30 years of Pixar movies: poll III (2015-2024)

Previously:

30 years of Pixar movies: poll 1 (1995-2004)

30 years of Pixar movies: poll II (2005-2014)

Coco was the last great Pixar film imho, and has my vote.

I must have gone through some serious adulting around 2015, because I've watched exactly two of those...

I must have gone through some serious adulting around 2015, because I've watched exactly two of those...

The exact opposite for me: watched everything with my daughter over the past years except for two: Cars 3 (never had an interest in that franchise) and Elemental (daughter watched it without me at a friend's).

I think I wrote in the Coco thread that Coco's probably the best one of all of them, but now I'm not so sure. Inside Out and Soul are magnificent too and I really do think all four Toy Story films are about on the same level of quality.
I also highly enjoyed Onward and Luca. Might even be tempted to give a vote to Onward because it seems so ignored to me and I find there's a lot to admire about it (cool contemporary fantasy world; magical adventure; humor; touching emotional storylines). But Soul is so unique, Inside Out is classic, Coco seems to be the quintessential Pixar... Have to think about it.

I’ve seen Coco, Soul, Inside Out, all excellent but imo Soul & IO dribble out a bit at the end, so I’d go for Coco. And the parents in Inside Out are awful.

I started TS4, Dory and I2, but found them all annoying and stopped after 30 mins.

I've seen 11 of these 14 but this is still the easiest of the three polls. Coco is the only top-tier movie here

I’ve seen Coco, Soul, Inside Out, all excellent but imo Soul & IO dribble out a bit at the end.

Inside Out over Coco, but you can really feel the drop-off here.

Soul is absolute horseshit. I really can’t overstate how much I hate that movie. It is worse than the Cars franchise.

My growing distaste for Soul after enjoying the experience of watching while thinking it wasn’t presenting the message it thought it was presenting is chronicled here: Next batch of Pixar films after the Monsters Inc. prequel

Four in this batch I haven't seen, a couple of real misfires and disappointments, a couple of real misses. Regardless, "Coco" with no hesitations. I really liked "Inside Out 2," but curiously both of my (no longer little) daughters prefer the first one. Haven't really given much thought to why yet, but it might be worthwhile.

Yeah, the movie decenters Joe from his own story, and I don’t think the Fey-Foxx partnership works. I liked it overall, but there’s the same Wall-E/Up problem where the shtick in the final two-thirds is way less interesting than the setup.

I think it’s interesting to look at parallel children’s art of the same period, in the cinema and TV - I think Encanto, Hey Duggee, Bluey, Wolfwalkers etc are all more enjoyable and original than most of these

I forgot Turning Red, which I thought was fun but a little too antic (I’m sure kids didn’t mind that though) and I loved seeing my old Toronto neighbourhood onscreen. A couple times they passed my old apartment!

We all, as a family, didn't like "Turning Red." Though it had great fur animation!

"Encanto" is great, better than most of these. (Never seen Hey Duggee, Bluey, or Wolfwalkers, don't even know what the two non-Bluey things are. It's amazing how our frames of reference shift based on when we have kids!)

We all, as a family, loved Turning Red.

I also liked Luca and Onward. They're not the best but they're still better than most kids stuff.

Well, there's always an element of Stockholm Syndrome at work, right? I was visiting my sister, who has two young boys, and they were watching the Super Mario movie. My sister says she's seen it like 20 times by now, but it's (more or less) "better than most kids stuff." I watched a few minutes and thought, sure, that might be literally true, but it's still not good and was mostly dumb with lots of yelling.

I am prepared to go to bat for Cars 3 as a legitimately good movie. Not as good as Coco or Inside Out but easily in the top 5 of the movies on this list that I’ve seen.

You don’t really expect a kids movie to give you a poignant tale about aging out of active practice and into coaching/mentoring, or at least I didn’t, but that’s what Cars 3 gave me, and it did it in a way that also entertained my kids. It’s far and away the best movie in the Cars/Planes franchise. (Although if Planes was eligible for these polls, I’d say positive things about it, too. It’s not nearly as good as Cars 3 but it does what it sets out to do without being embarrassing or unbearable.)

