Like you said, I also don’t think Ratatouille is necessarily an absolutely perfect, point for point fit to the history, but as a very strong metaphorical mirror to the events surrounding Pixar and Disney, it definitely seems to hold up.

I know Brad Bird writes a lot based on his life and work experiences and that the “rat in the kitchen” concept was one he was handed to retool, so seeing him take that idea and build it over the skeleton of Pixar’s history with Disney makes a lot of sense to me, especially after he’d just come off of the Incredibles which restored some of his faith in animation after the disillusionment that he was hit with from Iron Giant. Kind of a secret thank you to Pixar.

Interesting (if imperfect) interpretation. I’d probably re-spin the bit you mention in paragraph 4 to be Lasseter when he was working for Walt Disney Feature Animation. As they chronicle in “The Pixar Story,” Lasseter started experimenting with CGI, but was told flat out that CGI was only useful to WDFA if it let them make films cheaper or faster. Shortly after he was told this, he was fired, and drifted off to join up with Ed Catmull over at Lucasfilm’s CG project, which would become Pixar. However, it’s a case where someone has real talent, but the only use that the community can think of for it is venal and petty instead of artistic.

Of course, none of this is a perfect fit, but it’s an interesting spin on Ratatouille as a movie.