This article was originally published on June 13, 2018. It has been updated to include subsequent films, including Inside Out 2.
Trying to rank every Pixar feature film in order of quality is like trying to rank your children by how much you love them. None of these movies is bad, but when you’ve made 28 films, one of them has to be No. 28 and one of them has to be No. 1. We tried to keep context in mind — Toy Story had an ability to blow your mind in 1995 the way nothing could today — and also ambition: In the world of children’s entertainment, nothing has set Pixar apart more than its burning desire not to coast or mail it in. Some of these movies work better than others, but all of them are trying to do something special — even if, in recent years, it seems like the studio’s magic has started to wane. Still, Pixar’s competition lags behind. The worst you can say is that, at this point, Pixar is fighting a losing battle trying to live up to its own glorious past.
Cars 3 (2017)
Early reviews of Cars 3 praised the latest installment in the Lightning McQueen saga for, essentially, not being Cars 2, the only Pixar film to receive a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not exactly a high bar … and we’re not even convinced this film gets over it. Yes, the dopey Tow Mater is, blessedly, back on the periphery where he belongs while Lightning (Owen Wilson) squares off with two new foes: a sleek race car named Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer) and, more imposingly, the growing realization that he’s not the king of the track anymore. But where at least Cars 2 consciously tried to go in a radically different direction, Cars 3 feels like a tame holding pattern, providing the race sequences and heartwarming homilies that were rampant in the first film — except without the same level of inspiration. There isn’t one interesting new character, despite the effort from Hammer, Kerry Washington, Nathan Fillion, and Chris Cooper as Lightning’s cranky new trainer. And from Randy Newman’s by-the-numbers score to every single one of Mater’s tired quips, Cars 3 plays out like a rival studio’s lukewarm attempt to mimic Pixar’s magic. It’s not so much bad as it is deeply dispiriting.
Lightyear (2022)
This is not, inherently, a terrible idea: What if Pixar actually made the movie that first got kids in the ’90s psyched about Buzz Lightyear toys? What would that movie look like? What kind of character would Buzz be? Unfortunately, Lightyear is a letdown, not only because it doesn’t satisfyingly answer those questions, but because it’s not an especially great ’90s action movie in its own right — or, conversely, a sharp parody of one. This origin story follows the adventures of Buzz (now voiced by Chris Evans) as he works with a ragtag bunch of recruits to defeat alien invaders on a distant planet. Not surprisingly, Lightyear looks terrific, and it’s got some really funny moments — most of them provided by Sox, Buzz’s faithful robot cat. (Sox is voiced by Peter Sohn, who has worked at Pixar since the early 2000s, starting out as a story artist and doing voices on several of its films, not to mention directing The Good Dinosaur.) But this may be the first time that Pixar hasn’t fully justified one of its projects, at least creatively. After a few years of taking chances, Lightyear feels like the safe, obvious, slightly lazy play from a studio that used to pride itself on not thinking that way. We’re not mad at Lightyear, we’re just disappointed.
Cars 2 (2011)
Larry the Cable Guy was Cars’ secret weapon, lending his blue-collar earthiness to a character whose regular-folks demeanor had real pathos and sweetness. But that didn’t mean we wanted to see Tow Mater in a James Bond spoof. Give Cars 2 points for audacity: The follow-up shifts away from the original’s small-town, homespun charm to become a sleek, globetrotting action-thriller focusing on Lightning McQueen’s country-bumpkin sidekick. And then take away those points because Cars 2 proves that even the mighty Pixar can’t transcend the central problem with sequels: You can make everything bigger, but you can rarely replicate what was novel and charming about the original.
