From the River to the Sea

And what about Asian American movies too? are all Asian-Americans suddenly soulless by proxy of being American? Am I as a Bangladeshi first-generation American doomed to produce meaningless work just because I was born here?

Are Latin America / South America movies soulless as well? Because they're also American by the very nature of the word.

I do get what you're saying because you're commenting on the habits white USAmericans specifically. At least, I hope that's what you actually mean by that. Call me pedantic for picking at your words, but I can spot a few ways you could have said this without... you know... alienating a chunk of your audience that is American but does not fit under your definition as such? The brush you're casting is pretty wide.

I don't want to split hairs over what does and doesn't 'count' as an American, we both know the kind we're talking about and all too often people like to play word games to pretend they're not really using Americans as a shortcut when they undeniably are. It's interesting that you bring up Sinners, in fact. The much admired 'twins' digital effects they used to allow Michael B. Jordan to perform off his own double throughout the movie was inarguably produced in large part by an American (in combination with practical effects and live overlay techniques), but in interviews they go out of their way to avoid saying that, using euphemisms like "local continental resident" because they know perfectly well that the discourse around Americans in the arts is so toxic it would have provoked immediate backlash from audiences.

Also, I now know you mean white USAmerican specifically. Searching through your blog seems to imply that anyhow. (Which I don't think the average user is doing.) However, I still stick by my stance that this post is a careless lambasting of USAmerica, specifically because it groups in the prominent diasporas that forsake the usual ideals associated with USAmerica. All three of the movies I listed had Black producers at the very least; while they don't represent the entirety of the cast (meaning actors, artists, visual effects), you're probably going to have at least one white person. It's just improbable if I'm being blunt. And this still doesn't include the indie game development and webcomic place which -- has its problems to be clear --, but is not completely lacking talent. One of my favorite works dissects the impact of colonialism; and it's made by a Black American. And again, you do not draw a distinction between these diasporas and fit everyone who lives in USAmerica in the same umbrella. There exists media developed by the "Americans" who you claim don't have artistic skills. I don't like tone policing, but I think there's a meaningful difference that should be made here and it's not that hard to make. Plus, I remember a thing on Tumblr where when people were insulting Americans, they were more than willing to associate Black people with these negative stereotypes

Also sure; maybe Americans are involved in the assets. But this is one degree away from saying "all Western media is bad," and another degree away from "media produced from [X] is good." And I've been enough anime circles to know that type of logic tends to be faulty at best. Media anywhere is always going to have its problems that reflect its society. Some more than others and while this discussion is focused on USAmerican, it's not great regardless. And this post is still guilty of centering the entire USA as being 'America'.

"trained on a specific culture's stories"

"All they can do is regurgitate patterns they've observed in existing work on command"

"because art is the expression of human experience and human emotion"

"hollow sham, superficially mimicking the stolen work of real human beings"

"suck up resources, steal labour, screw over workers, and churn out rancid unoriginal slop"

"riddled with problematic biases as a result"

a mosque in scotland had to be put into lockdown. they are going door-to-door with hit lists and addresses in northern ireland, setting houses alight. they firebombed an imam's house in manchester. people of colour are being targeted and attacked by racist mobs in the street in broad daylight.

printer 1: lets crumple up paper and jam on it and make a ton of noise

printer 2: yay

printer 3: yay

With the success of Inside Out 2 (now only the second-highest grossing animated film of all time after being freshly dethroned by Ne Zha 2) Pixar has announced today that Coco 2 is in development, which will follow Toy Story 5, Incredibles 3, and “Hoppers”, a promising if controversial Bugs Life spinoff (time will tell if the decision to keep Kevin Spacey on comes back to bite them).

It seems we are firmly in the second major era of Pixar sequels; at this point it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to see a future devoid of Ratatouille 2 (Rata-2-ouille). To that end I have taken the liberty of inventing several fresh directions for the series to take. Brad, if you’re reading this, my schedule is extremely busy but I am willing to talk if you would like to meet with me about expanding on any of these.

