Every Pixar Director, Ranked (By Average Rotten Tomatoes Score)

Very few movie studios have such consistently high-quality movies. Though the last decade has seen Pixar slowly increasing its workload and there are a lot of movies currently in the pipeline, the animation studio would barely keep up with releasing one movie per year, as so much time and attention is given to each movie, and it shows on-screen.

The movies’ quality is largely thanks to the people behind the monitors, especially the directors, who Pixar has been keen to keep working with time and again. It’s hardly surprising to find out that many of fans’ favorite Pixar movies are helmed by the same guys, and the studio rarely ventures out to work with directors outside of the OGs, and in the rare event that they do, it rarely works out.

10 Brian Fee – 69%

Brian Fee only has one directing credit for Pixar to his name, and Cars 3 is unfortunately one of the worst Pixar movies of the 2010s, only being better than Cars 2. Having the edge over its predecessor is the only thing the third entry in the series has going for it, but the movie still somehow hilariously has a much higher Rotten Tomatoes score than most Dreamworks animated movies.

9 Peter Sohn – 76%

Being another director who only has one directing credit with the studio, Peter Sohn helmed The Good Dinosaur, which received positive reviews upon release, but has since become one of the more forgotten movies released by Pixar. That result is mostly due to the film being aimed at much younger children than normal, as the film is perfect for kindergarteners. But it is still a traditionally Pixar movie with a strong, heartfelt core, and it’s one of the movies we hope gets a Disney+ spin off.

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8 Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman – 78%

Being one of Pixar’s most expensive movies, it definitely shows on screen, as Brave is a historical epic that was largely well received, but the story was incredibly niche, being set in the Scottish highlands.

With Brave being Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman’s only Pixar movie, the film controversially won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2012. The movie beat out Wreck-It Ralph, arguably the much better movie of the two, which is ironic because Wreck-It Ralph was clearly hugely inspired by Pixar.

7 John Lasseter – 81%

As the creator of Pixar and the director of the first two Toy Story movies and A Bug’s Life, it’s surprising That John Lasseter is in the bottom half of the list. The reason why Lasseter’s average Rotten Tomatoes score is lower than expected is due to the Cars series. Not only did the legendary animator helm the first movie, but he directed the ludicrous, globe trotting sequel, which sits at a terrible 39%.

6 Dan Scanlon – 84%

Though there are a lot of things that fans didn’t know about the cancelled Monsters Inc 2, the final result of the sequel, which was directed by Dan Scanlon, received universal acclaim. Though Monsters University wasn’t as well received as the original because it sacrifices the emotion for more laughs, it’s still a great movie. The one other movie Scanlon directed for the studio was the recent Onward, and though it bombed at the box office, it was loved by audiences and critics, as it has an 88% on the critic aggregator.

5 Brad Bird – 95.3%

Getting in to the seasoned and celebrated originals who made the hugely unique movies that awarded Pixar its phenomenal reputation, Brad Bird is one of the fan favourites. Though there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense about the movie, The Incredibles became a critical darling for the way it looks at ageing superheroes through a typically Pixar lens.

Bird returned 14 years later to direct the sequel, which is even arguably better than the original. Not even mentioned is the fantastic underrated addition to the list of Pixar movies, Ratatouille, in which a rat is the best chef in Paris.

4 Andrew Stanton – 96%

Andrew Stanton’s Pixar directorial debut came in 2003 with Finding Nemo, an endearing movie about a clown fish who loses his child, and given the fact that he has to search the whole ocean, it’s one of the many times when a Pixar movie gives audiences that sinking feeling.

The director again returned for a just-as-good sequel, and also created not just one of the greatest animated movies ever, but one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time with Wall-E. One of the best things about Stanton is that he doesn’t treat kids like idiots, as the first 20 minutes of Wall-E has no dialogue, but it’s still completely captivating.

3 Josh Cooley – 97%

Josh Cooley is another one-time director for the studio, but given the success of that one movie, the director will surely be brought back again. Before the release of Toy Story 4, people questioned if we even needed it, as the third movie had such a perfect ending for the trilogy, but when the fourth movie finally came around, critics were enamoured by it and it served more as an epilogue to the series than anything.

2 Pete Doctor – 97.25%

Pete Doctor is the most consistent Pixar director there is, and if he’s attached to direct a Pixar movie, there’s no need to worry and rest assured that it will probably by an extremely philosophical adventure full of twists and turns. Doctor makes movies that adults can learn from just as much as kids can. Being the first director besides John Lasseter to helm a movie at Pixar, Doctor first directed Monsters Inc, then Up, then Inside Out, and now the newly released Soul. That’s some winning streak

1 Lee Unkrich – 97.5%

Being one of the animated movies that’s better than the first movie, Toy Story 3 was an emotional roller coaster, and the way it featured themes of mortality, it reached an apex for the toys when it comes to what it feels like to be alive. Woody and Buzz and company were literally face to face with death and prepared for the worst, and millions of grown adults were crying in multiplexes across the world in 2010. Lee Unrich then did it all of again with Coco, arguably the best original Pixar movie of the 2010s.

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