Elemental (2023)
Elemental continues a trend of recent Pixar movies that leave you thinking, Well, at least it looked amazing. And, indeed, the fantastical realm of Element City is gorgeously imagined, both futuristic and romantic. It’s just the story that keeps causing the problems. Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) is a fire element that ends up having to team up with Wade (Mamoudou Athie), a water element, to prevent their city from being destroyed by a mysterious canal leak. The four elements are turned into feuding factions in Elemental, and as you might imagine, this Romeo and Juliet–esque tale wants to preach the importance of tolerance. That’s a laudable message, but there’s something frustratingly undeveloped about this love story. The Pixar brain trust used to brag about how it took years to crack their scripts, the months of futility and false starts eventually leading to brilliance. By comparison, Elemental feels dashed off, with the bulk of the creativity spent making sure the visuals were stunning. Which they are. But Pixar is better than that. At least it should be.
Brave (2012)
In the late 2000s, Pixar finally set out to fix its lack-of-female-protagonists problem — but unfortunately, it did it with an undercooked story that feels more like a response to criticism than a well-thought-out Pixar adventure. This is a textbook Idiot Plot movie, in which the whole dreadful second half could have been eliminated if (spoilers here) Merida — who is beloved in the kingdom and would have little reason to be doubted — just said, “Hey, my mom was just transformed into this bear, everybody chill.” (Heck, her mom could have even written her name in the ground with her claw to prove it, were anyone to ask.) This is also the first Pixar movie whose comedic tone is entirely out of whack; it’s dumb slapstick that reminds you of some subpar early Dreamworks movies. (We wouldn’t have thought Pixar was capable of making irritating, un-cute children, but here they are.) They would finally come up with a terrific female lead three years later, but Brave was the first time you thought, Wait, have they really lost something?
Monsters University(2013)
How many of us had been clamoring to see how Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sulley (John Goodman) became friends in college? Anyone? One of the sizable faults with Monsters University is that it’s a prequel that doesn’t have much need to exist — just do a short before one of the studio’s features and be done with it — but there’s enough heart and humor to make this cash-grab amusing enough. Still, Monsters University uncomfortablysums up Pixar’s post-Toy Story 3 era: It’s pleasantly entertaining just so long as you will yourself to forget the inspired storytelling and freewheeling imagination that used to be the studio’s trademarks.
The Good Dinosaur(2015)
Pixar’s lowest-grossing film, pre-COVID, The Good Dinosaur was beset with story problems, production delays, and reports of directors being replaced midstream. It was hardly the company’s first movie to have a difficult birth (No. 4 on this list is Pixar’s most famous example of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat), but it is the one film that felt most hamstrung in the public’s mind, never escaping the cloud of bad buzz and relative disinterest that greeted it over Thanksgiving 2015. All that said, this tale of an Earth on which dinosaurs weren’t wiped out by a meteor is visually stunning, imagining an unspoiled American Northwest in which the mighty reptiles rule. The Good Dinosaur is oddly conventional for Pixar from a narrative perspective — a young apatosaurus (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) gets lost and has to find his way home — but as a meditative, hero’s-journey travelogue, it’s a thoughtful addition to the company’s canon. This may be the one Pixar film most deserving of a reappraisal in ten years.
A Bug’s Life (1998)
We might be in the minority preferring that year’s Antz — which was famously part of a race between Dreamworks and Pixar to make computer-animated insect movies — but this is still a charming, ultimately harmless little tale that basically has the same plot as Antz but is aimed more squarely at children. As the years went by, Pixar became unusually skilled at making movies as appealing to adults as they were to kids, but the scale is still being balanced here: This is not one adults will rewatch, like The Incredibles or Toy Story. It still wins big points for having the queen of an ant colony voiced by Phyllis Diller.
Onward (2019)
An uneasy feeling sets in for Onward’s first half, as we slowly realize the movie’s flimsy high concept (what if old fantastical creatures all became boring and suburban?) is being asked to carry some uninspired, familiar characterizations and yet another Let’s Go On A Quest! plot. (And that the movie’s idea of a sight gag is having a stop sign that reads “HALT.”) But just when you’re about to give up on it, Onward takes its first interesting turn, slyly flipping the concept of the destination being the journey all along, and the movie begins to feel like Pixar again, somehow finding a way to squeeze a little (if just a little) out of your tear ducts. The movie still feels a little half-baked, but it gets considerable mileage out of the simple visual of a pair of bodiless khakis, along with the most likable Chris Pratt since Parks and Recreation. They can do a lot better than this. But even at Replacement Level Pixar, they still find a way to crawl across the finish line.
