The 50 Best Animated Movies Of All Time, According to Our Expert Staff

Many consider Rankin/Bass’s “The Hobbit” to be the best of the three animated Middle-Earth movies. The round, friendly art style feels just right for Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves. And even the spookier moments are fun to look at — Gollum is a freaky little frog guy with big ears. I love him. The songs may not have the same oomph as the ones in the live-action version, but that’s a fair trade-off for the charm of 70s animation.

A good journalist judges movies on the strength of their artistry; a great journalist judges movies on the strength of their McDonald’s promos. No, “KPop Demon Hunters” didn’t have a set of interlocking pirate ship pieces a la “Return to Never Land,” but it did introduce me to ramyeon-flavored fries and a spooky purple Demon Sauce. Oh, and the movie was fantastic too. Hopefully, it ushers in a new era of musical movies and magical girls.

Of course, I had to include at least one Barbie movie in this list. Barbie’s made a lot of movies over the years (almost as many movies as are on this list, and counting), but there’s one that really stands out. That’s “The Princess and the Pauper,” a film so nice they remade it thrice. Of the four Barbie movies trying to make the P&P formula work, only the original was successful. Plus, it’s got Martin Short in it. You gotta watch it for Martin Short.

Full disclosure, “Peter Pan” didn’t age super great. But it’s still full of some fantastic animation (when it’s not promoting racist caricatures) and it introduced us to Disney’s iconic version of Tinker Bell. Without “Peter Pan,” we wouldn’t have the Pixie Hollow movies. And I have a hard time imagining a world with no “Tinker Bell and the Pirate Fairy.”

Most people don’t think about “Atlantis” when they think about Disney’s best work, but they absolutely should. A lot of 2000s movies get overlooked, but as a child of that era, I’m here to tell you they rule. “Atlantis” is a peak treasure-hunting adventure movie, right up there with “Treasure Planet” (another fantastic animated flick) and “National Treasure” (Nic Cage’s best work).

I’m of the belief that “first” doesn’t always mean best. A list of the best TV shows doesn’t need to include the first reality show, the first game show, or the first sitcom. But in this case, the first feature-length animated film still stands the test of time. Disney set the scene for what an animated movie could be, complete with an original soundtrack and gorgeous animation. Even decades and decades later, this is the definitive version of the “Snow White” fairy tale for a lot of people.

“Turning Red” was “KPop Demon Hunters” before “KPop Demon Hunters.” It’s about a Chinese-Canadian tween who worships a popular boy band and uses their music as a magical tool to save the day. Sure, the boy band is Canadian and not Korean, but if you liked one movie, you’ll like the other. Plus, it uses a weird panda transformation as an allegory for periods. I’ve never felt so seen.

Aurora is one of the core Princesses that Disney built an entire brand around in the 2000s, and that alone could give this film iconic status. But even in the age before all the pink sparkles and tie-in Game Boy Advance games, “Sleeping Beauty” earned its GOAT status on its own merits. Everything Maleficent’s magic touches is eerie and enchanting, to the point where you become genuinely scared for the doomed princess.

If you love movies with a twist that brings everything together, you’ll love “Meet the Robinsons.” It portrays such a cool, optimistic vision of the future, one where technology can be fun and quirky and not completely suffocating. Of course, the future isn’t without its villains, technological or otherwise, but it’s still just so fun. Also, this movie gave us another killer Jonas Brothers cover, so it has that going for it.

Anytime Alan Menken collabs with Disney, he makes history. “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” “Galavant.” Like a mermaid getting legs, this collaboration transformed Hans Christian Andersen’s beautiful story of unrequited love and longing into a magical adventure with some of the most iconic characters in the Disney canon. Like “Snow White,” Disney succeeded in making its version of a fairy tale the definitive version.

As an elder Gen Z, it’s hard for me not to skew this list towards movies from my childhood. But I can’t help it—the 2000s just genuinely slapped, especially since they were the last great era for 2D animation in filmmaking before everything went 3D. “The Emperor’s New Groove” is one of the best of the era, if a little underrated — Disney hasn’t even tried to disrespect it with a live-action adaptation yet — and is well worth a watch if you missed it the first time round.

