Spencer TuckermanI love Pixar’s work, but I’m not weird about it. My wife and I didn’t go to Disneyland on our honeymoon or anything perverse.
In reality, I grew up at the perfect time. Toy Story was an early favorite for so many kids like me, and the studio’s work followed us as we grew older. Toy Story 3’s ode to childhood came out the month I graduated high school.
Now—thanks to the magic of Disney+™—it’s all at our fingertips. While the idea of a full-Pixar rewatch is alluring, clogging up my watchlist with 22 feature films is a lot to ask. A fresh, thorough Pixar ranking is out of the question for now. Maybe one day. (Spoiler: Coco is the best, Cars 2 is the worst, and Wall-E and Up are overrated.)
Fortunately, there’s an easier way into the Pixar universe. The studio has always used short films as the launching pad for young talent and new ideas. They’ve won four Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film, starting way back in the ‘80s, long before Toy Story was a cultural icon.
The shorts that precede each new Pixar movie have become a mainstay, but I think we take them for granted. Watching them all consecutively gave me a new appreciation for the studio’s constant growth and consistent ingenuity. So of course I had to rank them.
20. The Adventures of André & Wally B. (1984)
In some sense, it might be the most impressive of any Pixar short. This was animated on a supercomputer that was large enough to feature wraparound benches like a piece of gaudy shopping mall furniture. To put the time frame in perspective, this came out three years after The Fox and the Hound and five years before The Little Mermaid. I give it major credit for importance, but it’s ultimately little more than a crude technical showcase for a medium that was a full decade from mass marketability.
19. Red’s Dream (1987)
It’s a pretty significant leap forward in terms of film language. Red’s Dream is effectively a Neo-noir centered on a lonely unicycle with dreams of glory. The lighting is much more evolved, and the camera moves far surpass its predecessors. It’s the first film that felt like it was trying, visually, to be a movie rather than a computer demonstration. Unfortunately it largely centers on a clown—the first human figure to appear in a Pixar film. It’s odd and uncomfortable.
18. Tin Toy (1988)
While much of Pixar’s output to this point feels like micro narratives more concerned with technical exhibition, Tin Toy begins to take the shape of a real short film. Its five-minute length (the longest to that point) gives it time to explore more of a plot, and it fills its space with its most fully formed character yet—a one-man-band toy. Sharing the screen is an infant that I’m sure was impressive in 1988 but looks horrific in hindsight. While it was notably Pixar’s first Oscar winner, most enduring in Tin Toy’s legacy is its success in securing funding for Toy Story.
17. Lava (2014)
Just wretched. Lava is Pixar’s second musical short after Boundin’. It’s a shame the song is so awful, because the animation is gorgeous and lush. But, sorry, finding “someone to lava” is just the worst, compounded by the fact that it’s one of the longest short films on this list.
16. Luxo Jr. (1986)
I think this was the first Pixar short I ever saw, because it was included on the Toy Story 2 VHS. This might be the first time I’m learning it was made in 1986—14 years before Toy Story 2’s release. It’s slight but charming, and it does a remarkable job keeping pace with what was considered premiere computer animation at the time. It feels much more mid-’90s than mid-’80s. It’s also the first appearance of Pixar’s iconic jumping lamp character, Luxo.
15. Geri’s Game (1997)
A full eight years after their last short film, Pixar went back to their roots with Geri’s Game, premiering it in tandem with that year’s A Bug’s Life, beginning the tradition of a new animated short preceding each new feature. I hated this as a kid. Geri is a little creepy, and there’s something fundamentally upsetting about an old man, alone in a park, dominating himself at a game of chess. It’s certainly a technical achievement but it feels like a rare miss narratively.
14. Knick Knack (1989)
The final film of Pixar’s opening era serves as the perfect jumping off point to the monster decade that followed. Knick Knack may not be the studio’s best-looking short of the ‘80s, but it’s a masterpiece of clever humor and short-form storytelling. I think I was shown this in a screenwriting class once. While it wasn’t officially released on home media until it was paired with Finding Nemo 14 years later, it’s the first Pixar short that resembles what we’ve come to expect. If you’re doing a rewatch, start here. It’s easily the best work of the studio’s first decade.
13. One Man Band (2005)
Certainly a nod back to Tin Toy, Pixar’s first short with passable human characters was ironically paired with Cars, the first Pixar film without any humanlike characters. There’s nothing overtly wrong with One Man Band, but I feel it lacks the charm and ingenuity I expect from a Pixar short.
