No idea if this is the right place for this or if anyone will see it in this place.
This was a foolish use of my time, lol, but I recently rewatched every Pixar film and ranked them 1-26. I did so in anticipation of the release of Lightyear which is as much a non-event as Pixar has ever put out, which only (sadly) goes to show that we're well past the point in history where a Pixar movie is a culturally-unifying event. There was a good swath of time where just about the one thing we could all agree on was the fact that when Pixar was going to put out a movie, it was going to be something special. Through new technology, timely corporate mandate (no Broadway Songs! no Princess! no Bad Guys! no "I Want!"), and cult of personality including John Lasseter, Joss Whedon, and Steve Jobs, Pixar inspired corporate brand loyalty for a swatch of time like we've rarely experienced in film. Their films seemed rarely concerned with appealing to children but rather adults who recall childhood, like $200 million independent films with state of the art animation. Today, they alternate between their more ambitious efforts and feeding the corporate beast of Disney in an era where the latter has far surpassed the former with films like Frozen, Moana, and Zootopia (overseen by Lasseter himself), and a new guard of Pixar voices are rising through the ranks with a slightly approach. Pixar used to tell stories that placed emphasis on magical worlds and today it's more the protagonists (of Luca, of Turning Red) that seem a bit more magical. But iff the era of Pixar has passed, their impact likely never will if only because 3D is here to stay.
In honor of their 26th feature, I've ranked all the Pixar films. Roughly 26-22 are the only ones I would say I actively dislike. 21-17 are varying degrees of fine. 16-8 are all good to quite good films, all works of ambitious personal expression that for one reason or another I just don't love. Either they're too skimpy or messy, but whose merits are knockout and could easily rise with time. 7-4 are all Top Tier Pixar, excellent movies that I could reshuffle without a second though and could (and will) watch again and again throughout my life. 3-1 and pretty set for me. I'll just preface this by saying I was hoping for some out there takes that diverge from popular consensus, and... I... have none. Enjoy!
26. Brave
Choosing the worst Pixar film is hard because it's been such a fall from grace over the last twelve years as they've had to alternate between original visions and feeding the corporate beast. There are so many sequels to choose from let alone franchises that have become unwelcomely dominant (see below). The reason I'm choosing Brave is because Pixar was supposed to be feeding the corporate beast in order to protect original stories like Brave, making it disappointing in a different kind of way. Pixar was built on creative systems (laid out in Ed Cantmull’s excellent Creativity Inc.) to ensure inspiration, storytelling confidence, and replace any departure at the company. Much could be said about the success of those systems after twenty-five years, but Brave is a total system’s breakdown. Forget about the backstage drama behind Brenda Chapman’s firing: no hard choices were made with this story. It’s an endless first act. It’s unclear who Merrida is or how she needs to change. She’s a fantastic design and voice in search of a character. Her mother is turned into a bear a staggering forty-five minutes into the movie, far too late to do anything with her. And the story is unforgivably small for its world. What could have been a transformative journey of understanding between a girl and her mother is a total muddle that still stings after ten plus years in a different way than shitting on the Cars franchise.
25. - 23. The Cars Movies
Okay, here we go. Look, at the end of the day, I don’t care that this universe (possible dystopian future) doesn’t make much sense or that the Cars metaphor is a shallow to non-existent text (compared to Toy Story). The problem is these movies are boring and I hate watching them. I’ll say this: John Lasseter’s desire to explore nostalgia for a simpler time through a Doc Hollywood story in Cars 1 isn’t a bad idea. It’s just boringly told, devoting ten minutes to a single race (rather than selling us on this world) and failing to get to Radiator Springs before the twenty-five minute mark. That’s… just too long. And it sets itself up for sequels so poorly that each subsequent entry is just empty genre riffs. It’s sad that what once looked like a rare whiff on an unparalleled winning streak has now become a company staple.
