40 Best Animated Movies of All Time
Animation is nearly a century old as a feature-film art form, and ranking its best is like ranking the best paintings — the criteria shift with every era. But after years of watching, rewatching, and arguing about these films, I’ve built the list I’d defend anywhere: the 40 best animated movies of all time, from Disney’s first gamble to the frame-breaking present.
My standard: influence plus rewatchability. A film makes this list if it changed what animation could do and still plays today. Here they are.
In this guide:
The top 10, in order
1. Spirited Away (2001). Miyazaki’s bathhouse epic is the medium’s high-water mark — a film with no villains, infinite imagination, and the train sequence, the most beautiful four minutes in animation.
2. Toy Story (1995). The film that proved computer animation could carry a story. Woody’s jealousy arc is genuinely sophisticated writing, and it launched the most consistent studio run in film history.
3. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). It broke the Pixar house style and rebuilt animation’s visual language — every frame a comic panel, every sequence a new technique. The “leap of faith” is iconic.
4. The Lion King (1994). Shakespeare with lions, Elton John’s songs, and the stampede — the Disney Renaissance peak and the best-selling home video of its era.
5. Pinocchio (1940). Disney’s second feature is its most technically perfect — the underwater sequences and Monstro chase remain astonishing 85 years later.
6. Grave of the Fireflies (1988). Takahata’s WWII memorial is the most devastating film ever animated. Not entertainment — a moral obligation in film form.
7. Coco (2017). Pixar’s masterpiece about music and memory. The Land of the Dead is a visual wonder, and the ending is the studio’s most emotional.
8. The Iron Giant (1999). Brad Bird’s Cold War fable bombed theatrically and became a generation’s favorite. “You are who you choose to be” — the Superman scene earns its tears.
9. Beauty and the Beast (1991). The first animated Best Picture nominee. The ballroom scene is the most beautiful sequence Disney ever produced.
10. Akira (1988). Otomo’s cyberpunk epic set a visual bar animation is still chasing. Neo-Tokyo’s detail and the body-horror finale are landmarks.
11–40: the rest of the canon
11. Snow White (1937). The gamble that started it all — the first cel-animated feature. The forest flight still frightens.
12. Fantasia (1940). Disney’s concert film: animation as pure music visualization. The “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence is the medium’s boldest experiment.
13. Dumbo (1941). 64 minutes, zero waste. “Baby Mine” is the saddest song Disney ever recorded.
14. Bambi (1942). The forest fire and the mother’s death — animation’s first great trauma, handled with devastating restraint.
15. Cinderella (1950). The film that saved Disney. The transformation sequence is pure magic, then and now.
16. Alice in Wonderland (1951). Disney’s strangest classic — a surrealist parade that confused 1951 and delighted every generation since.
17. Peter Pan (1953). “You can fly!” The London flyover is the definitive childhood-dream sequence.
18. 101 Dalmatians (1961). The Xerox style gave Disney a modern look. Cruella de Vil is the studio’s greatest villain.
19. The Jungle Book (1967). Walt’s last film. The vultures, “Bare Necessities,” and Baloo’s easy charm.
20. The Little Mermaid (1989). The film that launched the Renaissance. “Part of Your World” announced a new era.
21. Aladdin (1992). Robin Williams’s Genie redefined voice acting. “Friend Like Me” is a four-minute tour de force.
22. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Selick’s stop-motion dual-holiday classic. Elfman’s songs are perfect.
23. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Disney’s darkest film — “Hellfire” is the most adult sequence the studio ever produced.
24. Mulan (1998). The training montage and the avalanche — Disney’s strongest heroine arc.
25. Princess Mononoke (1997). Miyazaki’s environmental epic with no villains. The forest spirit is overwhelming.
26. Shrek (2001). The fairy-tale parody that ended Disney’s monopoly. Donkey and the onion carriage.
27. Monsters, Inc. (2001). The door-chase finale is Pixar’s greatest action sequence. Sulley and Boo’s goodbye hurts.
28. Finding Nemo (2003). Pixar’s funniest film. The shark support group and “just keep swimming.”
29. The Triplets of Belleville (2003). Chomet’s dialogue-free Tour de France caper. Grotesque, lovable, unique.
30. The Incredibles (2004). A superhero film about marriage. The dinner-table argument is the real superpower.
31. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). Miyazaki’s anti-war romance. The castle itself is a character.
32. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). Aardman’s feature peak. Every frame is handmade love.
33. Ratatouille (2007). Ego’s monologue is the best speech about art in any film. A rat who cooks — and it works.
34. Persepolis (2007). Satrapi’s Iranian Revolution memoir in stark black and white. Funny, furious, essential.
35. WALL-E (2008). The dialogue-free first act is pure cinema. The space dance is perfect.
36. Up (2009). The ten-minute opening is the medium’s most emotional sequence. Talking dogs close the deal.
37. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). Wes Anderson’s stop-motion heist. Every frame is a diorama; every line is quotable.
38. How to Train Your Dragon (2010). The flying sequences are pure joy. The Hiccup-Toothless bond is the genre’s best.
39. Toy Story 3 (2010). The furnace scene traumatized a generation — in the best way. The perfect trilogy ending.
40. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013). Takahata’s final film: eight years of hand-drawn work, watercolor style, devastating beauty.
And the canon keeps growing — Spider-Verse, Wolfwalkers, Flow, and The Wild Robot are already knocking on the door. For the modern era specifically, see my ranked list of the decade’s best below. The marriage of music and image across all of these is the craft I explore in how music videos are made — animation is music video logic at feature length. And the legends behind them? Many earned how Hollywood honors its stars the hard way. For the comedy corner of the canon, my ranked list of the best comedy movies ever made has the animated laughers.
The canon by era
The Disney golden age (1937–1942): Snow White through Bambi — the foundation, built one impossible gamble at a time.
The package era and revival (1950s–60s): Cinderella, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians — the studio finding its commercial footing.
The Renaissance (1989–1999): Little Mermaid to Tarzan — Broadway songcraft meets the animation boom.
The Pixar decade (1995–2010): Toy Story to Toy Story 3 — computer animation grows up.
The global era (2001–now): Ghibli, Cartoon Saloon, Sony Pictures Animation — the canon goes worldwide, and the visual rules get rewritten.
The single most influential scenes
If I had to pick the scenes that changed animation: the multiplane forest flight in Snow White (depth itself, invented), the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in Fantasia (animation as music), the stampede in The Lion King (CGI’s coming-out party), the door chase in Monsters, Inc. (action choreography’s new bar), and the “leap of faith” in Spider-Verse (the rulebook, rewritten). Each one expanded what the medium was allowed to do, and every film after it lived in the new territory. Watch them in sequence and you’re watching the art form grow up in fast-forward. That’s the real pleasure of this list — it’s not just 40 great films, it’s the story of animation learning what it could be, one impossible scene at a time.
And notice the pattern: the breakthroughs alternate between technology and artistry. Snow White was craft. Toy Story was technology. Spirited Away was craft again — proof that hand-drawn imagination could still humble the computers. Spider-Verse was both at once, which is why it hit like a revelation. The next breakthrough is probably already in production somewhere, by someone who grew up on this list. The canon isn’t a museum. It’s a relay race — and every film here passed a torch.
The next canon entries
Five films are already knocking on the canon’s door: Across the Spider-Verse, Wolfwalkers, The Boy and the Heron, Flow, and The Wild Robot. In ten years, at least three of them will be undisputed classics. The only question is which ones — and what they’ll have inspired by then.
Frequently asked questions
Spirited Away (2001) — the medium’s high-water mark for imagination and craft. Toy Story (1995) and Spider-Verse (2018) are the most common runners-up.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) — the first cel-animated feature. Disney bet the studio on it; it became the highest-grossing film of its time.
Toy Story (1995) for technology — it made CGI features viable. Akira (1988) for artistry — its visual ambition reshaped global animation. Snow White (1937) for proving the form could exist at all.
Absolutely — Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940) remain technically astonishing, and the Renaissance films (1989–1999) hold up completely. Start with the story, not the age.
Spider-Verse (2018), Wolfwalkers (2020), The Boy and the Heron (2023), Flow (2024), and The Wild Robot (2024) all have legitimate canon claims. Give them a decade to settle.
