Top 10 Best Animated Films of All Time

Disney's The Lion King grossed $987 million on its original release, making it the highest-grossing traditionally hand-drawn animated film in cinema history, a record it still holds. Its Hans Zimmer score and Elton John/Tim Rice soundtrack won two Academy Awards and remain among the best-selling film soundtracks ever recorded. The stage musical adaptation, running continuously since 1997, has been seen by over 100 million people across 100+ cities and is the highest-grossing stage musical in Broadway history, earning over $1.7 billion.

Toy Story was the world's first fully computer-animated feature film, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Disney, grossing $373 million worldwide on a $30 million budget and fundamentally changing the economics and aesthetics of mainstream animation. It launched one of cinema's most successful franchises — the four-film Toy Story series has earned over $3 billion globally — and established Pixar as the dominant creative force in animation for the next two decades. The American Film Institute ranked it the first animated film to appear in its 100 Greatest American Films list (No. 99).

Directed by Andrew Stanton, WALL-E holds a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score and grossed $533 million worldwide, remarkable for a film whose first act contains almost no dialogue and whose themes of environmental catastrophe and corporate dystopia were unusually dark for a children's release. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and received nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing — among the highest Oscar recognition ever given to an animated film. Time magazine called it "the best film of the decade" in 2009.

Pixar's Up holds a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score and grossed $731 million worldwide, becoming only the second animated film (after Beauty and the Beast) and the first ever to open the Cannes Film Festival. Its wordless 4-minute opening montage — depicting the life, marriage, and death of Ellie — has been repeatedly cited by film critics and psychologists as one of the most emotionally devastating sequences in cinema history. It won Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2023.

Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the founding masterpiece of the feature-length animated film — the first of its kind ever produced, released in December 1937 at a cost of $1.5 million (equivalent to roughly $32 million today) and earning $418 million in its various theatrical runs. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave Walt Disney an honorary Oscar: one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones. It is preserved in the United States National Film Registry, held in the Vatican's list of essential films, and remains the template on which all subsequent animated features were built.

Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke grossed $163 million worldwide and was the highest-grossing film in Japanese history at the time of its release, before Titanic arrived. Sitting at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, its unflinching exploration of industrialisation versus nature — refusing a simple villain or easy resolution — represents the most morally complex environmental argument in the history of animation. Studio Ghibli's hand-crafted production required 144,000 individual animation cels, and the film is credited with proving internationally that animation could sustain serious, adult-oriented storytelling without concession.

Written and directed by Brad Bird, The Incredibles holds a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score and grossed $631 million worldwide, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and Best Sound Editing. Its story — a family of superheroes forced into suburban anonymity — is considered the finest superhero family film ever made and arrived two years before the MCU era redefined the genre. The film's costume designer Edna Mode became one of animation's most quoted characters, and its script's sophistication prompted multiple film critics to observe it worked better as a family drama than many live-action equivalents.

Co-directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Persepolis won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize in 2007 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature — the only traditionally black-and-white animated feature to receive either honour in the modern era. Adapted from Satrapi's graphic memoir of growing up through the Iranian Revolution, the film proved animation could carry urgent, personal political testimony, earning 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Time magazine listed it among the 100 best films of the 21st century, and it remains the most critically regarded animated biographical film ever produced.

Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata and released on a double bill with My Neighbor Totoro in April 1988, is the most devastating anti-war film in animation history. Roger Ebert placed it in his Great Movies series and called it "an emotional experience so painful that it forces a rethinking of animation as a medium for children," while American Splendor director Shari Springer Berman described it simply as "the greatest war film ever made." Its unflinching depiction of two children starving in post-bombing Kobe, Japan, remains the highest moral statement animation has produced.

Disney's The Lion King grossed $987 million on its original release, making it the highest-grossing traditionally hand-drawn animated film in cinema history, a record it still holds. Its Hans Zimmer score and Elton John/Tim Rice soundtrack won two Academy Awards and remain among the best-selling film soundtracks ever recorded. The stage musical adaptation, running continuously since 1997, has been seen by over 100 million people across 100+ cities and is the highest-grossing stage musical in Broadway history, earning over $1.7 billion.

Toy Story was the world's first fully computer-animated feature film, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Disney, grossing $373 million worldwide on a $30 million budget and fundamentally changing the economics and aesthetics of mainstream animation. It launched one of cinema's most successful franchises — the four-film Toy Story series has earned over $3 billion globally — and established Pixar as the dominant creative force in animation for the next two decades. The American Film Institute ranked it the first animated film to appear in its 100 Greatest American Films list (No. 99).

Directed by Andrew Stanton, WALL-E holds a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score and grossed $533 million worldwide, remarkable for a film whose first act contains almost no dialogue and whose themes of environmental catastrophe and corporate dystopia were unusually dark for a children's release. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and received nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing — among the highest Oscar recognition ever given to an animated film. Time magazine called it "the best film of the decade" in 2009.

Pixar's Up holds a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score and grossed $731 million worldwide, becoming only the second animated film (after Beauty and the Beast) and the first ever to open the Cannes Film Festival. Its wordless 4-minute opening montage — depicting the life, marriage, and death of Ellie — has been repeatedly cited by film critics and psychologists as one of the most emotionally devastating sequences in cinema history. It won Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2023.

Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the founding masterpiece of the feature-length animated film — the first of its kind ever produced, released in December 1937 at a cost of $1.5 million (equivalent to roughly $32 million today) and earning $418 million in its various theatrical runs. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave Walt Disney an honorary Oscar: one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones. It is preserved in the United States National Film Registry, held in the Vatican's list of essential films, and remains the template on which all subsequent animated features were built.

Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke grossed $163 million worldwide and was the highest-grossing film in Japanese history at the time of its release, before Titanic arrived. Sitting at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, its unflinching exploration of industrialisation versus nature — refusing a simple villain or easy resolution — represents the most morally complex environmental argument in the history of animation. Studio Ghibli's hand-crafted production required 144,000 individual animation cels, and the film is credited with proving internationally that animation could sustain serious, adult-oriented storytelling without concession.

Written and directed by Brad Bird, The Incredibles holds a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score and grossed $631 million worldwide, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and Best Sound Editing. Its story — a family of superheroes forced into suburban anonymity — is considered the finest superhero family film ever made and arrived two years before the MCU era redefined the genre. The film's costume designer Edna Mode became one of animation's most quoted characters, and its script's sophistication prompted multiple film critics to observe it worked better as a family drama than many live-action equivalents.

Co-directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Persepolis won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize in 2007 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature — the only traditionally black-and-white animated feature to receive either honour in the modern era. Adapted from Satrapi's graphic memoir of growing up through the Iranian Revolution, the film proved animation could carry urgent, personal political testimony, earning 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Time magazine listed it among the 100 best films of the 21st century, and it remains the most critically regarded animated biographical film ever produced.

Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata and released on a double bill with My Neighbor Totoro in April 1988, is the most devastating anti-war film in animation history. Roger Ebert placed it in his Great Movies series and called it "an emotional experience so painful that it forces a rethinking of animation as a medium for children," while American Splendor director Shari Springer Berman described it simply as "the greatest war film ever made." Its unflinching depiction of two children starving in post-bombing Kobe, Japan, remains the highest moral statement animation has produced.