It’s been almost a decade since we first ranked every Pixar movie, and a lot has changed. Back in 2017, there were 18 films to debate. Today there are 30 — with Elio having just landed in 2025 and Hoppers hitting theaters in early 2026. The studio has been through creative highs, Disney+ pandemic drops, and a genuine late-era renaissance. It’s time for a full reset.

A few ground rules: we’re ranking on overall impact — emotional resonance, storytelling craft, rewatchability, and how much the film pushed the studio forward. We’ve kept the tier system from the original piece because some decisions are just too painful to put a number on.

Tier 4: The Ones We’re Glad Exist (But Don’t Need to Revisit)

These are the films that nobody would call bad exactly, but nobody’s fighting for them on a re-watch night either.

30. Cars 2 (2011) The only Pixar film that feels like it was made for a merchandise line rather than an audience. Shifting the focus from McQueen to Mater as a spy protagonist strips away everything that made the original charming. It’s not unwatchable — it’s just hollow.

29. Lightyear (2022) A fascinating misfire. The concept of a gritty Buzz Lightyear origin film that exists in the Toy Storyuniverse as “the movie Andy loved” is a clever premise that the execution never quite earns. It’s competent science fiction but feels like it belongs to a different studio.

28. The Good Dinosaur (2015) Beautiful to look at — the photo-realistic landscapes remain some of Pixar’s most technically stunning work. But the story is thin and the emotional beats arrive on schedule without surprise. It feels like a promising short film stretched to feature length.

27. Cars 3 (2017) A genuine improvement on Cars 2, and the passing-of-the-torch ending is genuinely moving. But it takes too long to get there, and the middle act loses momentum badly. Better than it gets credit for; not as good as it wants to be.

Tier 3: Solid Films, Uneven Legacies

These are good Pixar movies. On any other studio’s slate, they’d be highlights. Here, they sit in the middle.

26. A Bug’s Life (1998) Chronologically underrated. The second Pixar feature holds up better than its reputation suggests — the ant colony world-building is inventive, and Hopper remains a genuinely menacing villain. It just has the misfortune of existing in the shadow of everything that came after.

25. Monsters University (2013) A fun, well-executed prequel that answers questions nobody asked. The college comedy framework works, and the ending — where Sully and Mike don’t actually win — is a bold choice. It adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

24. Cars (2006) This one has always divided opinion, and it should. Strip away the nostalgic road trip photography and the Paul Newman performance and you have a fairly standard underdog sports story. But those two elements are genuinely great, and the film earns its place in the catalog.

23. Brave (2012) Pixar’s first film with a female protagonist deserved a tighter script. The mother-daughter relationship is emotionally rich territory that the bear transformation subplot keeps interrupting. The last act is a genuine tearjerker despite the film’s structural wobbles.

22. Finding Dory (2016) A perfectly enjoyable sequel that gets mileage out of expanding Dory’s backstory and the Monterey Bay Aquarium setting. The problem is that Finding Nemo was already a complete story, and nothing here improves on it. Hank the Octopus is a great new character, though.

21. Onward (2020) The suburban fantasy world is one of Pixar’s most original settings, and the brother relationship at the center is genuinely moving. The film fumbles its climax — the visual payoff doesn’t match the emotional buildup — but the journey getting there is warm and inventive.

20. Hoppers (2026) Pixar’s newest film is a confident, funny piece of work — a body-swap comedy set in a beaver lodge that earns its laughs and delivers a surprisingly moving finale. Whether it develops the cult following of Pixar’s best will take time, but it’s a strong addition to the catalog.

19. Luca (2021) A sun-drenched Italian Riviera coming-of-age story that wears its Studio Ghibli influences proudly. Charming in every frame and genuinely lovely, even if it’s the rare Pixar film that doesn’t seem to be reaching for anything beyond a perfect summer afternoon.

18. Elemental (2023) A late-career redemption arc for a studio that had started to drift. Elemental was underseen on release and is significantly better than its box office suggested. The immigrant family allegory is handled with more grace than the marketing implied, and the water-fire romance is visually unlike anything the studio had done before.

Tier 2: Great Films, Essential Viewing

These are the films you recommend without hesitation. Any of them could headline a studio’s legacy.

17. Turning Red (2022) Divisive on release, inevitable in retrospect. Domee Shi’s feature debut is one of the most specific and personal films Pixar has ever made — a story about a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl, her overbearing mother, her boy band obsession, and the red panda she turns into when her emotions overwhelm her. It’s funny, embarrassing in the best way, and quietly radical in what it’s willing to say about adolescence.

16. Elio (2025) A return to classic Pixar form — an introverted kid accidentally becomes Earth’s ambassador to an intergalactic council. The world-building is spectacular, the relationship between Elio and the alien council he stumbles into is genuinely funny, and the emotional core lands cleanly. It’s the best Pixar original since Soul.