22. Finding Dory
I would like to take a poll to see which moment of Pixar's oeuvre broke the most trust with audiences, and if anything came close to the final act of Finding Dory (where Dory and Hank, hijack a truck full of fish, and driving it into the ocean) I'd be astonished. There are many problems with Finding Dory but at the heart of it is that the Marine Life Institute is so boring. The film practically screams out for “Escape from Evil Sea World” shenanigans, but instead it’s a flatlining experience punctuated by admittedly adorable moments of Baby Dory. It gives new meaning to the word “Forgettable.”
21. Incredibles 2
Speaking of Forgettable. I couldn’t have been less interested in a sequel to Finding Nemo but I’ll concede that they found a premise (Dory seeking her lost parents) that was about as good as one could have hoped for. Incredibles 2 had the opposite problem. I was quite interested in a sequel to Brad Bird’s smart 2004 original and yet they offered me just about the one film I didn’t want. There’s nothing as meaningful or relatable as Bob return to superhero-ing-as-mid-life-crisis. Instead, it feels like an empty genre riff (social media as nemesis in retro-future) that at the very least represented a meaningful one-two punch alongside Spider-Verse that superheroes might have a better future in big screen animation.
20. Lightyear
Again, here for a Buzz Lightyear movie, just not this one. I wrote about this elsewhere on the board. It’s a film with an identity crisis about what it is and what it offers to fans of Buzz Lightyear. Twitter summed it up best:
https://twitter.com/thebigstevesy/statu ... 2630480899
19. The Good Dinosaur
Pixar’s other “Troubled Production.” If Brave is a tangled mess of passions, it’s unclear what story Bob Peterson originally wanted to tell. It’s a fantastic cold open premise (What if the meteor passed over the dinosaurs?) in search of a story that can match it. You’d think CUT TO: Dinotropolis. But instead, it’s Little Home on the Paleolithic Prairie, a boy and his dog story where the boy is a dinosaur and the dog is a boy, and surprise! It kinda works. There’s a lot left under-developed in this world and the seams are bursting through in this episodic yarn, but The Good Dinosaur is one of the rare Pixar misfires where there fact that it’s not up to standards makes it a bit more interesting. It’s also a gorgeous, photorealistic vision of the prehistoric west.
18. Luca
The film most likely to rise on subsequent viewings. There’s something that hasn’t yet unlocked for me about this skimpy tale about a sea monster who finds a friend in a fellow sea monster and the two become entranced with procuring a vespa in a summer they’ll never forget. What I keep coming back to are the gorgeous sea monster designs and the most gorgeous water I’ve ever seen in a film. Hopefully it becomes more on subsequent viewings.
17. Monsters University
I’d like to take this opportunity (while discussing Pixar’s most forgotten film) to discuss something that Pixar does better than just about anyone. At their best, they are great at taking their character(s) through an emotional personal journey that reaches a moment of existential crisis at the end of the second act. In the case of Monsters University, a pretty routine college campus comedy (another genre riff) that reaches a surprisingly moment of personal crisis for Mike Wazowski: at the end of the second act, he learns that no matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries, he will never be scary. This is a deeply resonant lesson for anyone who has ever had to face the music on their dream. The only problem is one must wade through one hour of generic college comedy to get there, but one could do much worse for company than Sulley and Mike.
16. Soul
The first film about A Guy Named Joe who’s re-incarnated for some unfinished business who has no real unfinished business. Soul is one of Pixar’s biggest swings and even though it’s only two years old, I wrestle with it quite a bit. I still think what should be a pretty clear-cut story of a man who missed his shot at fame and must learn to appreciate the bigger difference he makes (as a teacher) instead winds up an overly-busy therapy session about learning to smell the roses (in a movie about escaping death?) that never quite gets into a flow state. But increasingly with every viewing, it works as a beautiful sensory/emotional experience. Souls so cute you could eat them. The Jerry’s. One of the all-time great visions of heaven, by which I mean The East Village. Plus, it’s the first Pixar film to feature Bob Dylan music, so fitting for a man knocking on heaven’s door.
