The Classics
2. Toy Story
3. Up
4. Inside Out
5. Finding Nemo
6. Coco
7. Luca
9. Toy Story 4
10. Onward
11. Brave
12. Toy Story 2
13. Wall-E
14. The Incredibles
16. Cars 3
17. Soul
18. Incredibles 2
The Very Good
9. Toy Story 4
10. Onward
11. Brave
12. Toy Story 2
13. Wall-E
14. The Incredibles
The Better Than Average
16. Cars 3
17. Soul
18. Incredibles 2
The Not Bad
19. Turning Red
20. The Good Dinosaur
21. Ratatouille
22. Monsters, Inc.
23. Cars
24. Cars 2
In a previous version of this list, I made a comment that Cars will "bring about Pixar's inevitable demise" and I would like to take a moment to explain that position. It's not that Cars or any of its sequels are "bad". Pixar has to date never made a bad movie. The problem with Cars is how much money it made and how uncreative it is. Cars is Pixar's most profitable franchise and it's least challenging to write. Early Pixar reliably delivered great characters and original stories. Half of the post-Cars Pixar films have been sequels or prequels as they are clearly trying to capitalize on their established characters rather than creating new ones. Cars created the Forky problem at Pixar.
Forky is the new key character created for Toy Story 4. The character came about because the writers keep throwing partially completed scripts in the trash because they could not find a reason for Toy Story 4 to exist. (Toy Story 3 was a perfect end to the Toy Story story and the existence of Toy Story 4 makes the ending retroactively worse, even though it is a fine film on its own.) That is the central problem at modern Pixar. Pixar is financially motivated to make these meaningless sequels rather than tell new stories. So far, they have all come out okay, but they will eventually go downhill.
20. The Good Dinosaur
21. Ratatouille
22. Monsters, Inc.
23. Cars
24. Cars 2
In a previous version of this list, I made a comment that Cars will "bring about Pixar's inevitable demise" and I would like to take a moment to explain that position. It's not that Cars or any of its sequels are "bad". Pixar has to date never made a bad movie. The problem with Cars is how much money it made and how uncreative it is. Cars is Pixar's most profitable franchise and it's least challenging to write. Early Pixar reliably delivered great characters and original stories. Half of the post-Cars Pixar films have been sequels or prequels as they are clearly trying to capitalize on their established characters rather than creating new ones. Cars created the Forky problem at Pixar.
Forky is the new key character created for Toy Story 4. The character came about because the writers keep throwing partially completed scripts in the trash because they could not find a reason for Toy Story 4 to exist. (Toy Story 3 was a perfect end to the Toy Story story and the existence of Toy Story 4 makes the ending retroactively worse, even though it is a fine film on its own.) That is the central problem at modern Pixar. Pixar is financially motivated to make these meaningless sequels rather than tell new stories. So far, they have all come out okay, but they will eventually go downhill.
