The Best 10 animated films ever... with a few honorable mentions
So, a few notes about this list. I have been trying to compile and explain this list for about five years now. For those of you who do not know, I am very passionate about animation as a medium and I think that it is largely under appreciated and misunderstood. I had a few rules going into this in order to make the list more useful. So, here they are:
First, no directors get more than one item in the top ten. Second, any animated film made in the last twenty years has to ground breaking and influential on the medium, not just on culture. In short, anything made recently has to be the absolute cream of the crop, otherwise, this list is easily populated by things made in only the last fifteen years. Third, the films listed must not only have stood the tests of time, they must continue to be looked at as examples of how animated narratives must be done, if they are to be done well. Fourth, the art and the story are weighed equally and they must be the valued highly by fans and critics alike.
Now, the real problem is that after a lot of research and compiling of this list, a few fantastic movies did not make the list, so here's why:
The entire Dreamworks animated catalog was left off for two reasons: 1) the films have not really been put to the test as far as time goes, and 2) nothing Dreamworks has done has actually been new or ground breaking. I love Shrek, a lot of people love Shrek, but when you look at it, it is Fractured Fairy Tales in a feature length form, and it doesn't really measure up to what did make this list.
The Iron Giant should have found a place on this list. It is an amazing movie and it is getting edged out by some other things for reasons that I will go into. Who knows? When I revisit this list down the road, it might have to come back.
The films of Hayao Miyazaki, particularly Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away could have all easily made this list, but only one Miyazaki film could be on the list because of the rules.
The films of the Disney revival of the late 80s and early 90s have been left off entirely. I do not think that we are judging or have judged these films accurately at all. Each of these films were universally praised and universally uncriticized, so until we have some distance from them and are able to revisit them with fresh eyes, I have a hard time placing them in a top 10 list, unless it's my favorites list.
The films of Makoto Shinkai are also not represented here, for much the same reason that I have for leaving off the films of Dreamworks. I think that they are amazing, but Shinkai uses the same trick over and over again, which is great and no one else makes movies like he does, but they are too new to really be included and not groundbreaking enough.
Finally, this is not a list of my favorites. That comes later. These are the 10 films I think can objectively be called the ten best animated features thus far, based on the criteria stated above. So, here we go
10) Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - 1993, Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm
This is the only movie that seems to bring together fans of the Tim Burton films and fans of the Chris Nolan films, because I have never met a single Batman fan who watched this movie and did not love it. What is amazing about this movie is that it provides everything a Batman fan could possibly want. Timm takes his small screen success and makes a movie that is more than the sum of it's parts. The animation is stunning, as it always was for the Batman: The Animated Series, and it looks even better with the full force of Warner Brothers behind it as a feature length film for theaters. The real tragedy of this movie is that Warner Brothers, which is one of the most important studios in all of animation, has produced little in the way of feature length films. Most of their efforts have tended towards shorts, many of which are classics. One wonders what would have happened if WB had put their efforts into challenging Disney seriously.
9) The Secret of NIMH - 1982, Don Bluth
Ever want to bring the most powerful company to it's knees and wipe it off of the face of the earth? Don Bluth came this close to doing just that. In the late 70s, unhappy with the direction Disney was taking, Bluth rounded up the best animators at Disney and stormed out, starting his own animation studio. Single-handedly, Bluth almost caused Disney to close its doors for good. The result was a string of movies from the late 70s into the 90s, many of which are classics often mistaken as Disney films. The Secret of NIHM is not the most well-known of Bluth's post-Disney work - An American Tale is - but it really is the best. Stunning animation quality that was unparalleled in the early 80s, Bluth challenged the notion that only Disney could deliver a film at this level of quality. Truth be told, The Secret of NIHM still stands out as one of the most beautifully animated movies, and its simple story still fairs well today.
8) Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - 1937, David Hand, Supervising Director (Produced by Walt Disney)
Bottom line: animated feature films do not exist today without this movie. The historical importance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves cannot be overstated. So if it is the most important movie in all of animation, why isn't it number one? Well, to be honest, this film has not held up well. The animation quality is brilliant for its time, but it was surpassed in quality only a few years later by Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942). Still, even though Disney would improve animation by leaps and bounds over the next two decades, this film was stunning for its time and it continues to hold up well enough to make this list.