15. Up
There is something so contradictory about Pixar’s most earthbound, ornery protagonist (78-year-old Carl Fredericksen) launching their most magically realistic adventure. Watching Up, I never quite believe any of it is happening, but it almost succeeds in selling me on the fact that it’s not meant be taken seriously (almost). I can almost convince myself that it occupies a liminal space between the real and unreal as a projection of the turmoil inside Carl’s heart as he refuses the call to adventure (the House floating away is a retreat, not an acceptance) and encounters ghosts from his past on the road to change. The child he couldn’t have. The hero he couldn’t live up to. Wishes from his wife he never understood… I don’t know what the dog is. Whenever Up is following the plot of that stupid bird, I tune out. Whenever Up is trained on Carl’s face (one of Pixar’s greatest achievements) as he reconciles his current station after some 78 years of disappointment, it’s a testament to the evergreen power of change.
14. Onward
Pixar’s best premise since Inside Out. Onward imagines a road trip between two brothers through their world of fantasy and monsters that has gone suburban and has since lost its magic as the centuries have rolled, well, onward. Cue the unicorns fighting over trash. It’s such a great idea that the fact that it never quite gets out of second gear (Barley needed to give a few story notes) doesn’t ruin the fun. While I wish their journey of bringing magic back to a world where Dungeons & Dragons is a sacred text felt a bit bigger in scope, the emotional beats of the brothers’ journey hit hard, especially as Ian learns that he’s always had a father in his life in the form of his screw-up brother.
13. Toy Story 4
A grower for me. At first, I couldn’t get past how the second act felt more patched together than a toy on its fourth owner, let alone the fact that I didn’t need to say goodbye to these characters again. On a second viewing, I was more able to appreciate how yet again they’ve found more dreams and nightmares to dig up in the toy metaphor. This time, it’s two parts middle-aged romance and one part emancipation narrative (such a rich text!) as Woody — Pixar’s dearest character — is driven towards the unthinkable: that he doesn’t need to belong to anyone but himself. It’s more successful as a chapter we didn’t know we wanted than a goodbye we certainly didn’t need in 2019. Points for Forky, and the opening between Woody and Bo Peep which is one of Pixar’s most beautiful stretches of film.
12. Turning Red
What made Pixar stand apart from other animation studios is they are unusually concerned with the human condition, which they would explore with tour-guide-y representatives through fantastical worlds. Today as their shorts directors have moved onto features, their focus has shifted a bit towards fantastical individuals in contrast to human worlds and Domee Shi’s debut feature is the best of them. It’s not perfect; the metaphor gets a bit muddied, and it arguably peaks when Mei’s Mother chases her through school, but with its personal story, visual gusto, and wonderful character creation (the Panda is always a snuggle-worthy sight), Turning Red has a secret weapon that might prove to be Pixar’s purest path forward: the uniting power of cringe.
11. Coco
For all of Pixar’s memorable characters, they’ve come up a bit short in the world-building department. Enter: The Land of the Dead, from Coco, a gorgeous cultural celebration that’s as warm a vision of death as any since Defending Your Life. But as written by Keith Watson on Slant Magazine, it hides a darker undercurrent. It’s a place of two deaths: the first, a reunion of family and culture; the second as cold a fate imaginable, being forgotten by the Land of the Living forever. It marries perfectly with quite a good family story of secrets and betrayal that manages some real surprises along the way, culminating with as beautiful a moment (ft. Mama Coco) as any Pixar has produced. That said, I’d be lying if I didn’t think it dragged a little too much.
