As a longtime Pixar fan, I had hoped that the recent release of the studio’s 27th feature film, Elemental, might cause me to reshuffle the titles at the top of my personal all-time Pixar ranking — but, alas, no such luck. My top three Pixar movies remain, I suppose for the foreseeable future, the following: 2008’s Wall-E, followed by 2017’s Coco, and 1999’s Toy Story 2 (in descending order).
Graded purely on a visual basis, the jaw-dropping art in both Wall-E and Coco actually makes for a super-tight spread between the #1 and #2 spots for me. Even so, I’m keeping Wall-E at the top of my list for the time being. Your Pixar favorites, meanwhile, are no doubt different than mine — and are different, still, from the current Rotten Tomatoes rankings of each of the beloved studio’s animated gems. This is another interesting categorization to take a moment to consider, now that we’re in a brief fallow period between the release of Pixar’s newest film and future content still to come.
Rotten Tomatoes Pixar ranking, led by Toy Story 2
As for how Pixar’s existing movies stack up, here’s where they all stand at the moment based on Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” (which reflects the percentage of positive reviews from professional critics):
- Toy Story 2 (100%)
- Toy Story (100%)
- Finding Nemo (99%)
- Inside Out (98%)
- Toy Story 3 (98%)
- Up (98%)
- Toy Story 4 (97%)
- Coco (97%)
- The Incredibles (97%)
- Ratatouille (96%)
- Monsters, Inc. (96%)
- Soul (95%)
- Wall-E (95%)
- Finding Dory (94%)
- Turning Red (95%)
- Incredibles 2 (93%)
- A Bug’s Life (92%)
- Luca (91%)
- Onward (88%)
- Monsters University (80%)
- Brave (79%)
- The Good Dinosaur (75%)
- Cars (75%)
- Elemental (76%)
- Lightyear (74%)
- Cars 3 (68%)
- Cars 2 (40%)
Still to come
It’s obviously a shame, as you can tell from the list above, that some of the most recent content from Pixar ranks among its worst-reviewed. It should be noted that while many critics panned Elemental, however, it’s gotten a very different reception from the general public.
The movie’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score currently stands at 92%, based on more than 2,500 user ratings (compared to 206 professional reviews).
As for what’s next? Pixar’s next scheduled movie is Elio, set for a March 2024 release. The studio’s first-ever TV series is also coming soon (Win or Lose, about a middle-school softball team, debuts on Disney+ in December). Another unannounced TV series is also reportedly in the works, not to mention all the Pixar shorts for Disney’s streaming service
