Ranking of Pixar Movies

[Udaman]

OK, let's do a true USA Today type DBR poll.

Rank your top 10 Pixar movies (with 1 being the best). I'll do a total vote once everyone is in. My votes are:

1. The Incredibles (just loved it - funny, unique, geared for adults. Wonderful).
2. Toy Story (as Jason said - started it all)
3. Monsters, Inc.
4. Finding Nemo (parts were just hysterically funny)
5. UP
6. Cars
7. Ratatouille
8. Wall-E (I join the minority that found this slow...and the spaceship 2nd half really contrived and sort of pointless)
9. A Bugs Life
10. Toy Story 2

Personally, I think the top 6 are almost interchangeable, and Ratatouille was a wonderful film, no doubt...it just didn't have the same comedy to me as the others - and seemed pretty predictable as well.

8,9 and 10 were on the low end for me.

[Olympic Fan]

I agree with you about The Incredibles -- my favorite too.

I disagree with you about WALL-E ... loved it. Probably my second favorite.

I give props to Toy Story for being the first ... also think Nemo and Monsters were excellent. I think Cars and A Bug's Life were pretty mediocre.

I HATED Ratatouille and never bothered to see Toy Story 2.

I'm not rushing out to see UP -- the trailers aren't very appealing to me. I'll wait until it hits cable.

[Bluedog]

1. Finding Nemo
2. The Incredibles
3. Toy Story
4. Ratatouille
5. Cars
6. Up
7. Monsters, Inc.
8. Wall-E
9. Toy Story 2

Haven't seen A Bugs Life. Hard to choose though. Really enjoyed ones I listed 1-7.

[ndkjr70]

1. Finding Nemo
2. Toy Story (I grew up on this movie)
3. Monsters, Inc.
4. Meet the Robinson's
5. Toy Story 2
6. WALL-E
7. A Bugs Life
8. Up (I haven't seen it, to be honest-- but I've heard it was pretty good)
9. The Incredibles
10. Cars

[johaad]

1. Toy Story
2. Cars
3. Finding Nemo
4. Toy Story 2
5. Wall-E
6. Monsters Inc.
7. The Incredibles
8. A Bug's Life
9. Meet the Robinson's

I haven't seen Up yet so I will wait to comment on that. I must say, I really didn't like the Incredibles.

[Bluedog]

4. Meet the Robinson's

9. Meet the Robinson's

Seems that you've started a trend! Meet the Robinsons isn't Pixar - although it is Disney.

[Mal]

Two caveats - never saw Toy Story 2, and saw the original Toy Story at least 5 years after it came out so the groundbreaking impact was sort of gone by time of viewing.

1. Monsters, Inc. - the absolute, sheer genius of the premise of the plot puts this way up there for me. More heartwarming than any of the rest in my estimation, too.
2. Incredibles - wonderfully executed all the way through; great subtle humor and messages. I would have this at the top, but I suspect a lot of the themes may be lost on kids - that's fine, but for me it didn't work on multiple levels as completely as Monsters did.
3. Ratatouille - the moment where the reviewer tastes the ratatouille and is transported to his mother's kitchen as a boy is brilliance. The extended scene of hundreds of rats working the kitchen was an amazing piece of animation to me, too.
4. Wall-E - expectations weighed it down for me. I so wanted to love it based on reviews, and technically it was an achievement. But it left me a little cold, somehow.
5. Nemo - great adventure, good characters. I liked the switching between two plot lines at first, but later determined doing so was a move to cover the fact that neither plot line was enough to sustain for very long periods at a time. Also, Albert Brooks's voice bugs.
6. Toy Story - as noted above. The catchphrases and characters were so overexposed by the time I saw it it just didn't work well.
7. Cars - fun but pretty predictable. The cast of secondary characters is fun, and some of the details are great. I will say that my 2-year old son is obsessed with Lightning McQueen.
8. Bug's Life - meh. Barely held my attention, I'm afraid.

[JasonEvans]

This is almost impossible to do. A week ago, I did the following

1. Wall*E
2. Toy Story
3. Incredibles
4. Monsters, Inc.
5. Ratatouille
6. Finding Nemo
7. Toy Story 2
8. A Bug's Life
9. Cars
10. Up

The top 4 could go in any order for me. The next 3 could go in any order. The bottom 3 could go in any order. This is insane! My head hurts from even trying to rank them. How could Monsters, Inc be #4!??!?! How can Toy Story 2 be #7?!?!?! Arrrrgggghhhh!!

As an aside, the notion that Meet the Robinson's is even a league with the above films is -- well -- I just cannot speak about it any further.

