Every Pixar Movie, Ranked

Anton Ego takes one bite and the film cuts to a boy in a doorway — the fastest, cleanest argument about criticism any studio has put on screen. Brad Bird's kitchen farce grossed $623.7 million worldwide against a $150 million budget. A rat who cooks is the hardest sell on this whole list, and it lands every beat, which is why it sits at number one.

Grief for an imaginary friend should not work as a blockbuster hinge, and then Bing Bong steps off the wagon saying take her to the moon for me. Pete Docter consulted psychologists Paul Ekman and Dacher Keltner to build a whole city out of a preteen's head, and the original 2015 run took $858.3 million worldwide. The bravest structural gamble Pixar ever made, and the one whose rules hold tightest.

Yes, the consensus number one is parked at three, on purpose — argue by voting. Andrew Stanton opens with almost no dialogue, letting Ben Burtt's 2,500 recorded sounds carry a robot love story, and it won Best Animated Feature at the 81st Academy Awards. The fire-extinguisher dance outside the Axiom is still the most graceful sequence in the catalogue. The earthbound half is perfect; the cruise-ship half is merely great.

Eleven years before anyone said legacy sequel, a first feature made entirely on computers — 114,240 frames across 1,561 shots, roughly 800,000 machine hours — opened on November 22, 1995 and rewired an industry. Buzz's flight around the bedroom, falling with style, is the thesis: delusion doing the work of grace. Ranking it fourth instead of first is the coldest call here, because everything below exists downstream of it.

Four minutes of marriage, miscarriage and widowhood without a word of dialogue, and then a children's adventure has to follow it. The Married Life montage is the best thing Pete Docter has ever cut, and the film opened the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in 2009, the first animated feature to do so. Its lift-off alone used 20,622 digital balloons. The talking-dog second half is why it is fifth, not first.

Remember Me starts as a bombastic showpiece and ends whispered to a great-grandmother who barely speaks, which is the film's whole argument about memory in one reprise. Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina took two Oscars at the 90th Academy Awards for it, and in Mexico it passed every film ever released there to become that market's all-time highest grosser. Nothing else here earns its tears more honestly.

An errant delete command wiped ninety percent of two years of work, backups had been dead for a month, and the film survived on technical director Galyn Susman's home computer. Pixar then remade the whole thing anyway in nine months. Jessie's When She Loved Me montage repays all of it — the moment the toys stopped being a joke about consumerism and became one about mortality.

Marlin's swim through the jellyfish field — bouncing on the bells, losing Dory in the pink — is the moment the ocean turns from backdrop into antagonist. Andrew Stanton's 2003 film took $871 million on its first run alone, Pixar's biggest to that point. A father's grief played at farce speed; the therapy is smuggled in under a fish joke, and it still works on the fortieth watch.

Dash looks down mid-chase, sees water under his feet, and laughs — a kid discovering what he is for. Brad Bird's 2004 family-as-superteam picture grossed $631.6 million, the fourth-highest total of that year, and its argument about mediocrity enforced by committee is angrier than family animation usually dares. Ninth place is the insult you are invited to correct.

Sulley carried 2,320,413 individually simulated hairs, wrangled by software Pixar named Fizt, and Boo's lines were captured by following a toddler around the office with a microphone. The door-vault chase — doors as coaster track through a factory of nightmares — is still the studio's best pure action sequence. Randy Newman finally won his first Oscar here, on his sixteenth nomination.

When the toys stop scrambling in the incinerator and simply hold hands, a G-rated threequel stares straight at death and does not blink. First animated film to cross a billion dollars — $1.067 billion — and a Best Animated Feature winner at the 83rd Academy Awards. Many people's number one; eleventh here because the first two acts are a prison-break riff on beats the series already owned.

A maple seed spirals into Joe Gardner's palm and ordinary life stops being the consolation prize — the quietest epiphany Pixar has staged. Pete Docter's jazz film went to Disney+ on December 25, 2020, waited until January 2024 for a US cinema run, and won two Oscars, with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scoring the great beyond and Jon Batiste the clubs.

Toronto, 2002: a thirteen-year-old's embarrassment becomes a giant red panda, and her mother's becomes a kaiju-sized one rampaging toward a boy-band show. The SkyDome concert climax turns generational shame into a stadium set piece. Domee Shi's film went straight to Disney+ in March 2022 on a budget near $175 million, and finally got its US theatrical run in February 2024.

Mind-transfer into a robotic beaver sounds like a pitch-meeting dare, and Daniel Chong — the We Bare Bears creator, six years on this after returning to Pixar in December 2020 — makes it sing. Seagulls attempt an assassination by dropping a shark named Diane onto a moving car, which tells you the joke density. A 94 percent Tomatometer and an $88 million global opening in March 2026 made it the studio's return to form.

Anxiety builds Riley a panic attack in the penalty box, animated as an orange whirlwind of paralysis, and a kids' film about puberty briefly turns clinical. Kelsey Mann's sequel grossed $1.699 billion in 2024 — the biggest film of that year and the highest-grossing American-produced animated film until Zootopia 2 passed it in January 2026. It runs the first film's playbook with new emotions; the playbook happens to be excellent.

Portorosso exists only in Enrico Casarosa's memory of the Italian Riviera, and the film was assembled almost entirely from crew members' homes after the pandemic closed Pixar's Emeryville campus. The downhill Vespa run — two sea monsters on a homemade scooter, screaming toward the harbor — is pure summer. Slighter than the films above it and unbothered about that, which is its charm. Disney+ first in June 2021, cinemas in March 2024.

