Not just for DreamWorks, though.note
"Uhh... There are talking animals. And they do things animals don't normally do. And they all make this face." (holds up picture of guy smirking)
You know that face. The clever, asymmetrical smirk. The similarly crooked eyebrows. The intense stare-down that comes at you from the promotional movie posters - especially for CG family films. It's the expression that tells you the hero is going to be up to no good, and is much cooler than any of those classic, mainstream, conformist wimps those other studios produce. The character probably won't make that face in the movie, but it doesn't matter - on the poster the face says "Go see our movie, kids, or you're not cool!" It's usually a way to get audiences to see a particular film over another, and promises a very different tone from what we are used to. It's the facial expression form of hip, sassy, snarky dialogue.
This trope pertains to faces seen outside of the body of the film or TV show and only in marketing material... in posters, billboards, ads, etc. Otherwise, it would be a No Fourth Wall or an Aside Glance.
Films produce advertising and posters as various stages of production and all of these are meant to be teasers. The stuff that comes first is normally dominated by faces staring at you because that's the only thing finalized at that point. So the DreamWorks Face is one of numerous stock attractive faces. For instance, you may have also seen the "everyone is smiling, bright eyes and maybe waving at you".
See also Mascot with Attitude, American Kirby Is Hardcore, Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You.
Examples:
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Advertising
- The red M&M has this expression permanently etched onto his face in advertisements, reflecting his sarcastic personality.
- Isaiah Mustafa as The Man Your Man Could Smell Like in the Old Spice commercials, especially when he's on a horse.
Anime & Manga
- Anpanman: Nigauriman is The Charmer and often does this to the ladies.
- Daimos:
- Raiza, who prides herself in being Prince Richter's right hand, is prone to this trope. She makes an especially smug one
◊ when gleefully telling Melvi that Dr. Wallin was executed for treason against the Baam Empire.
- Reiko, the dim-witted upper-class woman from episode 11, makes one◊ as she confidently proclaims that Kyoushiro is in love with her. It serves to highlight her The Ditz status since it couldn't be farther from the truth.
- Raiza, who prides herself in being Prince Richter's right hand, is prone to this trope. She makes an especially smug one
- Kaze no Shōjo Emily: Rhoda Stewart is a smug Academic Alpha Bitch who loves to rub her successes in Emily's face and pranks her on her first day of school with a live snake, Each time, she has this smirk.
- Lady!!: When Hiroyuki◊'s introduced, he smiles with half-lidded eyes as he trolls his Alpha Bitch cousin Sonoko.
- La Seine No Hoshi: The anime's official soundtrack cover◊ features the titular heroine, Simone, smirking this way as she holds her sword between her teeth.
- Lupin III has used this expression since the late 60s. Note the page image for the Green Jacket series.
- Princess Diana: Yes, even Princess Diana can make a DreamWorks Face.
- On the Volume 4 cover of Puella Magi Kazumi Magica, Niko Kanna sports one.
- Seraph of the End: Shinoa Hiiragi often makes this face befitting to her Gadfly status. If you see her on a cover, she'll usually be wearing a DreamWorks Face.
Asian Animation
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: One of the official pieces of artwork◊ for Sparky from the earlier seasons shows him with the smirk and the crooked eyebrows that are characteristic of the DreamWorks Face.
Comic Books
- The cover and internal title page of Death: At Death's Door depicts Death of the Endless smiling with a raised eyebrow.
- Superboy/Kon-El has a habit of grinning or smirking while raising an eyebrow at friend or foe alike when making sarcastic quips. He also makes such an expression to the viewer on a couple of covers◊.
- This expression has become an iconic◊ image◊ of The Tick.
Fan Works
- The cover image of The Celestia Code.
- A rare literary example is used for a cheap laugh in the end of Garfield in: "Along Came a Splut". It's even called the "DreamWorks attitude expression"!
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: What Came After: Popplio is doing this on the cover art.
- The cover image of Saiko Rocks has Saiko do a more subdued version.