Cars(2006)
By 2006, Pixar had been making features for more than a decade, and so a backlash was inevitable; perhaps overdue. Into that awaiting storm walked Cars, a sweet, modest family comedy. Essentially Doc Hollywood starring a cocky stock car, the film imagined a world ruled by living automobiles, wringing laughs from a hot-rod-out-of-water scenario in which ultracompetitive racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) gets stuck in a Podunk filled with ordinary folks like good-ol’-boy tow-truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). Cars is Pixar’s most nostalgic work, lamenting the sleepy communities and small-town values lost to the endless march of progress, which may explain why the movie feels so recycled, drawing from different genres without the studio’s usual freshness. Still, it’s consistently amusing — and for a whole generation of car-loving boys who grew up on it, Cars is as important as Star Wars or Batman.
Soul (2020)
After the frustrating, half-baked Onward, Pixar course-corrected a bit with Soul, a goofy, weird charmer about a jazz musician (voiced, well, by Jamie Foxx) who dies and is sent to the Great Beyond, where he tries to get back to his life and fix all that he regretted during his life. That sounds a little like a reverse Up, but the movie isn’t mournful: It’s mostly silly, with some fun gags mixed in with yet another dull let’s-go-on-an-adventure! plot (with partner Tina Fey, who doesn’t rise to the occasion). The movie has a strong ending, and its heart is in the right place, but it’s also all over the place and has a very dumb subplot involving a cat. It works, it’s fine, but that this is probably the best we can hope for from a non-Toy Story sequel from Pixar right now feels like a very bad sign.
Coco(2017)
Family is often a theme in Pixar films, but it’s rarely been explored so deeply as it is in Coco, which tells the story of Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), a 12-year-old living in Saint Cecilia who wants nothing more than to be a singer and guitarist. Unfortunately for the boy, his family has forbidden music ever since his great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife and child to pursue his art years earlier. Told with magical realism and an array of terrific traditional folk songs, Coco sends Miguel on a journey into the Land of the Dead, which allows Pixar’s genius animators to produce one of their most dreamlike and colorful visual environments. The studio spent significant time researching Mexican culture and history, which adds authenticity and vibrancy to a quest-like tale about redemption, understanding, and forgiveness that will be familiar to Pixar fans. Still, it’s heartening that the Pixar braintrust, amidst pumping out Cars and Incredibles sequels, still tries to give itself fresh challenges.
Incredibles 2(2018)
This sequel may take place immediately after the events of The Incredibles, but for audiences, the movie world has changed immensely since the first film blasted into theaters 14 years ago. For one thing, a superhero film is no longer a novelty — it’s now a Hollywood staple — but in a more general sense, Brad Bird’s original vision of a rollicking, action-packed animated family film has been duplicated by Pixar’s competitors. (The Despicable Me franchise in particular owes The Incredibles a huge debt.) So naturally, Incredibles 2 can’t match what was startlingly innovative about the 2004 film — even the movie’s glorious retro-cool production design and groovy score lack surprise — but it’s still a pretty nifty piece of high-quality entertainment. This time around, Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) has to play Mr. Mom while his wife Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) goes out in search of a masked villain named Screenslaver, leading to a winning mixture of domestic misadventures and comic-book heroics. Like a lot of recent Pixar films, Incredibles 2 mostly reminds you of the company’s once-formidable talents, but it’s a nostalgic, very fun ride.
