In 1995 an unknown animation studio, with a name playing on the word ‘pixel’, released a little movie called Toy Story and changed the way that movie viewers regarded animation. No longer was computer generation reserved for blockbusters' special effects. Instead, within a decade it had almost entirely supplanted the traditional 2D animation, the hand-drawn sort that had dominated the industry since a man named Walter Disney brought Mickey Mouse into the world seventy years earlier.
Which is not, of course, to say that this revolution has been necessarily a good thing. Putting aside the issue of computer versus traditional animation artistically, CG (like any other tool in the industry) has been used to turn out a lot of crap. I saw Barnyard. But the granddaddy of the trend, the seemingly venerable Pixar, has been remarkably successful. In the 16 or so years subsequent to Toy Story they’ve released ten more movies, all of which have been more than profitable. It’s a remarkable streak by industry standards, but perhaps even more astonishing is the sustained quality. Sixteen years and ten movies later, Pixar has yet to release a movie that’s even mediocre, let alone bad. And so, in honor of the American movie studio with the highest batting average, here’s a ranking of all eleven Pixar films, from least good to best.