7) Ghost in the Shell - 1995, Mamoru Oshii
Perhaps no movie in recent times, animated or otherwise, is as responsible for pushing the boundaries of what kinds of stories movies can tell, regardless of the medium. The real tragedy of this film is that Oshii has to have his arm twisted to do Science Fiction films. Breath taking detail, and the story that inspired the Matrix movies, Ghost in The Shell broke rules about science fiction and animation. While animation was happy to be the medium of comedy and fantasy, popular science fiction animated films had not been successful around the world, until Ghost in the Shell. Not only did it lay the ground work for a renewed interest in cerebral sci-fi for the rest of the 90s, without Ghost in the Shell...
6) WALL-E - 2008, Andrew Stanton
... would not have been made. Pixar studios, led by John Lasseter, always seems to swing between cash-grab-toy-tie-ins like Cars and Toy Story, and films that are art, like UP and WALL-E. Here, we have an American, CGI animated film that is pure science fiction, and to a point, "hard" science fiction. Now, hard sci-fi fans are likely after me for saying that, but there is nothing "science-magic" about WALL-E as you would find in Star Wars or Star Trek. The science in the film is reasonably plausible and there is nothing here that would make you go "That's not possible." Perhaps the most amazing part of this film is how it shows that humans eventually turn into complete lazy blobs when there is nothing to work for or towards. Additionally, a large part of this movie has no dialog. It's just the life of this one robot who is supposed to be cleaning up the earth. Pixar really out did itself, shattering the bounds of what CGI can do and delivering an American science fiction story that people who hate sci-fi seem to love.
5) Akira - 1988, Katsuhiro Otomo
The inclusion of this film is proof that this is not a favorites list for me. I do not like Akira, at all. I get that other people do, and I get why they do. I am opposed to the live-action remake on principle, not because I care about this film. However, it is hard to argue that there is a hand drawn animated film that looks better than Akira. In fact, it's hard to argue against Akira having the best animation of any animated film ever. So why isn't it higher on the list? Well, in all honesty, this is not the most accessible film in the world. Otomo's film is focused on what Japanese youth angst is in the late 1980s, and it's hard to really understand the nature of the film and the symbolism without being a part of that culture. One of the reasons why I struggled with the film and why I still do not enjoy it is because I did not understand this when I first watched the film. Still, if you are judging strictly on animation quality, you would be hard pressed to find any film as well animated and as well regarded by artists as Akira.
4) Paprika - 2006, Satoshi Kon
All of Satoshi Kon's films should be in this list, rules be dammed. He only made four films in his career, but those four films cement for Kon the title of greatest animation director of all time, and I would entertain arguments against it if there were any. Paprika is the proof that some things have to be done in animation. The dream world experienced in Paprika could not be expressed in any other format. It would simply be too expensive to do a live-action movie, although Nolan tried with Inception, that handles dreams in this way (to be fair, Inception and Paprika are very different films, and I am in no way trying to imply that Inception ripped off Paprika, because it didn't). The reason why Paprika is #4 and not #1 is because the story is a little hard for a lot of people to follow. I do not find the plot overly complicated, but I like complicated plots. Still, it is easy to get lost in the sheer beauty of this film. The shame is that it is the last film of Satoshi Kon, who died at the age of 46 in 2010. If you have not, you should see Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika. If you are a fan of How to Train your Dragon, director Dean DeBlois is one of Kon's biggest fans.
The final three films are in no particular order. I have tried, repeatedly to find some way to separate these three, for there to be a clear #1, but there just isn't. Each of these films is iconic, revolutionary, critically praised, and loved by fans the world over. While I would accept that 10 though 4 could be replaced by any number of films left off of this list, the final three movies are the hands down the best works of feature length animation, and almost nothing is likely to displace them any time soon. So, in no particular order:
Tied for 1-3) Sleeping Beauty - 1959, Clyde Geronimi, Les Clark, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman (Produced by Walt Disney)
You know, nothing Disney has made since 1959 has even come close to approaching Sleeping Beauty. Using the score of the Tchaikovsky ballet and the basic story, this directing team, which was led by Walt Disney producing, managed to bring together a fairy tale that never feels dumbed down or cheap. Watching this film, you never get the sense that this is a movie for kids. As fairy tales should be, this is a serious film that is dark and scary as well as happy and joyous at the end. But what really makes this movie, and what really makes a lot of early Disney movies, is the villain. Eleanor Audley delivers perhaps the best acting performance in any animated feature as Maleficent, a character who lives up to her name. The animation has stood the test of time as Disney's best, and that is saying something considering the other movies this studio is responsible for. In particular, the battle scene and Maleficent's transformation into a dragon is one of the most iconic scenes in movies and every animated dragon from that point on has had to live up to that standard.