Nobody asked for a fourth one after the incinerator ending, and the $1.073 billion it grossed against a $200 million budget suggests nobody minded either. Woody walking away from Buzz under the carousel lights is a genuinely earned goodbye — the second time this series has ended perfectly. Forky, a spork in existential crisis, is the best new Pixar character of his decade.

Merida splits her suitor's arrow down the shaft, and for one archery scene the film everyone wanted flickers into view. Brenda Chapman, the first woman to direct a Pixar feature, was replaced by Mark Andrews in October 2010, and the seams show — witch, bear, spell, mother. Built on Presto, the studio's first ground-up rewrite of its animation system in 25 years, and an Oscar winner anyway.

A cargo ship of hi-tech Buzz Lightyears wrecks on a deserted island in the cold open, and the survivors navigate home by the North Star — the best series opening since the toy box. Andrew Stanton's entry pits the toys against Lilypad, a tablet, and took a franchise-record $160 million opening in June 2026, sitting at $589.3 million worldwide by month's end. Sharp, funny, and fifth-verse familiar.

Ember and Wade touch hands and neither evaporates nor extinguishes — the chemistry lesson the whole city insisted was impossible. Peter Sohn built it from his parents' Bronx grocery store and their emigration from Korea in the early 1970s. It opened to $29.5 million, Pixar's worst start since 1995, then legged out to $496.4 million, the strangest box-office recovery in studio history. Sincere to a fault, and better than its reputation.

Failure is the actual subject — Mike learns he will never be scary, and the film lets that verdict stand. The cabin scare finale, powering a door bank with a room full of terrified adult rangers, out-stages anything in the original. A prequel nobody demanded that grossed $743.6 million in 2013 and quietly delivered the studio's most honest message about talent and its limits.

Flik's fake bird lurches off its branch, catches air, and an ant colony briefly believes in itself — the maiden flight is the film in miniature. John Lasseter's 1998 follow-up took $363.3 million worldwide on a reported budget sources put anywhere from $40 million to $120 million, depending who you ask. Sturdy, likable, and home to Hopper, the studio's first genuinely frightening villain.

Stepping onto an invisible bridge over a bottomless drop, believing it into existence one stride at a time — the film's best scene is also its thesis about faith in a dead parent. Released March 6, 2020, it watched most American cinemas close within two weeks; by weekend three it earned $71,000, largely from drive-ins, and hit Disney+ on April 3. The pandemic's first casualty deserved better than $142 million.

Glordon, a worm-like alien kid designed off tardigrades and larval insects, is the best thing in it — the friendship struck aboard the alien collective almost saves the picture. Three credited directors tell the production story: Adrian Molina departed over creative differences and Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi finished it. It opened in June 2025 to $20.8 million, Pixar's lowest ever, and stalled at $154 million on a nine-figure budget.

Hank, a seven-limbed octopus with camouflage anxiety, ends the film driving a truck off a pier, which is either the franchise jumping the shark or its single funniest image. The 2016 sequel became that rare billion-dollar film — $1.029 billion worldwide — that evaporates on the walk out of the cinema. Dory's short-term memory loss, a running gag in 2003, is at least handled here with real clinical care.

Jack-Jack against a raccoon in the backyard — a baby test-firing a grab-bag of powers at a trash bandit — is five perfect minutes in a film content to remix its predecessor. Fourteen years after the original, the 2018 sequel took $1.243 billion worldwide anyway. The Screenslaver reveal is guessable from the trailer, and that gap in ambition is the distance between this and number nine.

Time dilation eats Buzz's life in a montage — every test flight returns him years late, and Alisha ages, marries and dies in minutes of screen time. It is the one sequence with real nerve. Chris Evans replaced Tim Allen for a $200 million spin-off that grossed $226.4 million, lost a reported $106 million, and was banned in at least 13 countries over a same-sex kiss Disney declined to cut.

Arlo drags a claw through the dirt, drawing circles for his family, and the wordless boy Spot answers with circles for his dead one — grief handled better than the rest of the film handles anything. Bob Peterson was removed in mid-2013, Peter Sohn inherited a full story reboot, and the result became Pixar's first theatrical money-loser, grossing $332.2 million against a budget near $200 million before marketing. The photoreal rivers deserved a sturdier story.

Radiator Springs runs on Route 66 nostalgia, and the ending — McQueen braking short of the line to push the wrecked King across it instead — is a genuinely decent piece of sports-movie writing. John Lasseter's 2006 film grossed $462 million against a $120 million budget and sold merchandise beyond counting. Ranked this low because pleasant is the ceiling it aims for and hits. Cars partisans, the vote button is right there.

A mud-track demolition derby ruled by Miss Fritter, a homicidal school bus, wakes the film up for exactly one sequence. The 2017 threequel course-corrected back to racing drama, grossed $383.9 million — most of it, like Cars 2 before it, from overseas — and hands its ending to trainer Cruz Ramirez. Dignified where its predecessor was deranged, which is an improvement and also less fun to talk about.

Finn McMissile's oil-rig raid opens the film like a Bond picture that wandered into the wrong studio, and it is all downhill from the derrick. Mater-as-spy earned Pixar its first rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, at 40 percent, while still grossing $562.1 million in 2011. Somebody at the studio loves this one. Vote it off the bottom and prove that somebody is you.