Films — Animation
- Aardman Animations (which, ironically, had a distribution deal with DreamWorks in the past) provides a few examples:
- Gromit does this on the DVD Cover for The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
- Roddy in several posters for Flushed Away is shown doing it as well.
- The face has even come into use in Eastern Animation, as seen on this poster◊ for the film Anahit, Armenia's first full-length animated feature. The dog beside the title character bears the face.
- Balto on the cover for Wolf Quest, in heavy contrast to the bold, noble gaze seen advertising the first movie.
- Two of the DVD◊ art choices◊ for Coraline, with the same art on the DVD cases. This is a curious case, as the posters released before the movie had Coraline in a suspicious or frightened expression◊ to tell viewers that this is will be scarier than a typical family film. While she is normally a sarcastic girl, she does spend the majority of the film scared.
- Disney's been doing this more often since the early 2000's (not coincidentally around the time Shrek 1 came out).
- In The Lion King, Simba makes the DreamWorks face in advertisements, on toys and in the actual movie, where it signifies him as a mischief-maker.
- Ads for Home on the Range, Meet the Robinsons and Bolt all included this. The dot-eyed Chicken Little even managed to do this sometimes.
- The minimalist poster for Tangled had Rapunzel and Flynn side by side, looking at the audience deviously behind a sea of hair. Those who see the film know that Rapunzel is usually polite and cheery at heart and only rarely gets devious. It's equally as unnecessary as the rest of the movie's Totally Radical style ad campaigns.
- Disney was associated with a Bollywood animated musical called Roadside Romeo, and pretty much all the posters featured this.◊
- These◊ posters◊ for Mars Needs Moms.
- Wreck-It Ralph does it as well.◊
- Several promotional pictures for Frozen have Elsa making that face. While she does it in the movie itself a few times, it's not often. And perhaps because of backlash, it's noticeable that the promotional posters for Frozen II make a point of keeping Elsa away from the DreamWorks face... with the exception of this◊ image.
- The series continues with Judy Hopps making the face in this poster◊ of Zootopia (2016). Nick Wilde also wears this expression in plenty of advertisement, but it quite fits his smug behaviour in the first half of the movie.
- In The Lion King, Simba makes the DreamWorks face in advertisements, on toys
- The Trope Namer is, obviously, DreamWorks Animation, who uses this face in most of its film posters, where it may also be the Trope Codifier. The image above explains it. It's especially notable in various posters of The Bad Guys (2022), where the titular characters (or occasionally Mr. Wolf) are shown doing it.
- Horton does this on the poster◊ for Blue Sky Studios' Horton Hears a Who! (2008). It's more jarring if you're only familiar with the humbler Horton from the 1970s Chuck Jones special!
- Dracula does this face for the poster of Hotel Transylvania (2012).
- Jimmy Neutron rather noticeably makes one on the movie poster of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
- Plenty of promotional artwork for My Little Pony: A New Generation has Hitch Trailblazer pulling this off.
- Sometimes used in Pixar's posters.
- Buzz Lightyear does it in the posters for all◊ of◊ the Toy Story films. At least the face is pretty much in-character for him, and he makes it in the actual film — it's the expression he was molded with, in fact, and wears whenever he's inanimate. On the poster for Toy Story 3, Woody and Mr. Potato Head also have the expression.
- The poster for Cars 1 had Lightning McQueen covered in a vehicle hood with only the corner lifted to reveal the smile.
- The poster for Cars 2 included all four main characters doing it now!
- The poster for Monsters University has the younger Sulley doing it—justified, as it's to show audiences that the college-age overconfident jock we see in this movie isn't the kind, gentle adult Sulley audiences know from Monsters, Inc. 1. Mike, however, can't make it, having only one eye of course.
- Coco: Miguel makes this expression both on the movie's posters, and in the movie proper where he raises his eyebrow and smirks goofily when trying to imitate Ernesto's facial expression captured on a record cover.
