Pixar Movies, Ranked

Thirty years of a lamp studio making grown adults weep in public.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A long overhead conveyor of colorful bedroom doors in a vast factory, one door open onto a child's dark bedroom.

    10. Monsters, Inc.

    Pete Docter · 2001

    Sulley has 2,320,413 individually animated hairs. Randy Newman won his first Oscar here after sixteen nominations and told the room he didn't want their pity. It lost the first Best Animated Feature award to Shrek, which remains the funnier joke.

  2. A marigold-petal path leading up stone steps to an ofrenda covered in candles, sugar skulls and an old white guitar.

    09. Coco

    Lee Unkrich · 2017

    Became the highest-grossing film ever in Mexico. In 2013 Disney tried to trademark Día de los Muertos, got a 21,000-signature petition, withdrew, and later hired Lalo Alcaraz, the cartoonist who'd mocked it, as a consultant. Two Oscars. Lesson learned, beautifully.

  3. A dentist's office fish tank with a toy diver and a tiki head, a sea anemone swaying behind the glass.

    08. Finding Nemo

    Andrew Stanton · 2003

    Pixar's first Best Animated Feature win and the best-selling DVD of all time, over 40 million copies. Stanton voiced the surfer turtle Crush as a placeholder, recorded it lying on a sofa, and audiences refused to let him be replaced. Dude.

  4. A red superhero suit with a black eye mask on a modernist tailor's dummy, a single flowing cape crossed out on a sketch pad beside it.

    07. The Incredibles

    Brad Bird · 2004

    Pixar's first film with an all-human cast, pitched as a 2D movie before Bird's The Iron Giant flopped at Warner. When the casting search for Edna Mode stalled, Bird voiced her himself. Two Oscars. Still the best superhero movie about a midlife crisis.

  5. A cardboard box of old toys on the porch of a suburban house at sunset, a pull-string dangling over the edge.

    06. Toy Story 3

    Lee Unkrich · 2010

    The first animated film to cross $1 billion and the third ever nominated for Best Picture. Its landfill climax was designed as the toy version of Dante's Inferno, which is not what parents were told at the ticket counter. The ending with Andy finished an entire generation.

  6. Glowing glass marbles in five colors rolling along a curved shelf in a vast dim archive of memories.

    05. Inside Out

    Pete Docter · 2015

    Docter got the idea watching his daughter Elie go quiet as she grew up, then spent five and a half years and about $175 million on it. Paul Ekman and Dacher Keltner consulted; contempt and surprise were cut from the emotions. Bing Bong did nothing wrong.

  7. A child's bedroom floor with wooden blocks, a toy spaceship box and a small cowboy hat, under a wallpaper of painted clouds.

    04. Toy Story

    John Lasseter · 1995

    The first entirely computer-animated feature, nearly shut down in 1993 when Disney saw a cut where Woody was a jerk. It holds 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and earned Lasseter a Special Achievement Oscar. Everything on this list is its sequel, technically.

  8. A small wooden house lifted into a blue sky by thousands of colorful balloons, a mailbox dangling from the porch.

    03. Up

    Pete Docter · 2009

    The first animated film to open Cannes, the second ever nominated for Best Picture, and the reason a wordless marriage montage can ruin your makeup in under five minutes. Animators built about 20,000 balloons for the lift-off. Two Oscars. Zero dry eyes.

  9. Towering stacks of compacted trash cubes in a dusty orange wasteland, a single green seedling growing in an old boot.

    02. WALL-E

    Andrew Stanton · 2008

    A trash-compacting robot falls in love, mostly without dialogue. Ben Burtt, who made the lightsaber hum, recorded 2,500 sounds for it, and Fred Willard became the first major live-action character in a Pixar film. A kids' movie about consumerism, merchandised accordingly.

  10. A small copper pan of thinly layered vegetables in a spiral, plated on a white dish on a stainless steel Paris kitchen counter at night.

    01. Ratatouille

    Brad Bird · 2007

    Brad Bird took over in 2005 because he liked the conflict: kitchens fear rats, and this rat wants to cook. Thomas Keller let a producer intern at the French Laundry and suggested the confit byaldi finale. Five Oscar nods, one win. Anyone can cook. Few should.

Honorable mentions

  • A grand piano in a dim jazz club with a single spinning maple seed resting on the keys.

    Soul

    Pete Docter · 2020

    Pixar's first film with an African-American lead went straight to Disney+ on Christmas 2020, then got a theatrical run in 2024 like a delayed graduation. Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste won the score Oscar. Co-directed by Kemp Powers.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A rusty tow truck hook resting on a tuxedo jacket on a Tokyo racetrack at night.

    Cars 2

    John Lasseter · 2011

    A spy movie starring a tow truck. It is the only Pixar film rated rotten on Rotten Tomatoes and the first not nominated for an Oscar, and it made $560 million anyway. Lasseter denied it was made to sell toys. The toys sold.

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