Warning! SPOILERS for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is a very ambitious film, and it beat Disney in one unexpected way: the movie works as a first live-action Ratatouille adaptation. Although it is strange, the movie features its own recreation of Ratatouille, except it's a raccoon in a hibachi restaurant. Disney is a company that has a reputation for remaking its classics, so it is strange but funny that Everything Everywhere All At Once did live-action Pixar first.
Everything Everywhere follows Evelyn Wang, a poor laundromat owner who soon gets pulled into a multiversal adventure. In Everything Everywhere All At Once's multiverse, characters can link to versions of themselves from other universes, gaining the skills and abilities of their alternate counterparts. Because of this, the movie shows brief scenes of the universes that Evelyn is pulling from, allowing the viewer to see all of the crazy deviations the world takes.
In one of Everything Everywhere's many universes, Evelyn works at a hibachi grill, yet she is always outshined by one of her peers. After unexpectedly walking in on him cooking though, Evelyn sees that the man has been keeping a talking raccoon under his hat that pulls his hair in order to cook, in the vein of Ratatouille. It's not just implied, though: Evelyn and her family explicitly discuss Ratatoullie early in the movie. The story is actually surprisingly in-depth and emotional, meaning that Everything Everywhere made an emotionally effective live-action Pixar movie before Disney did.
Disney has made plenty of live-action adaptations before, from its classics like The Lion King to its lesser-known movies like Pete's Dragon. Because of this, one would expect Disney to jump at the opportunity to adapt Pixar films, especially considering that movies like Toy Story are some of the most beloved in Disney's catalog. However, an A24 film beat Disney to the punch, and it fits that a film as zany as Everything Everywhere would make such an out-there choice.
Complete with its own variants of Linguini and Remy, Everything Everywhere's Ratatoullie joke is one of the most memorable parts of the film. Disney is known for being pretty strict with their movies, so seeing it pop up in the film is as shocking as it is funny. Everything Everywhere's Stephanie Hsu gives an incredibly emotional performance and intercutting that with the raccoon scenes creates a hilarious juxtaposition. Although it seems inevitable that Disney will one day make a live-action Pixar film, Everything Everywhere All At Once will always be remembered as the movie that did Ratatoullie first.