12. Partly Cloudy (2009)
I felt weird about not loving Partly Cloudy until I realized it was the first modern Pixar short to miss a nomination for Best Animated Short Film. The character design of the clouds is great, and I love its use of light, but the story is depressing and the setting is a bit one-dimensional.
11. For the Birds (2000)
Pixar’s first short of the new millennium bears the kind of forward leap you’d expect from a medium bursting with technical possibility at the time. It’s 20 years old but doesn’t look tremendously outdated—the perfect accompaniment to the studio’s first visually timeless feature, 2001’s Monsters Inc.
10. La Luna (2011)
I love this from a concept and storytelling perspective, but the visual style doesn’t really work for me. It feels too much like a generic children’s picture book come to life, only made worse by the fact that the credits double down on this design ethos. While it looks a bit stale by Pixar standards, the plot fits comfortably into the pocket of the studio’s trademark unconventional goodness.
9. The Blue Umbrella (2013)
Almost the opposite of La Luna. It’s visually stunning but the simple boy-meets-girl plot packs little narrative thrust. It’s cool to see Pixar make something photorealistic that aims to look like it was shot on film though.
8. Sanjay’s Super Team (2015)
It’s not my favorite visually, but it’s wonderful thematically. Not unlike one of my favorite TV shows, Ramy, it explores the push and pull between an immigrant father trying to instill the importance of faith and a first-generation American son caught in the allure of a new culture. It’s a heavy topic for an animated short film but I thought Sanjay’s Super Team handled it in a lovely way. It’s a shame this was tied to The Good Dinosaur, because it surely makes this the least-watched short of any of Pixar’s theatrical releases.
7. Boundin’ (2003)
It’s the first Pixar short to feature a vocal performance, which feels a bit like cheating in a format where we’ve seen the studio excel without saying a word. It’s extremely charming, almost becoming too cutesy, a really interesting contrast with its feature partner—The Incredibles—which was Pixar’s first PG-rated film. Having re-watched each of these, I think Boundin’ deserves lots of credit for being a fully-formed Pixar short before we grew accustomed to that.
6. Lifted (2006)
The first in 17 years to match the physical comedy of Knick Knack. I think Pixar’s shorts excel when they explore a visual language that might not make sense in a feature film, and the moody, ominous exterior scenes here fit the bill. It actually makes me crave a Pixar sci-fi in the mold of The Vast of Night.
5. Presto (2008)
This may be Pixar’s funniest short, and while it’s not groundbreaking visually, it’s rich—full of light, texture, and scale. It’s a short film about a magician that manages to pack the wonder and unexpected pleasure of a good magic show. Also, it kind of feels like Illumniation aped this character design for 2016’s The Secret Life of Pets.
4. Piper (2016)
It’s almost in the Blue Umbrella category of style over substance, but the style is too strong for me to care. They emulated a short focal length to emphasize the small scale of the film’s characters, which only further powers the photorealism. I remember sitting in the theater wondering if, in certain shots, they used real footage from a beach with inserted animated birds. Absolutely gorgeous.
3. Lou (2017)
When it comes to short films, Weird Pixar is Best Pixar. I had forgotten about Lou, but it’s such a treat. The colors here are satisfying and the premise is simple but inventive. These six minutes are probably better than the 102 minutes of Cars 3 they were paired with.
2. Bao (2018)
Like I said: Weird Pixar is Best Pixar. “Human Mom eats her dumpling son” is a bizarre plot for an animated short film, but Bao is gorgeous and heartfelt. This is Pixar’s most recent short film release. We haven’t gotten a new one in the two years since, which is a shame, and we’re headed for the longest stretch without one since 2003. If Soul ends up coming out in November, hopefully Pixar packages a new short film with it.
1. Day & Night (2010)
Just brilliant. Pixar shorts at their best. It has heart, humor, and visual ingenuity. It even boldly incorporates vocals from a 1970s speech by Dr. Wayne Dyer. Shorts are an area where Pixar is free to push the boundaries and change its audience, and Day & Night certainly seems to skew more adult. It’s the best Pixar production to feature bathroom humor, Las Vegas, and women in bikinis. It’s perfect that they paired it with Toy Story 3, a movie largely about the departure from childhood. It’s my favorite one-two punch in the studio’s portfolio. I can’t fathom how this didn’t win Best Animated Short Film. It has to be the only Academy Awards snub in Pixar history.