--Jason "Perhaps a better system would be to allow ties or some other kind of weighting-- please!" Evans

[darthur]

I'm missing a few but I'll chime in anyway:

1. The Incredibles (By far my favorite Pixar movie and also one of my all-time favorite movies of any genre)
2. Wall-E
3. Ratatouille
4. Up (I liked it, but it is so serious at times that I think it hurts rewatchability)
5. Toy Story (It's good and all, but I didn't see it at the time so it didn't amaze me with its newness and it doesn't hold nostalgia for me)
6. Finding Nemo (I do not and never will understand why this is so widely loved - one of the few Pixar movies I've seen where I simply could not forget I was watching a kid's movie)
7. A Bug's Life

If you need all 10, I'll rank the rest by how much I want to see them:

8. Toy Story 2
9. Monsters, Inc.
10. Cars

[bjornolf]

I did this in the other thread, but figured I should stick it here too:

1. Incredibles
2. Toy Story
3. Cars
4. Wall*E
5. Monsters, Inc.
6. Finding Nemo
7. Toy Story 2
8. Ratatouille
9. Bug's Life

I have NOT seen Up yet, but we're going next week, so I'll update my list then. My rankings are probably a little colored by my kids. They LOVED Cars. Watched it probably 50 times, if not more (on DVD, twice in the theater). Although they liked Wall*E almost as much as Cars, and I still put it at #4. My kids would probably go Cars, then Wall*E, then Monsters, Inc., then Incredibles (thought they LOVE Jack-Jack Attacks), then Nemo, followed by the Toy Story movies, then Bug's Life, and Ratatouille last. My kids are a little young for Toy Story 1 & 2, so they don't see it as quite as impressive as the ones they grew up with (Wall*E and Cars). It's difficult for me to rank them, cause I really loved them all.

So, my kids would go:
1. Cars
2. Wall*E
3. Monsters Inc.
4. Incredibles
5. Nemo
6. Toy Story
7. Toy Story 2
8. Bug's Life
9. Ratatouille (They actually liked "Flushed" better)

I like the idea Jason had of ranking the shorts. We have the DVD with all the shorts, except of course the Wall*E one and the Up one. I loved Burn*E. I thought that one was HYSTERICAL.

[CameronBornAndBred]

1. Incredibles
2. Wall*E
3. Monsters, Inc.
4. Up
5. Finding Nemo
6. Cars
7. Toy Story
8. Toy Story 2
9. Bug's Life

I haven't seen Ratatouille yet, one day I'll buy the DVD. I feel guilty not having the Toy Storys higher, but if I had all 10 movies laid out on the table and was asked which I wanted to see first, that's pretty much the order it would be in. I can barely remember Bug's Life, and I've seen it a couple times.

[bjornolf]

Not trying to be the grammar police here, I'm really wondering. Should it be "Toy StorIEs" or "Toy StorYs"? I'm never sure when you're dealing with titles, but technically, since you're using the plural, you're not EXACTLY typing the exact titles. This always confuses me.

[Mal]

I'd take the easy way out and go with "the Toy Story movies." :^)

[bjornolf]

Now that's just cheating.

[gethlives]

Here's mine, . . .

1. Wall-E (I bet this gets named top 2 or 3 film of the decade)
2. Ratatouille (hard to believe a film about rats could make me so hungry)
3. The Incredibles (One of the funniest of all the films)
4. Monsters, Inc. (most touching scene with kids in entire Pixar universe (the final scene))
5. Finding Nemo (touching emphasis on parenthood)
6. Up ((most touching scene with adults in entire Pixar universe (the opening montage on the Hendricksons.)
7. Toy Story 2 (I think a better story than the original)
8. Toy Story (great and obviously innovative but pales in terms of story telling to what followed--but if you want to rate innovativeness as a major criteria I can't argue)
9. Cars (holds up better on rewatching but the only one I found boring in the theatre)

[johaad]

Seems that you've started a trend! Meet the Robinsons isn't Pixar - although it is Disney.

Yep, you're right. I basically copied someone's list and changed things around. I guess Disney really needs Pixar to make a quality new-age cartoon! If I didn't have Ratatouille(?) than you can replace Robinsons with that (although it did have a great soundtrack).

[brevity]

Meet the Robinsons, while not on the level of Pixar animation and storytelling, is a very underrated Disney effort. And it did the impossible for me: listen to a Rob Thomas song without immediately wanting to kill either myself or Rob Thomas.

I've seen this Pixar movie rankings question in various places recently and it fails to interest me. It's so subjective that you could very well see every permutation in a long enough thread. If you want to talk Pixar, here's the better question:

Who is the best feature-length filmmaker in the Pixar stable?

Andrew Stanton (A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, WALL-E)
John Lasseter (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Cars)
Pete Docter (Monsters Inc., Up)
Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille)

The movies included are the ones that person directed or co-directed. The word "filmmaker" is open to some interpretation, especially since Pixar films are such collaborative efforts. Lasseter, for example, has had some involvement in every Pixar film.

For now I think I'd go with Bird because his films are the most distinctive and were the first to deviate from what one might call a standard look for Pixar. (It's worth mentioning that humans comprise many of his films' main characters.)

Docter is the least heralded of the four, and the only one not to have an Academy Award. (Monsters, Inc. lost to Shrek that year.) That could change with Up, which I have yet to see.

[cspan37421]

Without ranking them all, I think TY2 is being underrated. I like the way they brought in the Roundup gang with the theme of a collector who values toys more for their mint condition than the fun they give a kid. And who had a dry eye during this 3 minute stretch?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=natWIzL4gLg

[JasonEvans]

Brad Bird is the best and if you have not seen The Iron Giant then do yourself a favor and check it out.

I felt it was the best animated film of the past 20 years that did not have a one of these at the beginning--->


--Jason "" Evans

[cf-62]

I am sticking up for TS II. The concept in Toy Story was so cool that people simply dismiss TS2, but it is just awesome writing.

especially if you like, well,...hate to give away spoiler because it seems many never saw it.

Doc Hollywood (er, Cars) was cute, but the Toy Story movies and The Incredibles were really on a different level than the others.