Tied for 1-3) Grave of the Fireflies - 1988, Isao Takahata
Takahata's achievement here is that Grave of the Fireflies is not a fun movie. It is not a movie you want to watch. It is a movie you must watch. There is no humor in this story at the end of WWII and two orphans in Japan struggling to survive. Many people have leveled the criticism of why was this an animated film; why not just make it live action? The achievement here is that Takahata proves that all stories can be told through animation, that they can be told well, and that nothing is lost in the story by animating it instead of filming it. Highly critical of Japan's role in WWII, Takahata takes his own country's history and beliefs to task, and in doing so, questions the ethics of all war in a way that is not trite and is not easily dismissed. Like I said, this is not a movie you want to watch, but it is one that demands your attention and your respect. It is not just one of the great animated films, but it is held in high regard by fans of war movies and movies about war (which are not the same thing).
Tied for 1-3) Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro - 1979, Hayao Miyazaki
In an age when it took five years to make a feature length film with animation, Hayao Miyazaki took Castle of Cagliostro from story-board to theaters in nine months. That achievement is even more impressive when you see the stunning watercolor backgrounds, amazing character animation, and the several iconic scenes that have been borrowed into later films for the last 30 years. Miyazaki fans will point out that this is not the best Miyazaki movie, and it's not what people think of when they think of Miyazaki, but it should be. No preachy environmental messages here; just a solid story that is driven with amazing action, great characters and dialog, and amazing animation that has more than stood the test of time. In particular, the opening chase scene and the clock-tower battle scene have been recreated in animated movies for the last three decades, with Disney having to use computers in The Great Mouse Detective to achieve what Miyazaki was able to do with hand-drawn animation. It's hard to argue that Miyazaki ever did better than this, though he may have done as well later in his career.
So there it is, the current list of what I think are the 10 best animated films of all time, at least to this point. It is an incredibly hard statement to make, but I tried to keep personal taste out of it as much as I could. If you are wondering what my 10 favorite animated films are, well, you will just have to wait for tomorrow, now won't you?
First, no directors get more than one item in the top ten. Second, any animated film made in the last twenty years has to ground breaking and influential on the medium, not just on culture. In short, anything made recently has to be the absolute cream of the crop, otherwise, this list is easily populated by things made in only the last fifteen years. Third, the films listed must not only have stood the tests of time, they must continue to be looked at as examples of how animated narratives must be done, if they are to be done well. Fourth, the art and the story are weighed equally and they must be the valued highly by fans and critics alike.
Now, the real problem is that after a lot of research and compiling of this list, a few fantastic movies did not make the list, so here's why:
The entire Dreamworks animated catalog was left off for two reasons: 1) the films have not really been put to the test as far as time goes, and 2) nothing Dreamworks has done has actually been new or ground breaking. I love Shrek, a lot of people love Shrek, but when you look at it, it is Fractured Fairy Tales in a feature length form, and it doesn't really measure up to what did make this list.
The Iron Giant should have found a place on this list. It is an amazing movie and it is getting edged out by some other things for reasons that I will go into. Who knows? When I revisit this list down the road, it might have to come back.
The films of Hayao Miyazaki, particularly Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away could have all easily made this list, but only one Miyazaki film could be on the list because of the rules.
The films of the Disney revival of the late 80s and early 90s have been left off entirely. I do not think that we are judging or have judged these films accurately at all. Each of these films were universally praised and universally uncriticized, so until we have some distance from them and are able to revisit them with fresh eyes, I have a hard time placing them in a top 10 list, unless it's my favorites list.
The films of Makoto Shinkai are also not represented here, for much the same reason that I have for leaving off the films of Dreamworks. I think that they are amazing, but Shinkai uses the same trick over and over again, which is great and no one else makes movies like he does, but they are too new to really be included and not groundbreaking enough.
