Was Ratatouille the Worst Thing To Happen to Pixar?

It now feels quaint to stroll down memory lane to old JimHillMedia or other entertainment blog posts from 2007 claiming that Ratatouille (which made less at the U.S. box office than other 2000s Pixar movies) was some kind of “failure.” Not only did the film earn a pretty penny at the worldwide box office but Ratatouille’s pop culture impact over the last 18 years has been tremendous. It spawned a homegrown TikTok musical, an unforgettable subplot in Best Picture Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once; the pop culture impact of Brad Bird’s 2007 masterpiece is truly remarkable.

Yet, much like every cloud has a silver lining, there is also a darker corner to every triumph. This beloved motion picture established a behind-the-scenes precedent that is Pixar’s Achille’s heel. As a piece of standalone art, Ratatouille is unquestionably a masterstroke. In the history of Pixar, though, it may be one of the worst things to ever happen to the studio.

For the first 15 years of Pixar’s existence, directors stuck with the projects they originated. Even when films went haywire, like Toy Story’s production nearly getting shut down after the infamous “Black Friday Reels” or WALL-E’s third-act needing to get overhauled, the folks initially in charge of these movies handled them to the finish line. Monsters Inc. and Up belonged to Pete Docter. Lee Unkrich shepherded Toy Story 3. WALL-E and Finding Nemo came from the mind of Andrew Stanton.  An early exception to this was Toy Story 2. Original director Ash Brannon was relegated to co-director in the last year of production as Pixar mainstays like John Lasseter tried to get the direct-to-video project ready for the big screen.

The other exception across those first 11 movies? Ratatouille.

The saga of a rat wanting to become a Parisian chef originated with Jan Pinkava. However, after five years of working on the film, Pixar’s head honchos felt the film needed a new direction to realize its full potential. Thus, Brad Bird, fresh off The Incredibles, took over the production. The result was a $623.7 million grosser at the worldwide box office. Oh, and it was also one of 2007’s most acclaimed movies. Ratatouille had gone through a nightmare production and came out the other side unharmed. It was a miracle … and convinced Pixar brass that any director is replaceable.

After the studio’s first 11 titles, it became increasingly common for Pixar movies to jettison their original directors. Ratatouille producer Brad Lewis was once set to helm Cars 2. He would later get taken off the project in favor of John Lasseter. Most infamously, Brave was the brainchild of Brenda Chapman, who based the project heavily on her experiences with motherhood. She was removed from the production in 2010. Per allegations from former Pixar employees, there were all kinds of suspicious and infuriating factors behind this particular firing, which led to two men (Mark Andrews and Steve Purcell) taking over as director and co-director.

Meanwhile, as helpfully pointed out in a Pixar Post forum conversation, former Pixar head Ed Catmull off-handedly mentioned in his 2014 book Creativity Inc. that Monsters University went through a drastic director change in production. 2015’s The Good Dinosaur infamously jettisoned initial director Bob Peterson in favor of overhauling the film and delaying its release by 18 months. This trend continues this summer with Elio. Coco co-director Adrian Molina originally helmed this sci-fi comedy. Last summer, though, it was revealed Domee Shi (director of the rare modern Pixar classic, Turning Red) and Madeline Sharafian were taking over Elio, with Molina no longer involved (he’s still credited as a director).

This phenomenon almost exclusively exists at Pixar in a post-Ratatouille world. It seems like (whether intentionally or not) the creative success of that film led to Pixar determining that replacing directors can have no consequences. It’s a toxic perception that views artists as disposable cogs in a machine. That’s a microcosm of larger dehumanizing views on animators and animation directors not being “real artists.” Going this route on The Good Dinosaur, Brave, and others also ignores Ratatouille’s replacement director being an established acclaimed filmmaker. If anyone had to succeed Jan Pinkiva, you should probably hire the genius behind The Iron Giant and The Incredibles.

In sharp contrast, Pixar has since thrown filmmakers with no feature-length directing or even co-directing experience like Andrews, Sohn, and Scanlon into the gauntlet of helming a feature film for the first time. What pressure to put on newbie feature-length directors to say they better make another Ratatouille miracle. This expendable approach to directors, meanwhile, has limited who can and can’t direct Pixar movies. Brad Lewis, a newcomer to Pixar’s stable of filmmakers, was jettisoned in favor of studio mainstay Lasseter. Two dudes replaced Chapman. Most distressingly, though, is executing this approach with original projects like Elio, The Good Dinosaur, and Brave.

Molina, Peterson, and Chapman were good enough artists to get a Pixar movie pitched … but not to see it through to the finish line? These original Pixar productions were made from profoundly personal life experiences of their initial filmmakers like Peterson being blown away by mechanical dinosaurs at the World’s Fair or Chapman’s experiences with her daughter. To remove them and think the film will be just as specific coming from another filmmaker’s eyes is laughable. Imagine if somebody had jettisoned the Toy Story or Finding Nemo crew when story reels went badly or they had to replace William H. Macy with Albert Brooks.  The same patience Lasseter, Stanton, Docter, and others secured evaded so many other directors in the history of Pixar.

Sure, in animated filmmaking history, directors have often been swapped out with aplomb. Wilfred Jackson, for instance, was going to be a key Sleeping Beauty director before fate intervened. Decades later, How to Train Your Dragon was a Peter Hastings directorial effort until Chris Sanders & Dean DeBlois took over. However, Pixar’s notable post-2007 uptick in this practice suggests they learned all the wrong lessons from Ratatouille. Rather than trusting audiences with weightier stories less driven by rampant action and hyperactive comedy, Ratatouille taught Pixar how easily filmmakers can come and go.

With the studio allegedly shifting away now from “personal” stories and this summer’s Elio arriving with a hastily assembled new creative team, this phenomenon will likely continue. Expect Pixar to greenlight more emotionally aloof stories detached from profoundly personal experiences. That will make it all the easier to replace a director down the road. Poor Ratatouille. This tremendous masterpiece should’ve inspired more great art that challenged conventions of what American animation could look like. Alas, Hollywood always learns the wrong lessons and, in the history of Pixar, Ratatouille tragically seems to have started a terrible trend of considering filmmakers at this outfit disposable.