Top 10 Animated Movies that Should've Been Nominated for Best Picture

With the Oscars coming up, I figured I'd make a list about them. I've mentioned before that the Academy Awards seem to have a bias against animation. Which is quite odd when you think about it. Animated films always end up on several "Best Of" lists and if done well, they can appeal to adults as much as children. So far, only three animated movies have been nominated for the prestigious Best Picture award. They are Beauty and the Beast in 1991, Up in 2009, and Toy Story 3 in 2010. The movies on this list have received widespread acclaim from both critics and audiences, but have received little to no recognition from the Academy outside of the "Best Animated Feature" category. Here are the best animated films to not get a Best Picture nomination.

NOTE: These movies are not necessarily ranked in terms of their individual quality. They're more ranked in terms of how much they were snubbed by the nominations committee.
The Top Ten
1 Toy Story

1995 Best Picture Nominees:
Braveheart (winner)
Apollo 13
Babe
Sense and Sensibility
Il Postino: The Postman

Toy Story is a truly groundbreaking film in the history of cinema. As the first completely computer-animated film ever made, it brought in tons of critical praise, was a massive financial success, and most importantly, it announced to the world that a little studio named Pixar was going to change family films forever. It's not even really a "kid's movie" bias that kept Toy Story out of the Best Picture nominations. Babe was actually nominated that year over it. I guess the Academy just liked talking pigs more than talking toys.

Umm...Where's Toy Story 3 in this list? You're kinda joking, aren't you?

This really should have won!

2 The Lion King

1994 Best Picture Nominees:
Forrest Gump (winner)
Pulp Fiction
The Shawshank Redemption
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Quiz Show

1994 arguably is the greatest year for movies in history. Three movies from that year (Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, & The Shawshank Redemption) rank high in many people's "Greatest Movies of All Time" lists. In addition, many fantastic features were released that year such as The Lion King, Ed Wood, Hoop Dreams, Speed, & Bullets Over Broadway weren't nominated for Best Picture. The Lion King is one of the most epic films ever made. You would figure that a movie with a plot reminiscent of Hamlet and heavy adult themes would at least get a Best Picture nomination, but the Academy voters said no.

Why is this #1? It does not deserve any awards at all and I am glad it was never nominated for best picture. (or anything) It really is a bad film and has the worst characters in the history of animation.

The story of a cub named Simba and his family. The movie makes me cry. Should be awarded the best animated movie.

Yeah, it's still the best animated movie of all time (my opinion). At least it won 2 Oscars and got nominated for 4.

3 Inside Out

Not my most favorite from Pixar, but it is one of my favorites from Pixar. They were really thinking outside the box with this one when it came to the psychological and emotional aspects of how humans feel emotion every day and how it affects them. And the personification of some of Riley's different emotions and the events that occur as a result of their actions really made for quite a fun watch. It's a really good combination of storytelling, great visuals, psychological depth, comedy, emotions, and amazing characters. Just goes to show you that Pixar hasn't lost its charm and will continue to maintain it in the years to come.

2015 Best Picture Nominees:
Spotlight (winner)
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn

Inside Out was named the best film of 2015 by many newspaper outlets and professional movie critics. It seemed guaranteed to at least get a nomination, considering that there were eight films nominated for Best Picture that year. However, despite universal claim, the snobs at the Academy decided to leave one of the most beloved family films ever made off the Best Picture ballot. And that pisses me off to know end. I've already mentioned this before, but I believe Inside Out to be the greatest animated feature of all time. And it's very insulting as a Pixar and animation fan that a movie as perfect as Inside Out wasn't even given a chance to receive the most prestigious award in cinema.

To me this was the best film of 2015, a masterpiece through and through. There was no excuse to not nominate it.

Best 2015 film, no doubt about it. Deserves every award.

4 Finding Nemo

2003 Best Picture Nominees:
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (winner)
Lost in Translation
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

Anyone who is a fan of animation has seen Finding Nemo. It's an immortal classic and one of the most beloved films of all time, let alone animated films. We all knew that Lord of the Rings was going to eventually win Best Picture, but it would have been nice to see this underwater adventure get a little bit of higher recognition from Oscar voters. At least it walked away with a Best Original Screenplay nomination.

At least return of the king won

5 Zootopia

Zootopia was very much worthy of an award I feel. Not only for story, characters, and world building but especially with the extra work that was put into actually creating new technology to allow the fur to come out so well for each individual hair on the character models.