- In Turning Red, Mei makes the face during the epilogue when her friends show up.
- Buzz Lightyear does it in the posters for all
- While the gang don't use the face for the poster of Recess: School's Out, they do use it for the video and DVD cover.
- Most posters for Robots have Rodney Copperbottom making this face.
- Posters for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water has SpongeBob doing it as the Invincibubble.
Films — Live-Action
- Alvin does it in nearly every piece of promotional art for the 2007 CG feature film Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Squeak-quel.
- Fatso does this in the poster◊ for the Casper movie.
- Mike Myers does this as the Cat on The Cat in the Hat (2003) DVD cover. Ironically, DreamWorks handled international distribution for the film.
- Done by Eddie Murphy as his default movie poster expression. Another article asks if he might have been the inspiration for DreamWorks Face in the first place - considering that Donkey from Shrek 1, one of the first major hits from DreamWorks, is an Ink-Suit Actor version of Murphy, it wouldn't be surprising.
- The poster◊ for the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
- Home Alone: Kevin does this on some of◊ the movie covers.◊ The protagonist of the third movie does this as well.◊
- The poster for The Inbetweeners Movie. Hell, it's so obvious that it almost looks as though they just saw the face themselves and are mocking it.
- Taika Waititi does this in the poster for Jo Jo Rabbit.
- Completely averted on any poster for movies either directed or produced by Judd Apatow, likely to make his protagonists look as awkward as possible.
- Oh, hi, Jim Carrey! Pull off a cartoon DreamWorks Face with ease, you say?! Best case being The Mask, turning the original comic's Slasher Smile into something◊ zanier◊. The resulting cartoon followed suit.◊
- The poster for his live action movie Me, Myself & Irene plays with this by splitting Carrey's face down the middle, with nice guy Charlie on the left raising his eyebrow and smiling while Hank mugs at the camera.
- Matilda herself has one of these on the DVD cover and poster, where she is spinning an orb with her teachers and parents engulfed inside it on her finger. From the looks of it, one would guess that Matilda is some sort of mischievous witch girl who likes to pull pranks and cast spells on people, but Matilda is actually a nice little girl who happens to have telekinetic abilities that came about from the oppression that she faces at home from her parents and Miss Trunchbull, and only ever uses her powers as revenge on people who've done her wrong and to teach them lessons.
- It's more of a frown, but the posters for The Matrix trilogy kinda does this.
- This poster◊ for Paul.
- Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He makes this face on both the film's poster and in the film, briefly giving one to the audience during his "Sweet Transvestite" number.
- Gutsy Smurf is the prime example of this in The Smurfs. In a poster◊ for The Smurfs 2, everyone does it except for Grouchy and Hackus.
Literature
- In Animator Nancy Beiman's "Animated Performance" book, this expression is briefly mentioned as an example of a cliche expression that should be avoided. It also sets up a gag where a guy making this expression gets hit with a pie in the face to make him don a more specific expression.
- Artwork depicting the Discworld's Machiavellian tyrant Lord Vetinari almost invariably features the steepled fingers, the quizzical expression - and the single raised eyebrow.
- Harry Potter seems to be stuck doing it for seven years on the cover of the german books.
- Done on the cover◊ of the Ally Carter book Heist Society.
Live-Action TV
- The Boys: Butcher's default expression. He will smirk and raise his eyebrow every time he has a crazy idea, and he has them all the time, including in official posters and action figurines of him.
- Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (played by Seth Green) in this publicity photo◊.
- David Tennant, period. See examples here.
- Tyrion gets one in a Game of Thrones promo.
- Jay Leno.
- Seinfeld also uses this trope in ads and billboards, especially the the titular star of the series.
- Stephen Colbert likes doing it in promotional images for The Colbert Report.
Podcasts
- The main cover art for Distractible has the show's hosts, Mark, Wade, and Bob making this expression.
Theme Parks
- At Universal Studios:
- The painting of Jimmy Neutron◊ on the front entrance to the former Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast ride had him doing this.
