Loveday Writing

Now that I’ve watched and written analysis pieces on the five animated feature films of the Merger Era: Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3, I’m going to rank them from my least favourite to my favourite.

5 – WALL-E

Marking the middle of the era, WALL-E illustrated that Pixar were spreading their wings by mixing live action with animation, visual storytelling with little dialogue, and having a plot filled to the brim with multiple real-world issues and even, unintentionally predicting the future with its stance on technology use and progression.

However, as much as I appreciated the outstanding visual storytelling, the lack of dialogue and realistic but depressing topics made it hard for me to engage with, which is why I’ve ranked it last for the Merger Era.

4 – Ratatouille

The first film produced after Disney purchased Pixar, Ratatouille showed Pixar started to grow and change through its muted colour palette, more obvious mature and darker themes, minor elements of realism, and its ability to shift tone from grim at the beginning to comedic towards the end of the film.

However, I felt that the beginning of the film was slow and a little hard to engage with, and I think my personal hatred/fear of mice and rats got to me when watching this film, even though the rats of the film were a lot cuter than real-world ones.

3 – Cars

The first film of the Merger Era, Cars was par for the course for Pixar as it was all about a world of anthropomorphic vehicles with no humans. I found this world a little hard to engage with at first, however I went on to enjoy the film, specifically its comedy, self-improvement themes, and heartwarming ending.

However, Cars comes in third place for me as whilst the plot and film overall was enjoyable, it was simple and not particularly spectacular, and a bit of a lacklustre start to the Era, especially considering the films that came before it in the previous era.

2 – Toy Story 3

In all honesty, I struggled with whether to rank Toy Story 3 second or first in my rankings for this era. However, I ultimately ranked this film second, primarily due to its status as a sequel.

Toy Story 3 showed how far Pixar had come, not only generally, but with the Toy Story franchise itself over the then-fifteen years since the release of the first film. The plot of Toy Story 3 was relatable, realistic, touching and was also foreshadowed in the previous film, which illustrated the high quality of the franchise’s writing.

However, due to its status as a sequel and the fact that the previous Toy Story films were part of the previous era, Toy Story 3 felt slightly out of place in the Merger Era, in comparison to the other four films accompanying it.

1 – Up

Up comes in first place for me due to it high-quality emotional, and relatable storytelling, its ability to balance both drama and comedy, and its unique signature feature.

Up is an animated film with the rare quality of an elderly man as its protagonist. However, this was ultimately a smart choice by the writers, as children could relate to Carl similar to the way they could relate to their grandparents, and his age provides a humorous contrast to the film’s unique signature feature, as well as to the optimistic and fun-loving, Russell and Dug.

Up also comes in first place for me due to its multiple mature and darker themes perfectly juxtaposed against its more optimistic characters, emotional montage at the beginning of the film, and its emotional twist reveal towards the end of the film, which ultimately reinvigorates it and its protagonist, just in time to bring the film to a natural, satisfying and fulfilling close.

What do you think of my rankings and how would you rank the five films of the Merger Era? Feel free to let me know by leaving a comment below.