Pixar has been making brilliant feature films since its first smash hit, Toy Story, in 1995, and while it hasn’t had a perfect record, more than 30 years later, the animation studio is still putting out major box office successes. Most recently, that has included Toy Story 5, which actually proved to have the highest-grossing opening weekend for Pixar in eight years and has likewise been the biggest opener of any new release in 2026.
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This is especially impressive given that Toy Story 5 is, obviously, a sequel movie—a fourth sequel at that. Making a box office success is one thing, but doing it decades after the first movie in a franchise that now has five total installments (and counting, based on chatter about Toy Story 6) is something else entirely. Clearly, Pixar has the ability to make a slam dunk sequel, although that hasn’t always been the case. Of Pixar’s many sequels over the years, here are the best five but also the worst two.
7) Worst: Cars 2
Cars is undoubtedly one of Pixar’s best movies. When it was released in 2006, Cars captured viewers’ attention and hearts with the fascinating world building, dynamic characters, star-studded cast, and touching underlying message. In theory, that should have meant an easy success with Cars 2, but that was far from the case. Although Disney and Pixar had made an educated guess by focusing on Mater, a fan-favorite character from Cars, this sequel didn’t work at all.
Rather, Cars 2 felt like a chaotic, messy, at times outright nonsensical narrative that had forgotten what made the first movie work. In this next iteration of Lightning McQueen’s story, Mater gets wrapped up in a bit of espionage, and McQueen is tackling the international circuit. Unfortunately, the story just didn’t come together at all; frequently, the story felt painfully cheesy, and the characters had lost their charm. It’s therefore no surprise that this movie saw Cars’ respectable 74% critic score and 80% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes drop to 40% with critics and 50% with audiences for Cars 2.
6) Worst: Finding Dory
Very similar to Cars 2, Finding Dory had everything going for it before its release. Its predecessor, Finding Nemo, is a massively popular Pixar movie, and a follow-up story that focused on beloved character Dory seemed like a stroke of genius. Yet again, though (albeit to a lesser degree), Finding Dory failed to meet the extremely high expectations that the original movie had set for it. After all, Finding Nemo has an absolutely staggering 99% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Granted, Finding Dory wasn’t an actively bad movie. On the contrary, and rather ironically, Finding Dory simply suffers from being forgettable, which couldn’t have been further from the case for the emotionally profound narrative of Finding Nemo. In the newer installment, it was Dory who was going on a journey of self-discovery, which incorporated flashbacks of her traumatic past. Part of the problem, however, was that the franchise suddenly seemed uncertain about whether Dory’s short-term memory loss was a joke or a tragedy—and it really didn’t work to make it both.
5) Best: Monsters University
Luckily, underwhelming Pixar sequels are few and far between, and the fact that Finding Dory makes the list of worst Pixar sequels exemplifies how consistently strong the studio’s movies are. In fact, the top five best Pixar movies are extremely competitive, and it makes sense that there is so much disagreement within the Pixar fanbase regarding which sequels are the very best. Frequently high on that list, though, is the follow-up movie to the fan-favorite flick Monsters, Inc., Monsters University. (And, yes, this movie is actually technically a prequel story, but it nevertheless followed on the heels of Monsters, Inc.).
Monsters University was yet another risky addition, given just how loved and celebrated Monsters, Inc. is. Yet, even without adorable Boo and a range of other characters from the first movie, Monsters University managed to reproduce the heart of the original story and perfectly capture the charm of main characters Mike Wazowski and Sulley and their friendship. This was actually a particularly impressive feat in light of Monsters, Inc.’s conclusion, which had completely changed the rules of monsters and scaring—somehow, that still didn’t make Monsters University feel outdated or contradictory.
4) Best: Cars 3
Although Cars 2 had been a pretty serious flop, Cars 3 somehow managed to come along six years later, revitalize the franchise, and deliver a solid new story. Although there was some pushback to this sequel, a fair bit of it having to do with the narrative introducing and ultimately centering on new character Cruz Ramirez, this actually felt like the perfect conclusion to Lightning McQueen’s story. After being a record-breaking hot shot throughout his career, McQueen now had to confront something that comes for us all if we’re lucky: Aging.
Maybe some viewers didn’t like to see their racing hero lose his touch, but that was actually what made this story so powerful; Cars 3 felt like an accurate depiction of what it means to grow older and realize that your ‘prime’ has come and gone, and it’s time to look to the next generation. What’s more, Cars 3 has some truly hilarious laugh lines, and the dynamic between Cruz and Lightning McQueen is sincerely touching.
3) Best: The Incredibles 2
Like Cars 3, The Incredibles 2 was met with some hate from fans who were unhappy to learn that the focus was on Elastigirl, not Mr. Incredible. While there’s plenty to be said about why that might be (particularly given the similarities between Cruz and Elastigirl—namely, they’re women), that negativity was largely drowned out. In fact, The Incredibles 2 currently has a 93% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
As was the case with its predecessor, The Incredibles 2 is full of humor that will, of course, land with kids but is also genuinely funny to older audiences. Despite the massive 14-year gap between The Incredibles and The Incredibles 2, the characters also felt consistent between the two movies. In fact, this is arguably Edna Mode at her very best, especially when considering her interactions with Jack-Jack when she is babysitting. The success of this sequel is also great news, considering The Incredibles 3 is confirmed to be in the works.
2) Best: Toy Story 3
Just as Toy Story is easily one of Pixar’s greatest movies overall, Toy Story 3 is among the studio’s best sequels. In fact, while Toy Story 4 and Toy Story 5 have both proven to be very popular in their own right, Toy Story 3 really felt like the perfect conclusion to the trilogy of movies focused on Andy and his toys. In addition to successfully introducing a host of new characters yet again, Toy Story 3 saw the toys facing some of their biggest obstacles to date.
One major example of that is the incinerator scene, in which the toys almost literally die together, which is arguably among the most harrowing Pixar scenes of all time. In addition to that, Toy Story 3 included perhaps the single most emotional moment in the entire five-movie franchise, with Andy dropping his toys off with Bonnie and then, before driving away and quite literally leaving his childhood behind, saying, “Thanks, guys.”
1) Best: Toy Story 2
Finally, the single greatest Pixar sequel movie overall is Toy Story 2. This sequel is actually so successful that it is considered by many to be even better than its predecessor—a major rarity for second movies. Impressively, Toy Story 2 not only brought Buzz, Woody, and the gang back to the screen in a way that felt perfectly aligned with where audiences had left them at the end of Toy Story, but it also introduced new characters like Jessie and Bullseye, who became just as popular as their original movie counterparts.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that the larger Toy Story franchise arguably has yet to top the villain in this movie, Stinky Pete, who is wonderfully detestable. Toy Story 2 also undoubtedly laid the groundwork for the multiple Toy Story movies that have been released since by proving that these characters and this story could successfully continue, and it certainly has done exactly that.
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Image Courtesy of Sony
