Hello and welcome to the final installment of my Ultimate Pixar Ranking! We’ve finally made it to the top five! I hope you are as excited for this as I am!
Let’s get to it!
5. Coco (2017)
Since I first saw it in the theaters, I have loved Coco so much! Miguel is a great protagonist, and I love how much love there is between him and all of his family, dead or alive. The Land of the Dead is gorgeous and Miguel and Héctor’s adventures together are exciting upon first viewing and become more poignant when rewatching the film. The last scene + epilogue are so beautiful and make me cry big, fat tears.
4. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Toy Story 3 is by far my favorite film of the Toy Story franchise. I basically have it memorized from watching it so many times over the years. I love the ensemble, I love the setting, and I love watching the execution of the toys’ complicated escape plan. In addition to having a lot of excitement and fun, the movie really drives home its message of realizing when it’s time to move on, contrasting Woody, who learns to move on to a new phase in life, against Lotso, who remains bitter from his past. The toys’ perilous journey to the dump is always a bit stressful for me, but the epilogue is the absolute perfect ending to the original Toy Story trilogy.
3. Luca (2021)
I’ve only seen Luca twice, but both viewings were such a delightful experience that it had to rank extremely high on this list. It really iis pure joy! I adore the main characters, Luca, Alberto, and Guilia, and their relationships with each other, which is good because Luca is about the formative nature of childhood friendships. It makes me laugh while the story resonates deep within my heart. This film is another one of the newer Pixar films, that I am excited to watch it many more times in the future.
2. Up (2009)
Up is one of my childhood favorites. I love the style and genre of it, where it’s kind of fantasy, kind of not, and ultimately one grand adventure. I also truly take to heart the message of the movie: an ordinary life lived well with loved ones is the most special experience of all. I could watch it any time, crying big fat tears all the way.
1. Inside Out (2015)
Universality is an elusive and almost, if not entirely, impossible quality in writing, but Inside Out gets as close as you can get with the way it dives into the complexities of human thought, memory, and emotion while acknowledging the way a personality is the sum of all of a person’s experiences. Adding all that to a freshly imagined world that is inventive, colorful, and fits perfectly inside the real world, I think Inside Out may be the perfect animated movie.
Thank you so much for following along with this countdown. I had a lot of fun rewatching, and then writing about, these movies. If you want to see more fun pieces like this, be sure to keep an eye on this blog in the near future!