The Good Dinosaur is the latest Pixar movie heading into the box office, so with several new films from the studio under our belt, we've decided to update our ranking of the films of Pixar Animation. For a studio with such a successful track record, there is great and there is good, but there is very little if any bad. So bear that in mind as you read the following list… Even the worst of Pixar is usually better than the competition's best! Let us know in the comments below how you would rank the Pixar films.

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Cars 2 benefits from cherry-picking the best elements of the first movie and switching genres completely by taking Lightning McQueen and Mater out of Radiator Springs and dropping them into the middle of a fast-paced, dynamic spy flick. What's lost here, for the most part, is the warmth and heart that we adore, and expect, from most Pixar offerings. It gets left in the dust.

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This is also a darker film where several car characters do meet an untimely, and sometimes grisly, end. But the fast pacing here works in the films favor, as the slightly morbid moments flicker in and out as quickly as race car laps. Cars 2 isn't the usual intimate magical experience you expect from Pixar fare, but it's still a high-octane adventure the burns fast and furious.It should come as no surprise that 2006's Cars is near the bottom of this list, as it and its sequel are the least loved of all the Pixar films and yet, as we noted above, when it comes to Pixar, the worst is still so much better than most of the other junk being churned out by Hollywood. Directed by Pixar honcho John Lasseter and the late Joe Ranft, the film tells the tale of Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), a rookie racecar who learns that winning isn't everything. Which, one supposes, is easy for Lasseter and his team to preach, now that they've basically won everything themselves.

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The film, while quite entertaining and clever, just doesn't quite meet with the high standard that Pixar has set for itself over the past 15 years or so. As we noted in our original review, "Cars is hardly the bump in the road that some predicted. It's still a fun movie, it's cute and has enough going for it to draw in audiences. The unfortunate aside on Cars is that, unlike Pixar films past, this may be the first entry by the studio that parents will want to avoid re-watching alongside their kids, opting instead to plop their kids in the back of the mini-van with a set of headphones. Even the kids may opt to go back to that worn copy of Finding Nemo or Incredibles quicker than expected." A Bug's Life was the second Pixar film, after Toy Story. A take on the old Ant and the Grasshopper parable mixed with The Seven Samurai, A Bug's Life was a great sophomore effort for the young company, even if it didn't quite match the magic of Toy Story. Still, it outdid DreamWorks' Antz by a yard, so that's saying something. Dave Foley is Flik, an outcast ant who, after his colony is threatened by villainous grasshoppers, pulls a Seven Samurai and recruits a bunch of other loner insects -- well, actually they're just circus performers who are out of work. But they are, of course, up to the task.With this film, Lasseter and co-director Andrew Stanton once again proved they had let the genie out of the bottle with the Pixar formula, a mix of kid-friendly comedy, adult-friendly knowingness and nostalgia, and state-of-the-art computer animation. Throw in elements like Kevin Spacey voicing the lead baddie Hopper, Randy Newman offering up the film's music once again, and a sophisticated element of characterization. How else could bugs be made to be so lovable?The first Pixar film to follow a female protagonist (the arrow-shooting princess Merida), the first one to be set in the past (medieval Scotland), and their 13th film to open at No. 1, Brave wisely forsakes the well-worn relationships of other animated fairy tales – the wicked stepmother/stepdaughter dynamic or father/daughter bond or the princess and prince romance -- in favor of the more complicated, yet loving bond between a headstrong mother and her equally stubborn daughter. And yet despite that smart choice, Brave still never becomes more than a traditional Disney princess tale.

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12. The Good Dinosaur

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The narrative is surprisingly rote for a studio whose mantra is that story is everything, and it’s chock full of the usual “girl power” tropes and comeuppance moments one would expect. Brave is a technical marvel (Merida’s wild curls, the misty Highlands, immersive 3D), but it’s ultimately a lesser effort from a studio known for breaking new ground. Grownups may appreciate the artistry that went into making Brave, but they’ll likely yearn for the transcendent Pixar films they fell in love with.The Good Dinosaur, Pixar's most recent animated effort, takes on a big "what if?" Asking people to imagine what would happen if the dinosaurs never went extinct, this movie follows a young dino named Arlo who gets swept away from his family and has to journey through the great unknown to get home. The film is one of the most visually stunning projects Pixar has ever created, but it retreads some familiar Pixar tropes and its troubled production shows.There are some great emotional moments as Arlo and his "pet" human Spot grow closer, and The Good Dinosaur proves that Pixar excels at showing instead of telling. Even when the film does hit story points that feel familiar, it does them well and in a way that children can comprehend -- even if it does get a bit scary for its target young audience sometimes.Monsters University is Pixar’s take on a college movie, with Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sulley (John Goodman) reintroduced as freshmen at MU, both with dreams of making it as a “scarer.” It doesn't have the emotional weight of the first one (Boo, you are missed), but Monster's University is still a fun and funny movie in its own right. MU introduces us to a younger Mike and Sulley and delivers a funny take on a college comedy in the process.

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Pixar’s biggest obstacle at this point is their own track record. So many of their films have been so emotional that there’s a certain expectation that all of them should be. It’s unfair though. Pixar is using animation to tell all sorts of stories and not all of them have to make you cry to be worthwhile. We all like a good comedy too, right?