Gonna vote Soul, an understated, introspective film for whom I have no idea which audience they were aiming for other than myself

xxp

Oh, but I genuinely like Luca and Onward. I think they're very good movies that only look bad compared to Pixar's best.

xp that said i've hardly seen any of this batch

Onward is a very underrated movie

Bluey is wonderful. Would probably work for kids up to 11 or 12 I reckon. My mum has watched a lot with my daughter and sometimes she sneaks in episodes when we’re not around. “Movies” is a good starter.

Pixar though: Gonna watch Onward! Seems like the sleeper here. I detested Cars, it felt like it was pitched at my version of the annoying tone that sends dogs mad. But sure, I’ll try Cars 3.

(Xposts)

(Wolfwalkers is Brave, but good.)

I thought Onward was lazy and terrible, maybe a good idea rushed to production? Definitely don't recall it delivering on its premise, but I'm not going to watch it again to confirm or refute.

Yeah Wolfwalkers and its predecessor Secret of Kells is definitely Brave but good

I absolutely love the animation in Wolfwalkers and Secret of Kells, two of the most beautiful animated movies ever in my opinion. When you end up seeing basically every animated movie because of your kids where most stuff basically the same by now very stale style, these kinds of movies remind me just how good animation can be.

Don't overlook Song of the Sea! But yeah that director/animation team is probably the most "Pixar" currently in combining deeply emotionally resonant storytelling with gorgeous imagery and animation.

still need to see coco so this is a pretty easy inside out call for me.

also want to point out that the joke about the knicks in soul almost exactly marks the point where they started getting good again

I need to see Song of the Sea, my kids watched it without me

I think Coco will win this poll pretty easily, as it should, so I'm tempted to throw a vote to Elemental, which I think is far and away the best of the recent and very full slate of "the villain is generational trauma!" animated films.

Will also go to bat for Luca as being seriously underestimated and just lovely, and for Incredibles 2 for being the rare superhero film in modern times to wrestle with the implications of the heroes' destruction and violence as acceptable collateral damage.

The rest range from "a few really great moments in this" to just outright despair at what Pixar's become.

I remember taking my niece to see Coco; I didn't have high expectations due to an uninspiring run of Pixar films, but it was fantastic. I don't remember a whole lot of the specifics, but I certainly remember welling up towards the end, and I don't have strong emotional reactions to movies all that often.

Elemental was genuinely great too - I'm glad it eventually found success after the tepid initial response. Incredibles 2 was weird; I don't remember disliking it, but the plot was kinda all over the place.... it seemed to be forgotten really quickly.

The only one of these I've seen that I outright disliked was Turning Red. Maybe I'm just allergic to that late 90s/early 00s pop culture era or something. I enjoyed Encanto a whole lot more - this is a generalisation, but that really hammered home that Disney had enjoyed a creative revival while Pixar was floundering. Of course, Disney started floundering again soon afterwards...

I went with Coco too.

I know everyone shits on Lightyear - for good reason - but if I was six again, I probably would've loved the cat and fucking hated the movie for heartlessly killing one iteration of him.

Like some of you I drifted away a little here - it's between Coco and Inside Out for me. I still have yet to see Luca, Toy Story 4, or Elemental (no interest in The Good Dinosaur or Lightyear). Or Soul - I was more enthusiastic before it turned out it's actually Jazz (I want to believe there was a push for Jazzed as a title) - but I should see it. I didn't previously want to see Cars 3, but a DJP recommendation goes a long way.

I'd ding Onward a little because it feels like the first one with Celebrity Voices - there's some of that in Toy Story of course, but a) it's as part of an ensemble cast and b) I think it transcends it (largely by being better). This felt very much like you were going to the movies to see Chris Pratt and Tom Holland as brothers.