- Shrek does this on the sign◊ for Shrek 4D.
- The painting of Jimmy Neutron
Video Games
- In The Adventures of Lomax, the titular character sports this expression on the cover.
- The title character◊ of the Sega Saturn game Bug.
- Alex makes this face while pointing a gun Gangsta Style at the viewer in the American and European cover art for Deus Ex: Invisible War.
- In Fallout: New Vegas Mr. House does a subtle version of this with his avatar. The single raised eyebrow is pronounced but the smile is is very slight but noticeable, especially from the position the player is can activate his monitor to begin dialogue.
- Daddy Dearest is doing it on the box art of the Friday Night Funkin' BF Figurine.
- In Half-Life 2, both Alyx and Barney seem to have this expression permanently imprinted on their faces (at least whenever they look at Freeman).
- The G-man does this at the end of the reveal trailer for Half-Life: Alyx.
- Delsin Rowe sports this expression in the cover art for inFAMOUS: Second Son. His character in the game is really living up to that expression.
- Both Jak and Daxter do the crooked eyebrows on the cover◊ of their first game.
- Max Payne's character model from the first game has the ever-so memetical constipated-y wiseass-y smirking face that seems to invoke this trope to a certain point.
- Monster Rancher 4's boxart and advertising material somehow manage to pull off a one-eyed version of this◊, featuring the monster Suezo.
- Abe makes this face while standing next to Munch in promotional art material for Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee.
- The Pokémon Weavile sports one of these in its official art, making it look like a 90's Mascot with Attitude. Incineroar also makes this face as part of its victory pose in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
- Postal 2 uses this trope in this cover art◊, with Postal Dude on the bottom left hand corner, smirking while standing in front of a fire explosion.
- Sonic Unleashed, due to the Werehog having a lower brow, accidentally gives Sonic this expression on the boxart.
- Early Sonic boxart and title screens had Sonic with notably similar expressions used for the exact same reason as the DreamWorks face (though after the first game, the American boxart tended to have more attitude to the point that some of the Japanese boxart didn't even have the face for a while up until Sonic 3D Blast). This has since become a trademark expression for the hedgehog.
- Splatoon, naturally, as part of its mid-late '90s Genre Throwback. Female Inklings can be seen doing it in official artwork and several Japanese and European TV spots.
- The dutiful salute in the box art for SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom has been changed into this for the Rehydrated version◊.
- Spyro the Dragon has been doing this face◊ on the covers of his video games since The '90s.
- Cappy from Super Mario Odyssey not only does this on the boxart, but he does this in the game itself repeatedly - for about a quarter of the time that you can see his eyes. He can't do the smirk on account of having no mouth.
- Tomb Raider: Anniversary had carried this trope in the game's cover art where Lara Croft is seen smirking while holding one of her iconic dual pistols.
- Undertale:
- One of the sprites in the game files of Undertale shows Toriel making this face and is named spr_face_torieldreamworks_0.
- Papyrus does it during his boss fight sequence, showing his confidence in himself at that point in the game.
- Kouji Tagawa from World of Horror is always seen to be doing this in his character portrait, no matter how injured or haggard he looks. The only time he's not seen with this face is when hovering over the tutorial button in the menu, showing him looking anxious.
- The cover art for Worms 3D depicts a worm with a wide smirk on his face and a raised eyebrow, putting this trope in effect while aiming his Uzi directly at the fourth wall.
- This is used in the inverse of American Kirby Is Hardcore on the American cover of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. The Japanese cover has main character Ichiban Kasuga looking quite serious and ready for a fight while the US cover has this exact trope, considering how Denser and Wackier the game is compared to the rest of the series.
Webcomics
- This Chainsawsuit uses it to make Charlie Brown look like a tool.
- A strip in Cyanide and Happiness shows that it might be contagious.
- In Drowtales, Kiel's Vloz'ress mask bears a huge, toothy, crooked grin.