10. A Bug’s Life
The knock on Pixar is that their first wave of films were basically “What if ___ had feelings?” It’s no a coincidence that this basic question drove their strongest winning streak. I think it’s what they do best. And although time has been crueler to A Bug’s Life than any of their other films (it returns none of the visual splendor it brought into 1998 with whatever passes for BDE in the insect kingdom), it gets more than a few things right that today’s Pixar films could learn a lesson from, not least of which including one of their most hissable bad guys, Hopper. Far too many Pixar films feature characters who tumble out of safety into the great unknown only to return back changed (Inside Out, Soul, Coco) in a neat bow. A Bug’s Life understands the strength of a punch to the nose in the name of worker’s rights. It’s too skimpy to be great Pixar but it deserves far better than to be lumped alongside Forgotten Pixar with The Good Dinosaur. I’m allowed to be nostalgic about this wee thing about wee things.
09. Toy Story 3
Back in 2010, we lined up to watch and join Andy in saying goodbye to our childhood and enter adulthood, and this is probably where the story should’ve drawn to a close (even though 4 revealed more grace notes than I initially appreciated). The Toy Story franchise is a thing held dearest by Millennials. What better way to end it than by fittingly centering it around the idea of nostalgia, as Andy is sent off into the world, no idea the doomscape that he – or we – would be inheriting? Taken as an individual chapter, there’s something paradoxical to the trilogy-ification of Toy Story. More so than Cars 2, it represents for me the turning point of Pixar, where they went from being independent purveyors of existential crisis to corporate Beast-feeders. You can tell from the rehashing of old devices, crude humor (homophobic Ken jokes, announcing we hadn’t entirely left the era of Shrek), and a whiff of wheel-spinning in the second act. It’s the first film where characters felt moved about from one plot development to another like, well, toys. How does Andy choosing Woody over the other toys not provide any emotional spine? And yet it’s the Millennial moment where it went from being one or two great movies to arguably the most beloved film franchise of a generation. I am nostalgic for this film about nostalgia.
08. Finding Nemo
The first Pixar film that courted “O” talk — and it probably should’ve happened. Andrew Stanton has one big strength and one big weakness. His strength is that he’s excellent at building relationships that you care about. More than any other Pixar film, his films thrive on building loving relationships that you care about. Dory may have taken over the franchise, but the secret to Finding Nemo’s success was in how deeply it made audiences experience the father-son relationship between Marlin and Nemo without picking sides: Marlin’s protective love for his disabled son, Nemo’s desire for freedom, and their search for each other. The first act is such strongly-developed character-writing that it doesn’t really matter what happens on their journey back to each other… and that’s sort of Andrew Stanton’s one big weakness. He’s not the best at plot. The story is episodic “overcoming your fear” vignettes, no clear idea presented about the ocean (like the toys, the bugs, the monsters), you’d be forgiven for not remembering Nemo’s third act of bravery. It may not be A-Tier Pixar but it’s still one of their warmest heartbreakers.
07. WALL*E
Speaking of… This rating is a little big deceptive. I’m open to the idea that it’s Pixar’s best film. Heck, I’m open to the idea that it isn’t just one of the greatest films in the history of animation but one of the great films of the twenty-first century. But here comes the dreaded sentence fragment I’ve so resisted for the last fourteen years: “…at least for the first forty minutes.” In 2008, I was willing to admit deep down in my heart that the stretch of film aboard the Axiom was at the very least less inspired than that magical first act. Oscar voters were right to overlook Andrew Stanton’s screenplay. Once aboard the Axiom, the film fails to provide proper opposition to WALL*E’s believe in true love (that Wheel thing doesn’t work), its green message of humanity re-finding its purpose fits awkwardly, WALL*E’s third act sacrifice of getting crushed is about as disappointing as Captain Kirk getting killed by a bridge in Star Trek: Generations, and (how shall I put this) I no longer buy their vision of humanity becoming complacent once becoming glued to screens. How do I reconcile those meaningful things against how exciting the filmmaking is or how impossibly winning the love story is? I think WALL*E is probably Pixar’s greatest film. I’m just not convinced it’s their best.