Luca (2021)
One of Pixar’s great challenges is managing expectations. When you’re known for groundbreaking animation and whip-smart storytelling — when you’re praised constantly for being at the vanguard of your field — how do you downshift and do something that’s a little more modest in scale? That dilemma is what makes Luca such an interesting outlier in the studio’s catalog: It follows two teenage sea monsters who become friends in the human world, where they can blend in just so long as they don’t get wet, which isn’t advisable since people think those underwater beasts are horrifying creatures worth destroying. Where other Pixar entries want to knock your socks off, Luca drifts along on its gentle wavelength, examining male friendship and the pain of being an outsider with compassion and light chuckles. This isn’t the film you’d show first to someone who’d never seen any Pixar movies, but as the company reaches middle age, it’s an encouraging sign that its filmmakers are still willing to try new tones and moods.
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
The placement of Monsters, Inc. on any Pixar list depends on one question: How much of Billy Crystal’s shtick can you stand? If Aladdin is Robin Williams Unbound, this buddy comedy gave the Oscar host his chance to go full Catskills, voicing Mike Wazowski, the insecure, long-suffering, wisecracking partner to the lovable James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (John Goodman), who travels to the human world to give sleeping kids nightmares. The first of Pete Docter’s directorial efforts — he’d go on to make Up and Inside Out — Monsters, Inc. argues that you can never go wrong pairing exasperated adult characters with an impossibly cute kid (Boo, voiced by Mary Gibbs, who was only 5 when the movie came out). Mike’s kvetching gets tiresome, but the movie zooms along with whiplash speed. (The third-act chase set in the Monsters, Inc. conveyor belt of doors thrills.) And c’mon, Sulley’s final reaction shot is just beautiful.
13. TurningRed (2022)
In recent years, Pixar’s movies have been directed by a new wave of filmmakers, a younger generation who were kids when Toy Story first hit theaters, and the most promising of the bunch is Domee Shi, whose 2018 short Bao won an Oscar. Her feature debut is about boy bands and Toronto, friendship and motherhood, puberty and bullies. It’s also really funny. (Seriously, why are there five members in 4*Town?) Rosalie Chiang is delightful as the voice of Mei, Turning Red’s 13-year-old heroine, who has reached the age when she’s getting boy crazy — and discovering to her shock that she turns into a big red panda when her emotions take over. It’s a metaphor for girls getting their period, but perhaps more pointedly, it’s a commentary on how women are punished in society for being “too emotional.” Turning Red also has a lot to say about the impossibility of understanding our parents, who themselves are carrying around the baggage of their complicated relationships with their own parents. If Shi’s movie doesn’t quite reach the heights of Pixar’s finest moments, it does suggest that the fretting over the end of the company’s golden age is misplaced. With filmmakers like her onboard, maybe Pixar is merely rebuilding and preparing for an exciting new era.
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Some of the original voice cast has been replaced. (Tony Hale, we love you, but you’re no Bill Hader when it comes to portraying Fear.) And some of the novelty of Inside Out’s conceit has faded with this sequel. And yet, part two ends up being a nice reminder of what made the first film so special — while successfully building on its legacy. Adorable Riley is now 13, which means Anxiety (Maya Hawke) has made her way to Headquarters, usurping Joy’s (Amy Poehler) authority and turning this precocious teen into a self-conscious stress ball desperate to be liked. Anybody who was ever a teenager will relate, and Inside Out 2 keeps finding funny bits of business about how we let our worries guide our actions. Nothing in this sequel will make you cry as hard as the original did, but we’d be surprised if you walked out of the theater without wiping away a tear or two.