This is the movie that made everybody want to be a cat— even people who are allergic to cats. Eva Gabor plays the most elegant cat you’ve ever seen, and her daughter, Marie, is still an icon on pencil cases, backpacks, and pajama bottoms. Like “Peter Pan,” this one didn’t age great, but at least the racist caricatures are cats instead of people. That’s … better? Maybe?

This may be a basic pick, but it’s a classic for a reason. Cinderella’s transformation from her rags to a magical new ball gown raised the bar for all animated films. (And it really doesn’t matter whether it was blue, gray, or white). It also marked the first of an iconic trilogy, if you’re a Gen Z kid who was obsessed with direct-to-DVD sequels like I was.

If I had a nickel for every musical animated film revolving around the Mexican Day of the Dead, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s cool that it happened twice. This one was directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez, who chose to stylish the 3D animation to look like wooden puppets. It’s a really cool effect that adds a lot to the atmosphere of the movie.

Many Beatles songs seem to have strange, cryptic storylines that make you wonder exactly what John, Paul, George, and Ringo were smoking. So it’s only natural that Apple Films (no relation to Apple TV) turned 19 psychedelic music videos into a full film, with a plot and everything. Said plot involves a man in a “Yellow Submarine” bringing the Beatles “All Together Now” to save “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band” with a little “Help From [His] Friends.” Uh, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”

If you were ever a dinosaur kid (or even just a dino nuggies kid), you know that there’s one piece of media that reigns above all else. That’s “The Land Before Time”: a franchise of kids’ movies focused on the adventures of a young apatosaurus named Littlefoot and his dinosaur friends. And you’ll know that there’s no tastier cartoon food than those tree stars. Wait, were they just trying to trick kids into eating vegetables?

“The Mitchells vs. the Machines” got a bad rap when it was still in production due to the early marketing materials framing it as a “teens dumb, phones bad” type of movie. The actual film was so much more than that. It’s a complex story of a family reconnecting, surviving a nightmare road trip, and defeating a robot uprising. It also takes a lot of inspiration from Sony’s earlier hit, “Into the Spider-Verse.”

When I picked this DVD out at a Toys”R” Us a couple of decades ago, I was probably drawn in by the shiny holographic case and the slender white unicorn. Little did I know that the movie inside would be much more than just shiny rainbows — it’s also a poignant tale about immortality, possession, and how useless some men are in a crisis. I could do without the constant momentum-killing ballads, but those probably hit harder in the ’80s.

If you must blink, do it now. No other animation studio is doing it like Laika. The stop-motion studio, known for spooky hits like “Coraline” and “ParaNorman,” really hit it out of the park with “Kubo and the Two Strings.” Not only are the traditional stop-motion models gorgeous, but it’s full of equally stunning origami animals and characters. Kubo’s music-powered magic doesn’t look like anything else out there.

It’s hard to pick between Disney movies. Which ones deserve to be on this list, and which fall by the wayside? I picked “Aladdin” for this list for one simple reason: Robin Williams. His performance as Genie is easily the standout of this film, and the best adaptations capture his energy and charm. (Major props to the Broadway show, and uh, less props to whatever Will Smith was doing in the live-action).

I tried really hard not to let my own personal favorites dominate this list, but you can’t not include “Nausicaä” in a list of the GOATs. It’s more of an underrated Studio Ghibli movie, possibly due to the fact that it revolves around big, icky bugs and not cute little first spirits or cats. But this haunting story of post-apocalyptic survival deserves to be right up there with Ghibli’s other masterworks.

Some of the best animated films of the 60s and 70s were Christmas movies. That’s because Rankin/Bass, an American company that employed Japanese stop-motion animators, found so much success in its made-for-TV holiday specials. “Rudolph” was the first of these successes, enchanting audiences with the Japanese “Animagic” stop-motion techniques, and would inspire Rankin/Bass’s animation slate until the company’s demise in the 80s.