06. Toy Story 2
Toy Story 2 occupies a strange place in Pixar’s canon. Its most ardent devotees hold it as their crowning achievement, and it’s not hard to see their point. Toy Story may have kicked open the door but Toy Story 2 is where it became the rare franchise you can trust. It’s where the toy metaphor became Pixar’s richest text. Through answering the most pertinent overhanging questions of the previous film (what happens when children grow up), Toy Story 2 demonstrated that its central metaphor is durable enough to maintain multiple, contradictory meanings often at the same time. And of course, it’s home to the franchise’s most heartbreaking moments. For me, it’s Woody gaining moral clarity through his black & white television-self singing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” in Tom Hanks’ broken tones. If I’m slightly less bull-ish on the film as a whole than others, it’s because I can still see traces of its straight-to-video form (Woody completing the cliffhanger the world never got to see never packs the oomph it should). I’m not quite comfortable calling it a great film, but it’s a great time. It’s also one of the few Pixar films where the second act is standout in contrast to the third act.
05. Inside Out
There is a crucial punch missing at the end of Inside Out and that is that Joy needs to realize that she is holding all of the emotions back, not just Sadness. Joy is a control freak who needs to let go and let Riley grow. I wish Pixar had dialed this idea in more to create a fullness of arc. Beyond that, this movie wrecks me. Wrecks me. For both its conceptual ingenuity, its generosity of spirit in helping audiences feel less alone with their thoughts in the world, and in its recurring motif of childhood on the ice: at once free and constantly in peril.
While I’m here, let’s have a quick chat about Pixar’s second acts! What does Pixar have in common with Dan Harmon? They’re both obsessed with The Hero’s Journey. Bad guys rarely drive the stories in Pixar films (A Bug’s Life jumps to mind with Hopper), which means that most of their stories are about heroes who start off in a place of comfort, but something dislodges them and they end up on a vaguely circular journey that brings them back to where they came from changed. We see variations on these stories with Inside Out, where Joy has to return with Riley’s missing memories, with the Toy Story franchise where the toys have to return before Andy finds out… pretty much with every Pixar film. They’re generally a good fit because hero’s journeys prioritize personal growth and personal revelation and generally Pixar movies are about imaginary words, so even in their more forgettable films you walk away with a greater understanding of how these characters work — especially in the second act low point. I’m talking about when Buzz learns he’s a toy. When Sulley learns that scaring is bad. When Joy learns that Sadness has a place. As I wrote earlier, these moments are so uniformly strong, I truly wonder how many stories started with that moment and the writers reverse-engineered the rest of the story from there. Even Lightyear has a good one. The downside to these hero’s journeys is that they have to work on several levels at once — as both a literal adventure and a metaphorical journey — and if they don’t, they end up feeling a bit placeholder-y. For example, we remember that Joy must save Riley’s core memories but what does that mean exactly? Increasingly with some of their recent films that had the potential for greatness (Onward, Soul, even to a degree Inside Out), their journeys feel like “journeys.”
04. Ratatouille
It’s also hard to know what to do with this film because fifteen years after its release it’s still hard to know what to make of it. Really, what is its appeal? I think some Pixar films roar out of the gate in contrast to the surrounding fodder and then their appeal diminishes over time, but I don’t get the sense that Ratatouille has grown anything other than more dear as the years have gone on, as partially evidenced by Everything Everywhere All At Once devoting an entire reality to it. I think it’s the closest thing that Pixar has ever done to making what Quentin Tarantino once referred to as “a hangout movie.” The stakes aren’t life and death; it’s just about little people with their little dreams going about their little lives, and it’s fun to spend some time with them. I also think because it made no pretense whatsoever about appealing to children. But I also think that fans suspect that this film is something of a minor miracle that shouldn’t really work at all. On the surface, it feels like some half-remembered cartoon film the 1980s that might’ve been a dream (“Do you remember a cartoon about a rat that learns to cook and helps his human get a girl?”) but in truth it contains a multitude of very smart writing choices by Brad Bird, chief among them: it has two “magic tricks” but hides one of them. Magic Trick #1 is Remy puppeteering Linguini, which is given no explanation whatsoever, which I think is part of its charm. Magic Trick #2 is the idea that a rat can cook, which Brad Bird bakes into the very premise of the film and explores throughout the film: the idea that anybody could cook but not everybody can. It’s just this weird little film that embraces talent and talentlessness that appeals to the Little Chef inside us all. Whenever I watch Ratatouille, I’m always aware of how little I remember but it inspires unexpected emotions of giddiness, warmth, and ultimately fullness. And such inspired scampering animation camerawork!