Six months after La Ratatouille opens, a new restaurant across the street takes Paris by storm, run by a mysterious unknown named Bessières many are lauding as the next Gusteau. Remy doesn’t view cooking as a competitive process, and his business hasn’t been hurt at all despite a perceived rivalry in the media, but an especially positive endorsement from Ego gets him curious enough to ask that Linguini sneak him in to see what the fuss is about. Remy discovers that Bessières (Kumail Nanjiani) is actually a fellow rat chef, and strikes up a friendship with him as the first friend he’s actually been able to discuss his passion with. The situation takes a dark turn when Bessières reveals himself as a rat supremacist à la a young Malcolm X, who rejects the Gusteauian ideal that anyone can cook — in his worldview, only a rat can truly be an artist, and humans have treated their kind too poorly to be allowed to continue controlling the world. Bessières tries to raticalize Remy and enlist him in his plan to shock human society with a series of rat terrorist attacks across Paris and elevate the social position of rodentkind, but Remy resists him and narrowly manages, with the help of both his human and rat friends, to prevent Bessières from blowing up the Eiffel Tower. Remy makes a stew that’s so good that it snaps Bessières out of a hyper-realistic rat panic attack and instantly fixes his anti-human bigotry and they open a new restaurant together. No real structural changes are made to fix rat-human relations but Remy gets a cute new rat-sized oven at the end of the movie and makes Bessières a rat-sized creme brûlée and that makes them both smile

Chef Skinner returns from disgrace with a restaurant entirely staffed by robots — anything can cook, declares Skinner to mocking crowds, who change their tune when they discover that the food is just as good at anything Gusteau made in his heyday for the same price as a big mac. Critics still think it’s a joke, but the public can’t get enough of Skinner’s new concept, and he begins buying out one Parisian restaurant after another and replacing the workers with his automatons. Remy and the “rat-pack”,  a team of five diverse marketable rat-children he is training to follow his pawsteps (Awkwafina, Kenan Thompson, Jenny Ortega, Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, his last name cleverly stylized as Chris P. Ratt in promotional materials) team up to infiltrate the robo-kitchens and see if they can find a way to stop Skinner. They discover that the robots are fake and are all actually controlled by enslaved rats, whom they free. Following a rat gundam fight where a living swarm of rats battles Skinner’s ultimate machine in the Seine, Remy sacrifices himself to save the rat-pack and actually dies. Skinner goes to prison (where it is heavily implied that he will be killed and eaten by prison rats) and the rat-pack makes crepes in Remy’s honor

Emile movie. Remy and Linguini travel the world to compete in a global culinary competition while Emile accidentally joins a rat spy agency to stop an evil conglomerate from smuggling fake truffle oil into France. Remy is in this movie for six minutes and has nine lines of dialogue, Colette is unvoiced

Another rat-pack vehicle, this time with Jenny Ortega swapped out for Olivia Rodrigo, who stars as a young rat looking to make a name for herself and become Remy’s apprentice years after the events of the first film. An aged Remy has become disillusioned with cooking and lost his passion for creating after the sudden death of his rat-husband, but the rat-pack works together to help him find inspiration and learn to love food again. This is actually a sequel to the Emile movie, although Emile himself only appears partway through the movie to enjoy a short zoom call with Remy and then later to call the Chris Pratt child an extremely offensive rat-slur (which he is reclaiming, the usage is considered appropriate by the film; Linguini tries to repeat the joke later himself and is immediately cancelled by everyone)

Film based on the in-universe Gusteau documentary that inspired Remy to be a chef. A young Gusteau (digitally-recreated Anthony Bourdain) works his way through the unforgiving 1960s hellscape of French cuisine to fight for his third and final Michelin star. At first this seems like a small plot hole because in Ratatouille restaurants are able to get up to five stars but at the end of the movie Gusteau’s food is so good that the Michelin company has to change their system to add extra. First M-rated Pixar film, ties the record for second most F-bombs in any movie ever

Everything that happened in Ratatouille 1 happens again exactly as it did the first time but it takes place in Italy instead. No new characters and it’s not a reboot, it’s just the same plot in Italy, everybody remembers the first movie happened but they weren’t able to internalize the lessons they learned after they all decided to move to Italy because the train ride was very long. Remy has to once again balance his rat and human lives and Linguini finds out his Mom was secretly an Italian chef so he inherits another famous restaurant and Ego is sad again. Skinner wants it to be illegal for rats to work in restaurants, but it already is illegal at the start of the movie, so he lobbies the EU to make it legal so he can then get it made double illegal. This is also a sequel to the Emile movie, Emile farts on the pope

Three disconnected episodic interludes about Remy (Dan Castellaneta), Linguini (Phil LaMarr), Colette (Tara Strong) and the entire rat-clan learning the true meaning of Christmas. Olaf cameos in the second short as a monster chasing Remy during a hallucinogenic nightmare he has after staying up for a week straight trying to create the perfect fruitcake (only later does he realize that the only truly perfect fruitcake is the one you share with family). Disney+ exclusive