- At one point in Girl Genius Tarvek actually briefly pairs a cocked eyebrow with a shit-eating grin/smirk when he is being way to smug and cheerful for his own good. He ends up with a hand around his throat in short order.
- A drawing tutorial in Lackadaisy calls this "the Smarm Brow" and lists it among "things to unlearn". The character making this face gets smacked so hard his eyebrows pop off.
- Mr. Boop: Alec's trademark expression when thinking of his wife (Betty Boop).
- In Multiplex, Jason uses this trope to sum up his expectations of How to Train Your Dragon before seeing it.
- The trope is referenced by name in this The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, where Wonderella reminisces of an ex who did this face during... intimate moments.
- One Pain Train comic directly references DreamWorks as the characters make this very face in the last panel.
- In Scary Go Round, Sonny is under the impression that this expression is the height of cool and will make him and his mates Chick Magnets.
Web Original
- In Battle for Dream Island, the BFB voting icons for many of the characters have them make this face.
- This is mentioned in Honest Trailers' video about Shrek.
- The Nostalgia Chick examined this trope in her "DreamWorks vs. Disney" episode; directly referenced in the title of the first half, "Rise of the Eyebrow".
- This is Takahata101's default expression.
- Trollface is a variant of this with a very broad smug grin.
- In his Zero Punctuation review of Ratchet & Clank (2016), one of the reasons Yahtzee gives for his lack of interest in the franchise is that all the characters have "a permanent case of DreamWorks Eyebrow".
Western Animation
- The promotional images for Archer all feature the titular character making this face whilst all the other characters make neutral or disgruntled facial expressions. Might be deliberately invoked, as Archer is a textbook narcissist and everyone around him is perpetually frustrated by his personality.
- Gabby's Dollhouse: that's Cat Rat's default facial expression.
- Lampshaded in the season 3 premiere episode of of Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh where, among the Long List of seemingly arbitrary rules the Boov have, making that face is expressly forbidden.
- In Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, Po is shown with this expression in his wanted posters. He protests it looks nothing like him.
- This trope is Older Than They Think. The show logo in the opening for early 90s cartoon Little Dracula featured the protagonist's face making this expression.
- Littlest Pet Shop guest character Harold Winston of "In the Loop" has his eyebrows stuck in this position about 90% of the time.
- Penn Zero makes this face nearly every time he's seen smiling.
- The term is directly used in a storyboard for the Regular Show episode "Cruisin'".
Rigby: (Struggling to talk and hold the expression) Dude, this isn't going to work, no human ever makes this face.
- Explicitly avoided in John Kricfalusi's cartoons—he hates this expression so much that he forbids any of his artists from ever drawing it—and that includes any expression that even remotely resembles it, including non-cocky smirks or eyebrows raised out of curiosity. The Ren & Stimpy Show does make use of the Fascinating Eyebrow, though, usually when Ren is feeling smug or slightly annoyed.
Other
- Football manager Carlo Ancelotti◊, of Milan, Juventus, Chelsea and Real Madrid's fame, famously has no control over his left eyebrow, which makes him often show a very similar expression.
- On the other side of the ocean with the other football, Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Liam Coen's infamous Duval chant inadvertently led to his own Dreamworks Face.
- On the other side of the ocean with the other football, Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Liam Coen's infamous Duval chant inadvertently
- The Crazy Frog is doing it in this image.◊
- Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson did it so much in his WWE days that his logos made the expression. Although normally he didn't do the half-grin, just the eyebrow.
- On the poster for the intercontinental title match of WWE Extreme Rules 2016◊, Miz and Cesaro do it side by side.
- On the poster for the intercontinental title match of WWE Extreme Rules 2016
- Jeopardy! contestant Colby Burnett◊ seems to have one.
- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau often makes this face.
- Former prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, makes it◊ often, too.
- Former prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, makes it
- Ever-so-subtly used by Montréal mayoral candidate Mélanie Joly in her promotional images during the 2013 municipal election.