FindingDory (2016)
Thirteen years after the marvelous Finding Nemo hit theaters, it’s debatable whether audiences were clamoring for a sequel. Yet, Finding Dory is a pretty stellar follow-up, with director Andrew Stanton returning to the original’s themes of family, loss, and reconciliation to deliver another action-packed, emotion-soaked comedy. The title’s double meaning — it’s Dory (again voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) who’s doing the searching, both for her long-lost parents and for her own sense of self-sufficiency — speaks to the depth of the movie, which serves as an example of how Pixar should be making sequels: by investing in intelligent, heartfelt stories that expand the first film’s scope without radically altering the characters’ personalities to serve hackneyed narrative conventions. Of the new additions, a gruff octopus voiced by Ed O’Neill is Dory’s highlight, but the movie’s heart and soul remains Stanton, who rebounds terrifically from the embarrassment of John Carter for this second delightful dip into the ocean. Also: You may never hear Sigourney Weaver’s voice again without chuckling.
Up (2009)
All right, all right: We know this is lower than you think it should be. But take a step back and try to remember what comes to your mind when you first think of this movie. Yes, the wondrous image of the balloon raising the house into the air, and yes, maybe the cute dog that keeps being distracted by squirrels. But plot-wise, this whole film is completely overshadowed by the heartbreaking preamble, in which we learn the crushing story of Carl and Ellie’s life together. Yes, this will make you cry — just watching it again choked us up — but in retrospect, the rest of the movie is your fairly standard cute-kid, cute-dog, central-casting villain story. We’re not sure the whole movie should have been as powerful as those opening minutes — we might still be weeping — but take that away and this movie is a lot thinner than you remember. Sorry.
Ratatouille(2007)
As close as Pixar will get to an art movie, this story of a rat who is secretly the greatest chef in all of Paris is a delight, owing largely to a generous heart, a witty, Richard Dreyfuss–esque vocal performance from Patton Oswalt, and some legitimately democratizing notions about art and the act of creation. It’s not quite as viscerally thrilling as some other Pixar films — the main setpiece is about impressing a food critic — but it is funny and almost compulsively likable. After this film — which, we repeat, is a comedy about art and food and rats in Paris — became a huge hit and won an Oscar, it seemed as though Pixar could do no wrong.
Toy Story 4 (2019)
You can understand why so many were fretting about Toy Story 4.Pixar sequels have led to diminishing returns in recent years, and Toy Story 3 ended so perfectly. Why even risk the most beloved animated franchise of the last two decades? Turns out: We shouldn’t have worried. Toy Story 4 may not reach the emotional heights of the third installment, and it might not have the simple perfection of the first one, but it’ll still knock you over. The story focuses more intently on Woody this time, but the overarching theme of what it means to love and be loved is as foregrounded as it has ever been; these remain the most generous and good-hearted of all the Pixar films. And this honestly might be the funniest film of the entire franchise, from Key and Peele’s Plush Rush to Keanu Reeves’s Duke Caboom, and, of course, Tony Hale’s Forky, a surrealistic, existential touch that happens to make you keel over with laughter every time you see him. Did they need to make a fourth one? Probably not. But you’ll be delighted they did … and more trustful of Pixar, if they ever decide to make a fifth.
Inside Out(2015)
Those going through Parks & Rec withdrawal, rejoice: Amy Poehler’s adorable Inside Out character Joy isn’t that far removed from her hyperpositive, smilingly pushy Leslie Knope, running the emotional headquarters inside the brain of a happy tween like it’s her own little sunny fiefdom. Inside Out can get bogged down a bit in plot busyness — Joy and Sadness (a terrifically gloomy turn from The Office’s Phyllis Smith) have to find a way back to HQ after being sucked into the girl’s mind — but this is the cleverest, most emotionally pure Pixar film in years, offering plenty of teachable moments for both parents and kids about the need to embrace all of life’s emotions. And Bing Bong is going to break your heart.
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Ranking the three Toy Story films, all of which are wonderful, is nearly impossible, and there was much disagreement even among the two of us. (One of us had this as his best movie of 2010, after all.) You really can’t go wrong with any of them, but we’ve got this one third if only because the Great Escape–type plot feels more familiar than we’re used to from these movies, and because the ending resembles some sort of cruel Disney-funded Pepsi Challenge to see if grown adults can keep from sobbing in the company of their children. Also: It’s not fair, but the fact that they’re making a Toy Story 4 does, in fact, hurt a bit of the finality of this one that made it so powerful.