N. D. Stevenson first started writing the critically acclaimed webcomic “Nimona” in college. From there, it became a critically acclaimed graphic novel and then a critically acclaimed animated movie. But the movie almost got shelved forever. (Disney bought its animation studio and “punk shapeshifting dragon with two gay dads” wasn’t really in their brand vision.) In a great example of how competition is a good thing, Netflix saved the film and distributed it in 2023.

What’s this? What’s this? It’s the iconic stop-motion film from the minds of Henry Selick and Danny Elfman (you know, the guy from Oingo Boingo). No one can really quite agree whether it should count as a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie, but some people play it safe by watching it twice a year. Even beyond the film’s own merits, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” established an aesthetic for Hot Topic emos that would define the early 21st century.

Disney Pixar may have (allegedly) tricked kids into liking fish ahead of “Finding Nemo,” but it certainly didn’t need to. “Finding Nemo,” the story of a clown fish desperately trying to rescue his missing son, is a masterpiece of 3D animation. Every sea creature, from the stinging jellyfish to the giant sea turtles, immediately became an iconic fixture in the minds of its young audience.

“The Iron Giant” really takes the “E.T.” formula and runs with it. Rather than befriending a cute, little, meek alien, Hogarth Hughes befriends a Big Robot From Space. When depicting the aforementioned Big Robot From Space, the film blends 2D and 3D animation in a way that even modern films could learn from. Plus, we have this movie to thank for the GIF of the beatnik yelling, “It’s art!”

This 1988 film had a huge influence on generations of animators, who included an “Akira”-like bike slide in everything from Batman to Sonic. But “Akira” is a lot more than its iconic bike slide. This film’s identity as a product of post-WWII Japan shaped the way it depicted government, war, and progress. It’s a movie that absolutely could not have been made by any other country, and it was also a huge influence on science fiction worldwide. Did you like “Stranger Things”? You have “Akira” to thank for that.

Wes Anderson is a master of the quirky, twee aesthetic, and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is the perfect example of his work. Plenty of other animated movies have done the “talking animals outsmarting humans and farmers” thing, but this one does it in a way that feels just a little bit off. Even though the characters look just on the verge of taxidermy, there’s a certain charm to them, magnified by Anderson’s quick-witted writing and mastery of timing.

“Toy Story” was Pixar’s first feature-length film after about a decade of releasing only shorts. And its theatrical debut was a smash hit, kickstarting a franchise that still continues today (catch “Toy Story 5” in theaters this summer). Not only that — it kick-started a wave of 3D animation, a style eventually adopted by nearly the entire industry.

Anime movies tend to have gorgeous visuals, and “Your Name.” is a fantastic example. In this body-swapping tearjerker, the story moves between two teenagers who live in vastly different environments. But both Mitsuha’s rural town and Taki’s home in downtown Tokyo have their distinct appeals, and both are connected by the beautiful (and foreboding) visual of the comet at the center of the plot.

The early 2000s were an experimental era for Disney, and the last hurrah for its traditional animation department (which closed in the early 2010s). Like I’ve been saying, 2000s Disney movies broke the mold of what a Disney movie could be, and “Lilo & Stitch” is a great example. Sure, it’s a classic story about a girl befriending a difficult animal, but it’s also a statement on Hawaiian tourism culture and lovingly recreated choreography from real hula dancers.

“Beauty and the Beast” was the first animated film ever nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, a whole decade before the Academy introduced the Best Animated Feature category. For many, it was a turning point when critics began to take animation seriously. With classic Disney-style 2D animation and musical collaboration between Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, this fairy-tale adaptation became an instant classic. And an inspiration for bookish girls with long brown hair everywhere.

Animation studios tend to have a “house style.” These days, Illumination movies look like “The Lorax” and Disney movies look like “Frozen.” But Sony established a new style with 2018’s “Into the Spider-Verse” that changed the way audiences see animation. Its bold, mixed-media version of storytelling takes a lot of inspiration from the comic books that provided its source material.