Finally, this is not a list of my favorites. That comes later. These are the 10 films I think can objectively be called the ten best animated features thus far, based on the criteria stated above. So, here we go
10) Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - 1993, Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm
This is the only movie that seems to bring together fans of the Tim Burton films and fans of the Chris Nolan films, because I have never met a single Batman fan who watched this movie and did not love it. What is amazing about this movie is that it provides everything a Batman fan could possibly want. Timm takes his small screen success and makes a movie that is more than the sum of it's parts. The animation is stunning, as it always was for the Batman: The Animated Series, and it looks even better with the full force of Warner Brothers behind it as a feature length film for theaters. The real tragedy of this movie is that Warner Brothers, which is one of the most important studios in all of animation, has produced little in the way of feature length films. Most of their efforts have tended towards shorts, many of which are classics. One wonders what would have happened if WB had put their efforts into challenging Disney seriously.
9) The Secret of NIMH - 1982, Don Bluth
Ever want to bring the most powerful company to it's knees and wipe it off of the face of the earth? Don Bluth came this close to doing just that. In the late 70s, unhappy with the direction Disney was taking, Bluth rounded up the best animators at Disney and stormed out, starting his own animation studio. Single-handedly, Bluth almost caused Disney to close its doors for good. The result was a string of movies from the late 70s into the 90s, many of which are classics often mistaken as Disney films. The Secret of NIHM is not the most well-known of Bluth's post-Disney work - An American Tale is - but it really is the best. Stunning animation quality that was unparalleled in the early 80s, Bluth challenged the notion that only Disney could deliver a film at this level of quality. Truth be told, The Secret of NIHM still stands out as one of the most beautifully animated movies, and its simple story still fairs well today.
8) Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - 1937, David Hand, Supervising Director (Produced by Walt Disney)
Bottom line: animated feature films do not exist today without this movie. The historical importance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves cannot be overstated. So if it is the most important movie in all of animation, why isn't it number one? Well, to be honest, this film has not held up well. The animation quality is brilliant for its time, but it was surpassed in quality only a few years later by Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942). Still, even though Disney would improve animation by leaps and bounds over the next two decades, this film was stunning for its time and it continues to hold up well enough to make this list.
7) Ghost in the Shell - 1995, Mamoru Oshii
Perhaps no movie in recent times, animated or otherwise, is as responsible for pushing the boundaries of what kinds of stories movies can tell, regardless of the medium. The real tragedy of this film is that Oshii has to have his arm twisted to do Science Fiction films. Breath taking detail, and the story that inspired the Matrix movies, Ghost in The Shell broke rules about science fiction and animation. While animation was happy to be the medium of comedy and fantasy, popular science fiction animated films had not been successful around the world, until Ghost in the Shell. Not only did it lay the ground work for a renewed interest in cerebral sci-fi for the rest of the 90s, without Ghost in the Shell...
6) WALL-E - 2008, Andrew Stanton
... would not have been made. Pixar studios, led by John Lasseter, always seems to swing between cash-grab-toy-tie-ins like Cars and Toy Story, and films that are art, like UP and WALL-E. Here, we have an American, CGI animated film that is pure science fiction, and to a point, "hard" science fiction. Now, hard sci-fi fans are likely after me for saying that, but there is nothing "science-magic" about WALL-E as you would find in Star Wars or Star Trek. The science in the film is reasonably plausible and there is nothing here that would make you go "That's not possible." Perhaps the most amazing part of this film is how it shows that humans eventually turn into complete lazy blobs when there is nothing to work for or towards. Additionally, a large part of this movie has no dialog. It's just the life of this one robot who is supposed to be cleaning up the earth. Pixar really out did itself, shattering the bounds of what CGI can do and delivering an American science fiction story that people who hate sci-fi seem to love.
5) Akira - 1988, Katsuhiro Otomo
The inclusion of this film is proof that this is not a favorites list for me. I do not like Akira, at all. I get that other people do, and I get why they do. I am opposed to the live-action remake on principle, not because I care about this film. However, it is hard to argue that there is a hand drawn animated film that looks better than Akira. In fact, it's hard to argue against Akira having the best animation of any animated film ever. So why isn't it higher on the list? Well, in all honesty, this is not the most accessible film in the world. Otomo's film is focused on what Japanese youth angst is in the late 1980s, and it's hard to really understand the nature of the film and the symbolism without being a part of that culture. One of the reasons why I struggled with the film and why I still do not enjoy it is because I did not understand this when I first watched the film. Still, if you are judging strictly on animation quality, you would be hard pressed to find any film as well animated and as well regarded by artists as Akira.
