Every Pixar movie, ranked

polygon.com:

With the 2022 animated feature Turning Red, Pixar Animation Studios hit a new milestone: 25 feature films, released over 27 years. Those movies have had a profound change on American studio animation. They ushered in an age where computer animation rather than hand-drawn cel animation is the norm. They’ve raised the bar on animated storytelling, cementing the idea that animated features can be sophisticated enough for adults without alienating children, and entertaining enough for children without boring an adult audience. And they’ve consistently pushed the envelope on taboo subjects for children’s films, from aging, disappointment, and death to (in Turning Red’s case) menstruation.

Twenty-five films is a lot to navigate, though, even for animation fans. So we’ve laid out which Pixar movies we think new fans (or new parents) should prioritize, or that existing fans might want to revisit or reassess. Our collective staff ranking, averaged from our individual ranked lists, address which Pixar films we feel are most exciting, most ambitious, and most moving — the ones that most changed our perspectives on what animation and all-ages storytelling can do.

The worst crime of The Good Dinosaur, which went through several incarnations and a lot of behind-the-scenes drama as Pixar tried to figure out what do with its big dino film, isn’t the actual quality of the story or animation. It’s that it rarely lets viewers really care about its characters.

The idea of a world where dinosaurs never went extinct is rich. Certain scenes are breathtaking — Arlo the dinosaur sticking his head up into a sea of clouds! A nightscape set aglow with luminous fireflies! But the odd Western narrative (it’s basically a cowboy movie about a young