I have returned with the next five movies in my Watching and Ranking Pixar series. To catch you up on what I have been doing, after having conversations with many of my friends I figured out that I have not seen most of the Pixar movies that have come out, so to fix this I am watching all of them in chronological release order and ranking them to determine what I think is the best Pixar movie of all time. This is the second group of five movies starting with The Incredibles and ending with Up. The rankings for the first five films are:
1. Toy Story 2 2. Finding Nemo 3. Toy Story 4. Monster’s Inc 5. Bug’s Life
This group of movies continues the strengths the studio has become known for. One of the main things I enjoyed from this group is how each of the movies felt extremely different from one another. There were no sequels in this group, which played a big part in the originality I felt while watching these. Pixar really felt by the end of this group of five that the studio had come into its own and was not a startup company backing unproven technology, instead an animated powerhouse that had become the gold standard of the medium they made mainstream. The characters and music in this group of movies are some of my favorites that I have heard so far, even without the classic themes that the first group of movies had. Now that we have established some overall thoughts about this group, let's breakdown each movie individually and update the rankings!
The Incredibles
It has been years since I have seen The Incredibles and I am thrilled that it aged extremely well. Releasing originally in 2004, during its theatrical run it brought in a worldwide total of $631.6 million (Box Office Mojo) making it the 4th highest grossing movie of 2004. The movie also held the record for the largest November opening for an animated movie till 2019 when it was overtaken by Frozen II. The story behind its development is extremely interesting to me, as it was the first time Pixar had brought in an outside director in Brad Bird to helm the project. Bird came up with the idea of this movie during the time he was making The Iron Giant and after that movie flopped at the box office, he decided to revisit the idea.
The two things that stand out about this film to me are the animation style and the music score. When I was watching it, the style instantly reminded me of a classic 60’s spy film. The retro future tech style mixed with art deco is ingrained into the DNA of the animation, with Mr. Incredible visiting the island for the first time as the standout moment. The music by Michael Giacchino is stellar and I was surprised to learn that this was the first Pixar film he had worked on. I have been listening to it after watching the movie and it is incredible even without the visuals accompanying it.
Now that we are in 2023 with superhero movies coming out at a regular cadence, it felt nice going back to where the superhero aspect of it felt like part of the overall structure and not what the entirety of the film was about. Instead, you get a great movie about a father feeling that time has passed him by and all his great adventures are behind him, realizing by the end of the movie that his greatest adventure is his family.
Cars
This was the last of the group of movies that I had already watched and is also the first one where my opinion of it got worse after re-watching it for this series. Releasing in June 2006, this movie was the first release after Disney bought Pixar and given the new Disney-Pixar branding. The box office numbers were extremely good, coming in worldwide at $462 million (Box Office Mojo) and being the highest grossing automotive movie till it was passed by Fast & Furious in 2009.
Like most Pixar movies, the story behind the film’s development and how it came together started years before it came out, beginning in 1998 while wrapping up A Bug’s Life. It was originally seen as the next movie to be released but got scrapped in favor of Toy Story 2. John Lassiter became inspired to work on the idea again after taking a trip with his wife in 2000 across the legendary Route 66. Making sure the cars were animated properly, Lassiter took trips to visit the Big Three car manufacturers in America to make sure the animation was believable “It took many months of trial and error...to figure out how each car moves and how their world works”.
This movie is not terrible but really did not hold my attention for long. Other Pixar movies feel like they are talking to children and adults at the same time. This movie gave off the impression of how to sell merchandise to kids. There is the message about how times change, watching the town of Radiator Springs become abandoned after the interstate system was built, but to it felt like more of an aside than the focus. Having one of the longer run times for any of the movies at almost 2 hours really did not help it. Overall, not the worse movie I have ever seen, but one I remember liking more as a kid that feels shallow compared to Pixar’s other films.
Ratatouille
This was the movie that started this whole series of me re-watching all of Pixar. The last year I have gotten into cooking and baking more as a hobby of mine and have been recommended this movie countless times. I am excited to report that it mostly lived up to the hype and I found great joy in watching this for the first time. Released in 2007, it was a financial success during its theatrical release making $623.7 million worldwide (Box Office Mojo).
A brief plot synopsis, the story follows a rat named Remy who has bigger aspirations than the rest of his family. He wants to become a chef like his idol Chef Auguste Gusteau who he watches his cooking show in the kitchen of the house his family is staying at. Remy teams up with the garbage boy at Gusteau’s old restaurant, controlling his movements under his hat as together they help each other make their dreams come true.