4) Paprika - 2006, Satoshi Kon
All of Satoshi Kon's films should be in this list, rules be dammed. He only made four films in his career, but those four films cement for Kon the title of greatest animation director of all time, and I would entertain arguments against it if there were any. Paprika is the proof that some things have to be done in animation. The dream world experienced in Paprika could not be expressed in any other format. It would simply be too expensive to do a live-action movie, although Nolan tried with Inception, that handles dreams in this way (to be fair, Inception and Paprika are very different films, and I am in no way trying to imply that Inception ripped off Paprika, because it didn't). The reason why Paprika is #4 and not #1 is because the story is a little hard for a lot of people to follow. I do not find the plot overly complicated, but I like complicated plots. Still, it is easy to get lost in the sheer beauty of this film. The shame is that it is the last film of Satoshi Kon, who died at the age of 46 in 2010. If you have not, you should see Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika. If you are a fan of How to Train your Dragon, director Dean DeBlois is one of Kon's biggest fans.
The final three films are in no particular order. I have tried, repeatedly to find some way to separate these three, for there to be a clear #1, but there just isn't. Each of these films is iconic, revolutionary, critically praised, and loved by fans the world over. While I would accept that 10 though 4 could be replaced by any number of films left off of this list, the final three movies are the hands down the best works of feature length animation, and almost nothing is likely to displace them any time soon. So, in no particular order:
Tied for 1-3) Sleeping Beauty - 1959, Clyde Geronimi, Les Clark, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman (Produced by Walt Disney)
You know, nothing Disney has made since 1959 has even come close to approaching Sleeping Beauty. Using the score of the Tchaikovsky ballet and the basic story, this directing team, which was led by Walt Disney producing, managed to bring together a fairy tale that never feels dumbed down or cheap. Watching this film, you never get the sense that this is a movie for kids. As fairy tales should be, this is a serious film that is dark and scary as well as happy and joyous at the end. But what really makes this movie, and what really makes a lot of early Disney movies, is the villain. Eleanor Audley delivers perhaps the best acting performance in any animated feature as Maleficent, a character who lives up to her name. The animation has stood the test of time as Disney's best, and that is saying something considering the other movies this studio is responsible for. In particular, the battle scene and Maleficent's transformation into a dragon is one of the most iconic scenes in movies and every animated dragon from that point on has had to live up to that standard.
Tied for 1-3) Grave of the Fireflies - 1988, Isao Takahata
Takahata's achievement here is that Grave of the Fireflies is not a fun movie. It is not a movie you want to watch. It is a movie you must watch. There is no humor in this story at the end of WWII and two orphans in Japan struggling to survive. Many people have leveled the criticism of why was this an animated film; why not just make it live action? The achievement here is that Takahata proves that all stories can be told through animation, that they can be told well, and that nothing is lost in the story by animating it instead of filming it. Highly critical of Japan's role in WWII, Takahata takes his own country's history and beliefs to task, and in doing so, questions the ethics of all war in a way that is not trite and is not easily dismissed. Like I said, this is not a movie you want to watch, but it is one that demands your attention and your respect. It is not just one of the great animated films, but it is held in high regard by fans of war movies and movies about war (which are not the same thing).
Tied for 1-3) Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro - 1979, Hayao Miyazaki
In an age when it took five years to make a feature length film with animation, Hayao Miyazaki took Castle of Cagliostro from story-board to theaters in nine months. That achievement is even more impressive when you see the stunning watercolor backgrounds, amazing character animation, and the several iconic scenes that have been borrowed into later films for the last 30 years. Miyazaki fans will point out that this is not the best Miyazaki movie, and it's not what people think of when they think of Miyazaki, but it should be. No preachy environmental messages here; just a solid story that is driven with amazing action, great characters and dialog, and amazing animation that has more than stood the test of time. In particular, the opening chase scene and the clock-tower battle scene have been recreated in animated movies for the last three decades, with Disney having to use computers in The Great Mouse Detective to achieve what Miyazaki was able to do with hand-drawn animation. It's hard to argue that Miyazaki ever did better than this, though he may have done as well later in his career.
So there it is, the current list of what I think are the 10 best animated films of all time, at least to this point. It is an incredibly hard statement to make, but I tried to keep personal taste out of it as much as I could. If you are wondering what my 10 favorite animated films are, well, you will just have to wait for tomorrow, now won't you?