The Incredibles (2004)
It was obvious, in retrospect, that director Brad Bird would move on to making live-action blockbusters: This is as exciting and riveting an action film as we’ve seen in American animation. If all blockbusters were like this one, we’d never object to a fifth Transformers movie. The key to TheIncredibles’ success is its economy of action: We are introduced to an entirely new universe, meet and empathize with a likable and close-knit family, discover the parents’ quiet dissatisfaction with what their lives have become, and then watch as everyone unites to overcome an evil force that wants to destroy the planet. It does all this in under two hours and never seems to be rushing or cramming anything in. Take note, Marvel: You can create a world, balance a huge cast of characters, and still wow your audience without making them look up everything on Wikipedia afterward.
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Toy Story 2 should have been a disaster. Designed to be a straight-to-DVD feature but then slotted for a theatrical release by Pixar’s Disney bosses, who were much happier with the in-progress film than the Pixar brain trust were, the sequel had to be reconceived on the fly and rushed to completion, grabbing story beats that had been rejected from the original film. Miraculously, Toy Story 2 shows no signs of the panic that went into making it. Expanding Woody and Buzz’s universe without losing focus on the characters, laughs, or sentiment, this follow-up deepens the themes of the original while keeping a wistful eye on childhood’s end. Joan Cusack is the MVP as the rootin’-tootin’ cowgirl Jessie, and her “When She Loved Me” flashback sequence remains one of the great cries in Pixar’s rich history of tearjerking moments.
Finding Nemo(2003)
Director Andrew Stanton wanted to make a movie set in the ocean, but he also wanted to address his own guilty memories of being an overprotective father to his young son. So he made this emotional, exciting, visually gorgeous story about a nervous clownfish (voiced by Albert Brooks) on a desperate search to find his lost son Nemo (Alexander Gould) with the help of a lovably loopy blue tang (Ellen DeGeneres). Finding Nemo’s lessons about the importance of letting our children live their own lives are only strengthened by how scary this movie can be. Stanton and his animators load the film with plenty of terrors — the opening remains a nerve-shredder — and yet still insist that we have to learn that rather than smothering those we love, we need to release them into the scary world if they’re going to survive on their own.
Toy Story (1995)
More than 25 years after Toy Story’s release, some of Randy Newman’s songs come across as creaky, and the once cutting-edge animation looks rudimentary. Otherwise, though, the best comedy of the 1990s remains perfect. Pixar’s first feature is still the template for every great movie the studio has made since: earned emotions; ripping action sequences; dead-on insights into human nature; and lots of giddy, witty, silly laughs. Toy Story is so funny because deep down, it’s actually a very melancholy film. Woody and Buzz’s battle for Andy’s love speaks to everyone’s fear of being replaced, as well as our shared recognition that the innocence of childhood cannot last. As for the voice cast, they’re impeccable: Tim Allen was never better, and even though Tom Hanks has won two Oscars, it is very likely (and completely appropriate) that Woody will be the role that immortalizes him.
WALL-E (2008)
We went back and forth on the top two here, but we ultimately had to go with this one, the most original and ambitious of all the Pixar movies. The first half-hour, which basically tells the story of the destruction of the planet and the devolution of the human race without a single line of dialogue, is total perfection: It’s almost Kubrickian in its attention to detail and perspective, though it never feels cold or ungenerous. Then we get to know WALL-E himself and realize that he sees humanity for so much more than it has become, and what it can become again. WALL-E is an unprecedented achievement, the absolute pinnacle of what Pixar can do. And not for nothing, WALL-E also happens to feature Pixar’s greatest love story. They’ve never been better. This is our pick.
Grierson & Leitch write about the movies regularly and host a podcast on film. Follow them on Twitter or visit their site.
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Tim Grierson,Will Leitch , 2024-06-14 15:00:00
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