Soul pays tribute to late Disney and Pixar animator Joe Ranft, a 20-year animation veteran whose credits include Toy Story and Cars. When middle school band teacher and jazz musician Joe (Jamie Foxx) suffers an accident, his soul separates from his body and ends up in the Great Beyond. To buy time and reunite his soul with his body back on Earth, Joe poses as a soul counselor in the Great Before and becomes the unwitting mentor of 22 (Tina Fey). As an eons-old soul who has never found her “spark” — despite the teachings of notable figures like Abraham Lincoln, Mohammed Ali, and Mother Teresa — 22 proudly shows Joe a wall collecting the nametags of her many mentors.
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Conspicuously placed in the center is a name tag for Ranft, who died in a 2005 car accident aged 45. Ranft and Soul director Pete Docter worked together on Toy Story, the first Pixar feature film, where they broke the story with Andrew Stanton and director John Lasseter.
Ranft also served as the story artist on Docter’s first feature as director, 2001’s Monsters, Inc., where Ranft voiced the blue-skinned monster who panics when he’s nearly touched by a human child. Ranft’s other voice roles include always-hungry caterpillar Heimlich in A Bug’s Life and penguin squeaky toy Wheezy in Toy Story 2.
Ranft made his directorial debut on Cars, serving as writer and co-director with Lasseter. The film released posthumously in 2006 and was dedicated to his memory.
Soul is just the latest Pixar film to honor Ranft in the form of an Easter egg. An engraved portrait of him appears in 2012’s Brave, and the home to brothers Ian (Tom Holland) and Barley Lightfoot (Chris Pratt) in Onward gets its address from Ranft’s birthday. Docter also paid tribute to Ranft in his previous film, Inside Out, by modeling the Jangles the Clown character after Ranft’s real-life clown costume.
“We wanted a wall full of stickers. So there were plenty of chances for people to fill in their own,” Docter told /Film about 22’s Easter egg-filled wall of name tags. “Another one for me was Joe Grant, who was one of the great Disney story artists and development guys back in the ’40s. He worked with Walt Disney. I got to know him when he was like 95 or something, and he was a great mentor to me. As well as the father of Frank Oz, this guy named Mike Oznowicz. He lived locally in Oakland, and we would meet him every weekend, and his was just a fantastic, full of life guy. And a bunch of other folks.”
Soul is now streaming on Disney+.
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