15. Incredibles 2 (2018) A worthy, if slightly overstuffed, sequel. The role reversal — Elastigirl in the field, Mr. Incredible managing the kids — works better than expected, and the Screenslaver plot has real teeth. Jack-Jack’s power gag wears out its welcome about twenty minutes before the film thinks it does.

14. Toy Story 4 (2019) The film nobody wanted that turned out to be genuinely necessary. Woody’s ending in Toy Story 3 felt complete, and somehow Toy Story 4 finds a different, more honest ending underneath it. Forky is one of the studio’s great original characters. The antique shop sequence is a masterclass in tension.

13. Toy Story 2 (1999) A sequel made in eleven months under chaotic circumstances that somehow came out better than most planned films. The Jessie “When She Loved Me” sequence remains one of the most purely emotional moments in the studio’s history.

12. Ratatouille (2007) Brad Bird’s second Pixar film is a love letter to Paris, ambition, and the radical idea that anyone can create something great. Anton Ego’s review — and the memory it triggers — is the kind of filmmaking that justifies the entire medium.

11. Soul (2020) A film about death, purpose, and jazz that somehow got marketed as a children’s movie about a cat. Soulis Pixar operating at full philosophical ambition — exploring what makes a life meaningful in a way that’s genuinely surprising, even if the Earth sequences can’t quite match the afterlife’s invention.

10. Inside Out 2 (2024) A rare sequel that deepens the original rather than repeating it. Anxiety as a new emotion is a smart addition — not just dramatically but conceptually, as the film grapples with how teenage identity forms under pressure. Riley’s core memory montage is the most purely cathartic sequence Pixar has made since Up‘s opening minutes.

Tier 1: The All-Timers

These are the films that define the studio. They belong in the conversation with the best animated films ever made.

9. Monsters, Inc. (2001) The creative peak of early Pixar’s world-building — a fully realized alternate universe where the rules of comedy, action, and emotion all operate perfectly. Boo remains the studio’s most purely lovable character, and the door factory climax is as good as anything in the catalog.

8. Brave (moved to Tier 3 above — see note)

8. Finding Nemo (2003) The best road movie Pixar ever made, and one of the most purely pleasurable theatrical experiences the studio has produced. The ocean world is built with genuine curiosity, and the father-son dynamic between Marlin and Nemo gives the spectacle something worth caring about.

7. The Incredibles (2004) Brad Bird’s superhero family drama is one of those films that operates simultaneously as a great kids’ movie, a great action film, and a genuinely smart piece of social satire. Syndrome’s villain logic still lands. Edna Mode still lands. The suburban spy thriller structure still lands. Nothing ages.

6. Toy Story 3 (2010) The film that made an entire generation of young adults cry at a cartoon in public. Toy Story 3 is a film about the end of childhood that somehow also works as an Escape from Alcatraz thriller and a meditation on the fear of being forgotten. The incinerator scene. You know the one.

5. Coco (2017) Pixar’s warmest film. The Land of the Dead is the studio’s most visually inventive world, and the final reveal — delivered as a simple melody — is devastating in the best possible way. The film treats its cultural source material with genuine love rather than superficial decoration, and the result is something that stands on its own terms as a story about memory, family, and what it means to be remembered.

4. Up (2009) Nobody needs to be told about the first ten minutes. But the rest of Up is also exceptional — a genuinely adventurous friendship movie that earns every emotional beat it goes for. Russell and Carl’s dynamic is one of Pixar’s great comedic pairings, and the villain reveals something real about how grief can curdle into obsession.

3. WALL-E (2008) The most formally daring film in the Pixar catalog. Forty minutes of nearly dialogue-free animation, a genuine critique of consumerism, and a love story between two robots that’s more romantic than most live-action films manage. The first act on the abandoned Earth is slow cinema that happens to be in a family film. It should not work as well as it does.

2. Inside Out (2015) The most elegant piece of emotional architecture the studio has ever built. Mapping the interior landscape of an 11-year-old’s mind onto an adventure film is a concept that could have been gimmicky and instead became one of the most useful frameworks for understanding human psychology — and grief — that popular culture has produced.

1. Toy Story (1995) It was always going to be this one. Not just because it started everything, but because it still holds up in a way that feels almost unfair. The first fully computer-animated feature film is also one of the best children’s movies ever made — a story about jealousy, identity, and friendship that works on every level. Thirty years on, Buzz and Woody still feel alive. That’s the whole game.

Think we got it wrong? The debate is the point — drop your ranking in the comments and tell us where we missed. And check out our updated Disney vs. Pixar bracket to see how the two studios stack up head-to-head.