CGI, Pixar and Ratatouille

To tie in with the release of Pixar’s new title – Ratatouille - which sees wannabe chef ‘Remy’ the Rat team up with calamitous cook Liguini, we thought we would take a moment to chart the history of Pixar’s CGI titles.

But what does CGI mean?
In its basic form, CGI stands for Computer-generated imagery, however this simply does not give CGI justice. Especially with the immense development of CGI that we’ve seen over the last ten years.

Over the passed 12 years CGI ‘creator’ Ed Catmull and directory John Lasseter have helped Pixar generate almost $4bn at the box office, with the following titles:

1. Toy Story (1995) Box Office: $360.1m
“Cowboy Woody is put out by the arrival of new toy Buzz Lightyear”

2. A Bug’s Life (1998) Box Office: $361.8m
“Flik the ant recruits a bug army to defeat some hostile grasshoppers”

3. Toy Story 2 (1999) Box Office: $484m
“Buzz tries to rescue Woody, who has been stolen by a toy collector”.

4. Monsters, Inc (2001) Box Office: $523.7m
“Monsters Sully and Mike protect a little girl traps in Monstropolis”

5. Finding Nemo (2003) Box Office: $862.4m
“Epic story of a clown fish’s journey to rescue his son from a fish tank”

6. The Incredibles (2004) Box Office: $765m
“A family of undercover superhero’s come out of hiding to save the world”.

7. Cars (2006) Box Office: $461.9m
“A young race car realises there is more to life than winning races”

Perhaps the outlook for 2007’s Ratatouille is secure afternoon. It is just a shame that they felt the need to phonetically spell out the title – there is nothing like a bit of education with a movie is there?