Every decade's best animated movie.
In the 1930s, Disney Animation proved that cartoon movies could bring people to theaters and make as much money as a live-action drama, action, or horror movie.
For many years, Disney was the king of animated movies, but that began to change by the time the 1970s rolled around. Disney Animation was on a downward slope, and new studios proved they could create films that might not have the animation experience that Disney's team had, but could trump them story-wise. That led to the surge in the 1990s, when new animation studios began to rise that challenged Disney both creatively and technologically.
Pixar changed how everyone told animated stories, and DreamWorks Animation was ready to prove itself worthy of Oscars and box office success. What is great for animated movie lovers is that Disney was on the surge again as well, with its new Renaissance delivering classics like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King.
In the 2000s and beyond, there is a plethora of amazing animated movies released every year, with Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Laika, Sony, and even Netflix delivering hit after hit. These movies deliver stories that rival and often beat the live-action movies that studios put out, and every year, it seems the technology is improving to the point where these animated movies are among the best films released every decade.
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs It all started in 1937 when Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This was the first cel-animated feature film produced in the United States and the first feature-length film from what is now Walt Disney Animation Studios. The film introduces the idea of the Disney Princess, something that would become commonplace at Disney for the next seven decades, and a theme that remains iconic to this day.
While animated movies were unproven, mostly seen as cartoons in the 1930s, the movie made $8 million in its first international release and was the highest-grossing sound movie in history at the time. It is also a brilliant story, with the princess heroine, the anthropomorphic animals who befriend her, and some catchy songs setting the beat. This is the template that Disney would use for many years.
Pinocchio Disney continued to enjoy success in the 1940s, but the best movie released in that decade was one that seems a little dark for the studio when looking back. Instead of Disney Princesses and catchy song numbers, Pinocchio was an animated movie about a wooden puppet made by a lonely man who was brought to life and given a chance to become a real boy.
However, he makes bad decisions that almost cost him his soul. That is where this movie stands out. Sent to Pleasure Island, he ends up with more bad boys and then watches as they are all punished by being turned into donkeys. This was a morality tale, and it has some terrifying moments that push it above the more pleasant fairy tale stories Disney was putting out at the time.
However, it also has catchy songs, including the first Disney song to win an Oscar with"When You Wish Upon a Star.
" Cinderella In 1950, Disney released what might be its greatest Disney Princess movie. Cinderella is a story about a young woman whose father dies and her evil stepmother and two wicked stepsisters make her life a living hell, refusing to allow her happiness and forcing her to wait on them hand and foot.
However, when she meets her Fairy Godmother and gets a chance to attend a ball, a prince dances with her and falls in love. This is a movie about a young woman who wants to live a better life, and she ends up strong enough to stand up to the people holding her down and meets her prince.
This positive story ended up as Disney's biggest hit since Snow White, and its success allowed Disney to both move onto television and open the first Disneyland. It has also been adapted many times in different live-action movies. The Jungle Book Walt Disney died in 1966, and the last animated movie he personally oversaw was The Jungle Book, which was released after his death.
Knowing that, it was a massive success considering its quality, and it proves that Disney was still on top of the animated world before his death. The movie follows a young boy who is raised in the jungle and then has to survive a menacing Bengal tiger named Shere Khan, who sets his sights on him.
The movie is fun and has a lot of great moments, both with the animation and the story, but this is a movie that lives and dies with its incredible songs. The biggest hits remain"The Bare Necessities" and"I Wanna Be Like You," with"Bare Necessities" nominated for an Oscar. The voice cast was perfect, and it ended up with a live-action remake that is the best that Disney has made.
Watership Down In the 1970s, Disney was starting to struggle, with some lackluster movie releases. There were only four Disney animated movies released that decade, and while The Aristocats, Robin Hood, and The Rescuers were great, they were missing something that past Disney movies offered viewers.
However, in 1978, a non-Disney movie came along that shocked the world with the animated adaptation of Watership Down. This animated movie was never meant for little kids, and that came as a shock to parents who sat their kids down to watch it and traumatized Gen-X kids for life. Watership Down follows a group of rabbits whose warren is destroyed, and when they seek to find a new home, it leads them into danger.
Death is a possibility in this movie, and this is something that helped the movie rise to the ranks of the best adult-themed cult classics from the 1970s. The Land Before Time An animated movie series that almost every Gen X and Millennial kid should remember fondly started in 1988 with The Land Before Time.
Released by Universal Pictures and executive produced by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the movie follows dinosaurs in the prehistoric era, and it deals with the separation and anxiety from their parents, distrust of other dinosaur types, and the exclusion of some specifically. This is a movie that teaches kids about acceptance and how all dinosaurs can get along and look out for each other, even if they are from different packs.
This was one of the first monster animated movie hits for a non-Disney studio, and it started a franchise that went on for 13 sequel movies and a TV series. Toy Story In the 1990s, everything changed. While DreamWorks began production, it wasn't until the 2000s that the studio was the first to win an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
However, in the 1990s, it wasn't DreamWorks that anyone was talking about. It was a new upstart animation studio called Pixar, which was formed out of a company funded by Steve Jobs. What resulted was a studio that set the bar for every animated movie released since. The movie that started it all was the 1995 hit Toy Story.
Pixar ignored the hand-drawn animation Disney was famous for and used computer animation to create something that was colorful, vibrant, exciting, and fresh. The story was emotional and brought something for kids and adults alike, and it forced Disney to up its game in later years. It was also the first animated movie to ever receive a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination.
Spirited Away While DreamWorks made history with the first Best Animated Feature Oscar in the 2000s and Pixar was on a roll of a lifetime in the decade, it was a movie from Japan that remains the best from that era. Hayao Miyazaki had been impressing animation fans since the 1980s, but he delivered his masterpiece in 2001 with the movie Spirited Away. Subscribe for deeper animated‑movie stories and picks Love animated films?
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The movie follows a young girl who is on a trip with her parents, but they accidentally end up in a village where her parents are turned into pigs, and she has to work in a bathhouse as she seeks a way to turn her parents back into humans. The movie won the Best Animated Feature Oscar the year after Shrek's inaugural win, and it was the highest-grossing movie from Japan for almost 20 years.
Inside Out In 2015, Pixar released one of its masterpieces in a film that no one understood until they watched it. The promotions indicated Inside Out would take place almost exclusively in the mind of a young pre-teen girl.
However, this ended up being a tender movie about a girl named Riley, who moves away from her home and friends in Minnesota to San Francisco, and finds it hard to fit in. The story follows her emotions, with Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear, and their struggles to help Riley deal with all these changes in her life.
This is a Pixar movie that leaves its audiences crying more than once, whether that is during the fate of Bing Bong or when Riley finally breaks down in her parents' arms. Inside Out is a movie about coming to terms with depression, and it is a masterpiece. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse While KPop Demon Hunters is the movie everyone is talking about, the best animated movie from the 2020s so far is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
The first Spider-Verse movie helped change how Hollywood animated movies are made, with films from the Puss in Boots and The Bad Guys series following in the footsteps of making the films less photorealistic and more cartoony. Nothing did it like Across the Spider-Verse, which actually changes its animation style more than once in the movie, depending on who is on the screen.
While Miles Morales goes through the multiverse, the Spider-Verse animation changes based on where he is, and the technical achievement here is miles above almost any animated movie ever made. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse changed what animated movies looked like.
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