Brad Bird on Ratatouille

(Source: www.slashfilm.com)

If I haven't mentioned it before, I'm genuinely buzzed about Pixar's upcoming movie, Ratatouille, coming to theatres June 29th. The concept (Paris rat tries to become a top chef) looks like it has possibilities and Bird directed my favourite Pixar flick, 2004's The Incredibles. So I definitely wanted to check out what Bird has to say about Ratatouille.

Right off the bat, it's important to note that Pixar mainstay Randy Newman will not compose the music for this flick. That job is for Michael Giacchino, who also scored The Incredibles.

Bird seems to be teasing the audience, telling them that a Ratatouille 2 may be in the works. "We were thinking about retitling it Ratatouille 1," he says. "And letting you guys know it’s the prequel to the sequel.”

As everyone knows by now, Ratatouille is about a Parisian rat named Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt). Not content to eat garbage like the rest of his family, Remy wants to be a great chef. However, he knows that the mere presence of a rat in a kitchen will doom the restaurant so he finds a frontman: an incompetent chef named Linguini, voiced by Pixar artist Lou Romano (who also voiced hapless teacher Bernie Kropp in The Incredibles).

Bird goes on to explain how the movie works (SPOILER ALERT): The flick starts with Remy and his family living on a farm. When Remy exposes the family to the farmers, they are forced to flee to Paris. Remy gets separated and ends up living underneath the restaurant formerly owned by his hero, chef Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett). The great chef has died but Remy talks to what he believes is Gusteau's ghost. When Remy sees Linguini ruining the soup, he's spurred to take action. In an elaborate sequence, Remy gets to the soup pot and manages to fix it. But just as he finishes the soup, Linguini catches him. At that point, Skinner (the current head chef, voiced by Ian Holm) catches Linguini with a soup ladle in hand, and starts giving him hell. This is interrupted when a restaurant critic tastes the soup and loves it. At which point, Skinner lets Linguini handle the soup and Remy becomes Linguini's silent partner.

In other news, will Brad Bird ever make The Incredibles 2?

“I love the characters and I would love to return to that world,” he says. “But I think at Pixar, the bottom line is the story that you’re telling.

"And Pixar does not look at sequels as a financial plan. We feel we have a relation ship with the audience and that they believe in each movie we put out. We believe completely in every movie we put out. If I can come up with a story that is as good or better than that first film, then I’d love to return to that world, but it would have to be story first.”

In all honesty, that's exactly what I want to hear. In my mind, it would be better to have no sequel at all to The Incredibles than a lousy sequel. Pixar has only done one sequel so far (1999's Toy Story 2) and most people agree that it was a superior movie to the original.

Pixar's "no sequels" policy was originally devised to counteract Michael Eisner's bad-faith negotiating style but it's not a bad basis for future endeavours. Some movies are complete in their own right: I could certainly live without a Cars 2, and Finding Nemo doesn't need a sequel. But The Incredibles would work as a franchise, if the sequels were done right.

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