In another reality, The Prince of Egypt kicked off a new wave of American animation

polygon.com:

Twenty-five years ago, DreamWorks’ movie The Prince of Egypt hit theaters. Its release could have changed American animation — and maybe should have. But it didn’t.

Instead, out of the DreamWorks projects released at the turn of the millennium, it was Shrek that produced a cultural explosion, rapidly shifting the focus of American animated movies from sweeping musicals to snarky comedies. Perhaps at the time, The Prince of Egypt seemed too similar to what Disney was doing: another animated musical, too much of the same thing.

But The Prince of Egypt was intended to go further than Disney projects, to widen the audience for animated movies in America and appeal to a more mature crowd. It follows older characters than most animated features of its era, and it tackles the story of a figure who’s important to three major world religions. But the biggest difference is the tone: The Prince of Egypt maintains a serious and dramatic tenor throughout the entire movie, a rarity for American animation, which often tosses in lighthearted gags and comedic relief in even the somberest movies. From the get-go, though, DreamWorks wanted The Prince of Egypt to have an impact.

“We wanted to do something that reached more adults,”The Prince of Egypt co-director Brenda Chapman told Polygon in 2018, on the movie’s 20th anniversary. “We were hoping to break out of that and bring to America all the different types. How about an R-rated animated film? How about a PG-13 or an NC-17 or whatever? It’s like just trying to break out of that box. We didn’t quite succeed.”

In another timeline, where The Prince of Egypt dominated pop culture instead of Shrek, the decade of snarky, self-aware animated comedies that followed was replaced by more