The production of this film and the amount of research that went into it was amazing. Taken the original idea over from Jan Pinkava and Bob Peterson, this was Brad Bird’s second directed film. Helping to capture the romantic version of Paris that the production team wanted, they spent a week in the city going on motorcycle tours and eating at five top French restaurants. I feel like this research really shines when you look at the computer-generated food that the movie has.
Besides some extremely slight nitpicks about some of the story beats, I enjoyed my first viewing of Ratatouille. The scene near the end where the food critic Ego eats the ratatouille that Remy serves and how it unlocks the happiest memory of his childhood is one of my favorite scenes so far with any Pixar movie. That scene shows the power that food has and how one bite can bring us back to when the world was simpler, and we were all a little happier.
WALL-E
This was another one that I thought I had seen all the way through but about halfway in I realized I had not watched most of it. This movie gave me a heartwarming feeling almost all the way through. I especially loved how WALL-E and EVA interacted with all the other robots on the ship. Because none of the robots talk, watching them use motions and sounds to explain how they feel is wonderful. I felt more emotionally connected to these characters, then say in Cars where even though they were inanimate objects that could speak English.
This film was released in 2008 and was directed by Andrew Stanton, his last project being Finding Nemo and you can see improvements in his style from that movie to this one. The lighting in this film and how realistic everything on Earth looks is extraordinary. The juxtaposition between how Earth, filled with dirt and trash is seen to be this romantic museum of this past life, while everything on the Axiom is extremely sterile is such an amazing production choice. During its original theatrical release, WALL-E had a worldwide box office of $521.3 million (Box Office Mojo). The production of this movie started back in 1994 when the idea was first talked about, going through multiple rewrites and story changes till 2003 when Stanton showed a story reel to Lassiter and Steve Jobs.
The anti-consumerism and environmental themes of this movie really hit home for me while watching this and have become even more important than they were when it was released. The story also shows that humans must be active in taking care of our planet and not just leaving everything to be automated for them. Because of how much detail went into capturing the movie’s unique animation style, the important themes it showcases throughout its story, and how it hearkens back to classic Hollywood style of film, WALL-E is one of my favorite animated movies of all time.
Up
Even with the warning of how emotional this movie would get; I still was not prepared for the gut punch Up would cause. The first twenty minutes of this movie was one emotional ride after another. Seeing the life of Carl and Ellie told through brief snapshots of their life together. Between them moving into their dream home, deciding to have a family and then losing that future, then trying to go on the adventure they always wanted, to Ellie dying before that Paradise Fall’s dream could become a reality was just incredible. Seeing how Carl starts to warm up to Russell, realizing that he could be the new adventure that Ellie wants him to go on just pulls at your heartstrings.
Up was released in 2009 with a worldwide box office of $735.1 million dollars, becoming the sixth highest grossing film of that year (Box Office Mojo). The idea of Up was conceived in 2004 between director Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson and was originally called Heliums. The three major things I want to highlight that really make this movie shine are the animation style, the performances, and Michael Giacchino character driven score.
The animation of Paradise Falls is based on Venezuela’s Monte Roraima, and you can really tell because it feels like a real place. Docter and team spend three days and nights traveling around the area to get a better feel for what to create. The performances of Ed Asner (Carl) and Christopher Plummer (Charles Muntz) are fantastic, with the animators helping bring those performances to life with characters that I feel only these two men could play. Finally, Giacchino created his third score for a Pixar movie and this one felt more intimate than the other two. “Ellie’s Theme” is the one track I wanted to highlight; it goes from a simple piano tune to a full orchestral assembly when Carl can lift his house by balloons out of the city. The soundtrack overall adds so much to the emotional connection between these characters and their stories.
Alright after this second group of Pixar movies, here are the current rankings:
1. WALL-E
2. Up
3. Toy Story 2
4. Ratatouille
5. Finding Nemo
6. The Incredibles
7. Toy Story
8. Monster’s Inc
9. Bug’s Life
10. Cars
Overall, I think these five Pixar movies showed how original they could be. Even with being disappointed and not connecting with Cars like I did the other four movies, it still showed how creative the studio could be when not focusing on sequels. These movies all had unique animation styles, came from different backgrounds, and really focused on how to make each of these animated worlds feel lived in, which I think is a huge accomplishment.
The rankings will be updated after every batch of five movies. This next group of films is going to be interesting as three of the five are sequels. It feels like we are getting deeper into the Disney era of Pixar as a company, so it will be intriguing to see if the quality continues or if there is a drop off at some point. Thank you for reading this and I welcome you back for Part 3!