell and binge our Good-to-Evil playlist.
Where we break down the morality of the characters in your favorite cartoons, shows and movies.
But most importantly, stay wicked!