2016 Best Picture Nominees:
Moonlight (winner)
La La Land
Arrival
Manchester by the Sea
Hell or High Water
Hacksaw Ridge
Fences
Hidden Figures
Lion

In a year where NINE films were nominated for Best Picture, Zootopia stands as the biggest snub. In my opinion, at least. This movie is extremely funny, written very well, and actually touches on themes such as discrimination that aren't usually discussed in Disney animated films. And in a year where so many negative things regarding discrimination and racism occurred, it would have been thoughtful for Oscar voters to give this movie the respect it deserves. Disney took a big chance with this movie, and it would've been more than respectful if the Academy took a chance on it.

@Videogamefan5 - Yes we get the point you think it's overrated - NOBODY CARES

It should of been nominated for most overrated movie

6 Spirited Away

It's vary rare that a foreign language film gets nominated and Spirited Away won the animated oscar because Disney owned Studio Ghibli.

2002 Best Picture nominees
Chicago (Winner)
Gangs of New York
The Hours
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Pianist

The irony is that at the time, Disney owned Miramax as well as Studio Ghibli so Disney did have a Best Picture Oscar winner.

Dare I point out that Spirited Away was never really a contender what with Lord of the Rings' second outing, a Martin Scorsese gang epic, a Holocaust film directed by a real life survivor Roman Polanski and eventual winner Chicago in contention.

Chicago is widely considered responsible for the re-emmergence of the movie musical. Without Chicago there would be no Mamma Mia!, Enchanted or Sunshine on Leith.

This is not only my favorite anime movie, but this is also my favorite movie of all time. All you need to do is see my entire review on this Hayao Miyazaki gem to know how much I love this Studio Ghibli film.

Beautiful film. One of my favorites.

7 The Incredibles

2004 Best Picture Nominees:
Million Dollar Baby (winner)
The Aviator
Sideways
Ray
Finding Neverland

The Incredibles is one of the most adult-oriented children's movies ever made. It features a man's midlife crisis as a major element to the story, scenes of intense action including gunfire, and dialogue that wouldn't seem out of place in a Tarantino movie (maybe it's just Samuel L. Jackson I'm hearing). With all of those elements, Pixar's impact, and the fact that critics and audiences both went nuts over it, you'd think that it would get a shot at the biggest award of the ceremony.

8 Shrek

Shrek is love, Shrek is life

9 Wall-E
10 Tangled
The Contenders
11 How to Train Your Dragon

2010 Best Picture Nominees:
The King's Speech (winner)
Inception
The Social Network
The Fighter
Black Swan
True Grit
Toy Story 3
127 Hours
Winter's Bone
The Kids Are Alright

I love Toy Story 3, but when it comes down to it, I believe How to Train Your Dragon is an overall better movie. The film is action-filled, funny, and looks absolutely astonishing. I think the main reason why Toy Story 3 was chosen over it was because of Pixar's larger name recognition and that it was from an established, critically-lauded franchise. Both How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 are great films. But if I were to pick one over the other, I'd take the former.

I love this movie.

12 Aladdin

1992 Best Picture Nominees:
Unforgiven (winner)
A Few Good Men
The Crying Game
Howards End
Scent of a Woman

Aladdin is one of the most beloved films from what is perhaps the most beloved era in Disney animation history. It's an overall classic with great songs, a great plot, and unforgettable characters. I believe the Academy didn't want too seem redundant with having two Disney movies being nominated for Best Picture two years in a row. However, Aladdin is a fantastic film that at least should have been nominated in an unremarkable year for cinema.

13 The Simpsons Movie
14 Cars

Yep Bros, I Had the Guts to put this on the list, You can't do anything about it!

15 Monsters, Inc.
16 The Iron Giant

This movie is so heartwarming and ever since I've seen it,it's been a favorite of mine. It's such a great story and is very well drawn. Unfortunately this never got the attention it deserved when it was realised.

17 The Lego Movie

It really should not be nominated sorry to you who liked it. But to me I don't get why some people liked it. To me it was the most stupidest thing I have ever seen and no real story line

Good movie, I really liked it, I can't Believe it's been almost 3 years since I saw this in the theaters, and the lego batman movie is going To suck, open your eyes!

Funny and heart warming, not only did it not get a best picture nod but it was screwed over for best animated movie having not been nominated at all.

My favorite animated movie! It got so snubbed at the oscars that I got angry. I wasn't TOO mad though because big hero 6 won (which is a great movie in my opinion)

18 Ratatouille
19 South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

I love this movie!

20 Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
21 Moana

Amazing visuals, engaging as well as compelling characters, excellent voice acting, SPECTACULAR music, what's not to love?!?!? For me, THIS is the Disney film that should've been getting all the praise last year, as Zootopia was a little too close to home (in it's writing) for me to like it as much as other people.

It has very good pictures

The least-mentioned Disney film of all time.

I could stare at th animation for hours... The water was so beutiful

22 Fantasia
23 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
24 Kubo and the Two Strings
25 It's Such a Beautiful Day
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