Between a Rat and a Hard Place

I vegged in front of the TV last night, spending the evening watching Ratatouille followed by Shooter. Ratatouille is another in Pixar’s fine collection of animated masterpieces which had me laughing out loud a number of times. Two things stood out for me, though, as far as the mechanics of the script are concerned.

Firstly, family is a major component of the theme of Ratatouille, with Remy the rat forced to choose between his family and his ambition to be a chef.

The character of Linguini, who befriends Remy, also has an important family connection. While Linguini’s family connection does play an important part plot-wise, however, it has very little emotional impact.

Had Linguini’s family connection been integrated more effectively into the theme, I believe it would have made for a stronger emotional impact. The movie would have benefited from having both Remy and Linguini dealing with various shades of the same issue.

As it was, Linguini was basically unaffected by the issues Remy was dealing with, and the film makers lost a valuable opportunity to add a further layer to the theme, and show us different attempts at solving the same issue, or slightly different variations of the same issue.

This is something that Prison Break did exceptionally well – and something that television is able to do very effectively, as it has much longer to play out various arcs and themes.

The second thing I particularly noticed was Remy’s dialogue with the Gusteau ‘figment’ character. There was certainly humour in these dialogues, but they served a much more necessary purpose: Remy, a rat, is either frequently by himself or in the presence of Linguini. When he is by himself, there is no other character to talk to, and when he is with Linguini, they cannot talk to each other.

By creating the character of the chef Gusteau as a figment of Remy’s imagination, they give Remy someone to talk to so that the audience can overhear Remy’s thought processes. Without this imaginary character for Remy to interact with, we would only be able to get inside Remy’s head through voice-over, which is already used a few times throughout Ratatouille.

When writing your own projects, it is important to factor in these points. Ask yourself, “have I used each character to their utmost to bring out the theme of the movie? Is there a way of having a character serve a plot purpose, and integrate them with the theme? And can I have a number of characters battle variations of the central theme?”

Also, are you allowing for interaction between characters? Unlike a novel, where an author can let us inside the thought processes of a character, a movie requires thoughts to be visualised or verbalised. Much humour and excitement in movies derives from the interaction of characters.

If you have interesting characters interacting with each other in an interesting way, and if you have characters grappling with variations of the theme, you will be well on the way to crafting a story that will grip an audience and touch their emotions in a way few art forms can rival.

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