DreamWorks’ “Shrek” made history as the first recipient of the newly created Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 2001 Oscars. A loose adaptation of a picture book by William Stief, “Shrek” takes big swings by parodying the fairy-tale formula. “Shrek” is the antithesis of the classic Disney movie romance, and pushed the whole animation industry to get a little weirder.

When you’re a kid, “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is a magical, if pretty standard, animated film about a little witch in training. But once you get older, it starts to hit a little differently. Kiki’s struggle to reconnect with her magic represents a loss of innocence that a lot of adults can relate to, especially creators and artists. It’s just one of many examples of Ghibli movies that reach a wider demographic than just children.

Everyone loves to cry during a Pixar movie, right? Pixar leaned hard into its reputation as the studio that makes its audiences sob during “Coco,” the story of a young boy searching for his family in the afterlife. Half of the movie is a gorgeous, fun party, and half is an equally gorgeous tribute to family and loss.

DreamWorks’s “How to Train Your Dragon” convinced a whole generation of kids how cool dragons are. Hiccup’s first flight on the back of his new dragon friend, Toothless, is a gorgeous work of art, score and all. And the film spawned a franchise to rival the studio’s other big success, “Shrek.” Look, I love Shrek too, but have you seen that theme park they’ve got down in Florida? With the dragon puppets? It’s cool as hell.

What do you get when you cross music from one of the greatest pop musicians of all time with a story inspired by one of the greatest writers? An animated movie about lions. Elton John’s songs elevated this loose “Hamlet” adaptation into a hit that, as much as it tries, Disney can never replicate through live-action remakes. And even years later, students are still studying “The Lion King” clips as examples of excellent visual storytelling (I know from experience).

Nearly every Ghibli movie (“Spirited Away,” “Ponyo,” the list goes on) is filled with magic, mixing fantastical lands with a lot of depth and heart. But “Howl’s Moving Castle” stands out against an already great lineup of films. Based on the book by Diana Wynne Jones, the Ghibli movie adaptation is a beautiful love story about a hatmaker and a wizard learning to accept themselves. Also, “Merry Go-Round of Life” is one of the best songs from a movie score, hands down.

Decades before Peter Jackson tackled the franchise, the 1978 version of “The Lord of the Rings” terrified children with its intense interpretation of Tolkien’s books. It’s notable for its use of rotoscoping, where almost all of the animation was traced over footage of real-life actors. This gives every character an exaggerated, uncanny feeling. And that’s not even mentioning the sections that are just recordings of real people (and horses). This film is, in my opinion, scarier than the live-action movies from the 2000s.

“The LEGO Movie” was groundbreaking in two ways. One is its animation style, which really captures the feeling of putting LEGO pieces together. And the other is through its fourth-wall break partway through the movie. Audiences get to see not only the world the LEGO minifigures live in, but the live-action people controlling them. And the source of all of their world’s biggest mysteries.

“Fantasia” breaks two of my rules. It’s feature-length, sure, but it’s really a collection of animated shorts in a feature film’s clothing. Like the blueprint for an episode of “House of Mouse.” Plus, it’s got a lot of real people in it. Real people up the wazoo. But that doesn’t stop people from considering it as one of the greatest animated films of all time. Nay, one of the greatest films of all time, full stop.

Personally, I don’t think “Mary Poppins” should count as an animated movie. There are a few dancing animals here and there, but the real focus is Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke’s acting. But I won’t deny that it’s an important part of Disney’s history, and at that point in time, Disney’s strongest asset was its hand-drawn animation department. Plus, it’s just a damn good film.

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” is the gold standard for what can happen when animators collab with live-action filmmaking. Plenty of films, like Disney’s “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” have tried to replicate its success to no avail. As of writing, “Coyote vs. Acme” has yet to release in theaters, though, so maybe it’ll take Roger Rabbit’s toon crown.