I really liked Turning Red, not great that it took 25 years to get a female-made movie, but, it turns out, that is in fact Pixar for you (hence the Brenda Chapman shitshow with Brave a decade previously). But anyway, yeah it's a really lovely film and it's a shame that the reaction was largely "Okay, but it's not really relatable, is it?". (xp not a shot at Duane)

imo Soul & IO dribble out a bit at the end

Huh, I've never heard this opinion of Inside Out before - I thought it really held the line rather than have a moment where the parents suddenly turn out to be wiser or more observant than they've been to date (for example).

Inside Out - This is classic pixar, as good as the first 6.
Good Dinosaur - Trainwreck production where they rerendered the entire film to make the dinosaur smaller. The film never has a purpose. I like the scene where they get high on fruit.
Finding Dory - totally OK sequel. about as good as it could be.
Coco - looks fantastic and has great scenes. The structure is too "moral of the story", very simple, when most pixar films have a bit of a twist.
Toy Story 4 - unnecessary. a villain almost identical to the one in TS3, with the chase structure from TS1.
Onward: weird premise that's far too complicated, but the movie is fine.
Soul: I agree with djp that the ending is flawed. Joe has a modest dream and he never gets a chance to go for it. They should have emphasized more that what joe liked to do was help people grow and learn -- which is what he does with 22 through the film.
Luca: Kind of great? even if the behavior of the townspeople in the ending is a cop out.
Turning Red: I haven't seen many people mention that the multicultural Toronto setting emphasizes that it's possible for different people to live together in peace. which, 20 years ago, i would think it was too obvious a message, but, you know....
Lightyear: not that bad if you can get past the confusing premise. more mature than interstellar.
Elemental: disaster. total confusion. did you know that fire and water can in fact live together, and don't destroy each other?

Cars 3, incredibles 2, inside out 2 - never watched

I voted for Inside Out. My runners up are Luca and Turning Red.

FWIW, I love how they reference the Village Vanguard in Soul (the club design is basically the same).

Finding Dory - totally OK sequel. about as good as it could be.

And yet, Gerald is one of my fave Pixar characters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEdOCvexyck

soul was alright

zero interested in a single other entry tbh

I didn't notice before that those sea lions are voice acted by two actors who were in The Wire.

I watched Luca hoping for something wonderful and came out of it thinking Pixar had finally lost the last of their mojo entirely. It's the exact kind of formulaic, banal mediocrity other studios were making while Pixar was dropping Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up back to back to back like the visionaries they used to be. It wasn't terrible or anything, but it just made me sad as it showed that the enshittification of Pixar was now fully entrenched in their original works, not just their sequels. While I wasn't super sold on Soul, at least it was visually stunning and had some original ideas. Luca has none of this. Compare Luca to any Miyazaki film for more clarity on what is missing beyond aesthetics too.

I haven't seen Elemental yet, but Incredibles 2, Soul, Luca and Turning Red kinda just left me no longer excited about the studio or confident they can make a Great Movie again. Inside Out 2 was probably the best movie they've made since Coco, but that's not really saying much given the competition.

fwiw I adore the OG Inside Out, it's up there with Coco, a la 1a and 1b of this group, but taste is taste.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Coco is a lovely film, the only flaw of which is I found the plot very very predictable.

I enjoyed Luca and Onwards more than most seemed to... Luca in particular benefited from viewing it in two-room covid isolation in British winter, making it the most glorious escapism imaginable.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I’m fine with this. I suppose we have to finally watch COCO now.

It's a sad poll when it reminds you how active Pixar has been and how little from the past ten years even approaches the quality of their best work.

70, 69 and 42 votes for the three polls

I think the covid years -- Onward (2020) to Turning Red (2022) -- was a good run.

We should do Miyazaki 80s-90s-00s next

uk peeps, Lightyear in on bbc1 on easter saturday

(which is how i've seen the 6 from the above list that i've seen, given the years of buying them for mike's kids and then watching them beforehand are behind us)