Fifteen years after the first movie, Colette’s crazy sister (Sarah Silverman) returns from her exile in Elba to try and steal the soul of Linguini and Collette’s firstborn son Bouillabaisse (Jack Black) to use in an ancient culinary ritual that will allow her to take over Paris. Remy is dead and a ghost in this movie, it’s revealed that the Gusteau he kept talking to in the first movie was NOT a figment of his imagination, that was the real Gusteau; cooks of significant skill are able to continually defer their true deaths by making tasty enough food for the grim reaper (for reasons that are only alluded to, this form of necromancy only works for the french, in a comforting throwback to the nationally-segregated afterlife system implied by Coco). This movie also touches on the themes of rat discrimination more seriously; Remy is directly compared to Rosa Parks. Remy’s great granddaughter Madeline (Zendaya) and Bouillabaisse, guided by spirit Remy, defeat Colette’s crazy sister and use the power of the culinary ritual to reveal the truth of rat society to the human public. The movie ends on a bittersweet note when it turns out that only french rats are sapient, all the other rats are just rats

Remy and Linguini reunite to battle the Underminer and his robot army and stop them from destroying the surface world and polluting the atmosphere to turn the whole planet into an artificial underground. At the end they leave the underground for the first time in the movie during the final battle and the Underminer turns good because he sees Paris and realizes that he doesn’t need to terraform the surface world because the hellish aboveground wasteland he wants already exists. 62 on metacritic

Live-action remake of Ratatouille, but instead of going the Lion King CGI abomination route this uses actual trained rats who are voiced over Milo and Otis style (in that their mouths don't move and no effort is made to sell even the illusion of this, not that 40,000 real rats are ritualistically killed during production). In order to truly echo reality all dialogue is spoken in untranslated french regardless of the version of the film you are watching, except for Emile, who only farts (though is insinuated to be farting in the same language as the viewer). The rats constantly pee on everything just like real rats though this is never acknowledged. The Grammy and Annie award-winning songs "Le Festin", "Colette Shows Him Le Ropes", "Dinner Rush", and "Ratatouille Main Theme" do not feature (save for the trailer and brief EDM remixes of their motifs during the end credit blooper segments where we get to see all the silly mistakes the rat actors made during filming!) and are replaced with silence and sad coughing sounds. No rats are harmed in the making of this film but many many french people are

Followup to the live-action remake, Remy's dad Django prequel movie. IntergeneRATional trauma movie through the frame of a friend of Remy's Dad, Git (that one super fucking buff rat running around in the kitchen during the scene where they're stealing, you know the one) recounting the story to Remy and Emile shortly post-Ratatouille after they have a fight and decide they can't be brothers anymore. It is pointed out that Remy is a prince; the subtle implication that Remy grew up in Anton Ego's childhood home and was able to cook a meal that so perfectly matched his nostalgic preferences because he learned to cook using the same books and techniques as his mother is made explicit here, making the original movie much better and more cohesive as a result. We learn that Django actually had dreams of being a chef himself as a young rat and was friends with little Ego (Seth Green). Remy and Emile interrupt the central narrative multiple times throughout the story with witty banter and wacky interjections. Halfway into it after the tragic misunderstanding scene where Django only overhears Ego says that he's sick of rats (he leaves the room before hearing the -atouille) Emile points out that Git's story doesn't make any sense because rats only live for 1/35th the human lifespan and Ego and Django couldn't have been childhood friends. Blood instantly starts running from Git's nose before he collapses and dies and Remy and Emile realize that Chef Skinner has manipulated their entire lives through his magic time machine. The brothers work together to fix the timeline and even manage to save Gusteau, who we learn was murdered by Chef Skinner; but Skinner was only a puppet (literally!) of an evil future version of Remy who Remy himself defeats in "Rat Combat". For as well as this works as a thematic climax, the weaknesses of the trained rat conceit do begin to reveal themselves during the final fight scenes when so many crusted dribblings of rat piss and shit accumulate in the Skinner's actor's hair and eyebrows that he's unable to stop crying for the entire segment

Romcom Toy Story crossover in the style of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" where Remy falls in love with a stuffed toy rat. Django and the toy's adoptive parents (a Pet Rock and a 2nd generation Tamagotchi, who had faced parallel discrimination themselves in their youth but don't see it as equivalent to what their son is doing) eventually do give up their bigoted ways but the relationship falls apart anyway during the same night due to Remy's obsession with his career. Heavily marketed as featuring Pixar's last LGBT character