03. The Incredibles
Eighteen years later, and I still think this is the best film about superheroes I’ve ever seen. Nothing Nolan has put out has changed my opinion. Nothing in the MCU has changed my opinion. Every time I put on Brad Bird’s witty superhero family story, I always expect it to creak or I expect to wince at his exceptionalism kick. I never care. I’m only charmed anew. I’m always impressed at how it juggles two prologues and manages to re-start its first act at roughly the ten minute mark without a moment of gracelessness. I’m always impressed at how successful it is as parodying both tropes from both superhero films and James Bond while managing to be more entertaining than pretty much any I’ve seen in my life — throw in most mid-life crisis films too. I’m always impressed by how it maintains my sympathy on both sides of the marital divide. It’s both the perfect gateway into superhero entertainment as well as the strongest mic drop on the subject, and years of multiverse nonsense has done nothing to dampen its freshness and singular focus on family. I'm putting it at third but it's probably their second most perfect movie.
02. Monsters, Inc.
Such a wonderful film. I think more than any other Pixar film, it best exemplifies everything they do. Warm slightly bickering friendships (the vaudevillian odd couple of Mike and Sulley). Creating new worlds from childhood fears and fantasies (monsters under your bed), turning them upside down with unexpected twists (they’re more scared of us than we are of them) and moral messages (has this ever been put to more satisfying effect than monsters harnessing the green technology of laughter vs. scares?). Dad jokes and awful puns. And they use all of these things to explore deeply meaningful interpersonal relationships, in this case Sulley learning to be a father by taking care of a human child named Boo, possibly the most adorable child I’ve ever seen on film. Pixar has broken ground in bolder ways, but the visual storytelling of watching this big, blue, furry monster go from scared out of his mind of this adorable little child to tucking her into bed as tears well in his eyes that he’ll never see her again is unmatched in as Roger Ebert would say their ability to generate empathy. It’s not quite a perfect film. Unlike The Incredibles, there’s a little too much water-treading in the second act as Mike and Sulley try to find Boo and the business with the scream extractor never quite lands with the power that it should. But spirit of generosity in Monsters, Inc. (and Pete Docter, their sweetest soul) wins out for me, in its belief in the power of personal change and in better worlds.
01. Toy Story
Maybe you had to be there in the 90’s to witness with gaped jaw the bravery of this tightrope walk, announcing a new path forward for animation (and entertainment) like the rifle shot opening of “Like a Rolling Stone.” It defined the brand right out of the gate. And it’s that mix of new and old that defined a brand right out to the gate, of the latest technology and corny jokes in a classic Hollywood two-hander, except how many classic two-handers were really this good? It’s their most breathless narrative. Every twist in the plot feels meaningful and yet inevitable. Every character and idea about their subject matter is a 10/10. Later entries in the series would mine more thematic depths, but Toy Story 1 has the divine comedy of a toy who fears being replaced by a toy who doesn’t know he’s a toy, both of them locked into conflict for one time only. I understand dismissing it as a primer with its dated animation and occasionally mean humor (the toys turn on Woody so fast!). At this point, it probably has less in common with other Pixar films than it does with classic Hollywood game-changers, but I think that’s what makes it soar above the pack. There’s a higher calling at work in this film that’s clear in every frame: to make you emotionally care about a visual effect like it’s real life as if the future of the industry depends on it. Sitting in that packed theater in 1995, I did. Watching it again all these years later, I still do.
