Most Mature Pixar Movies

When I was a kid, I loved The Incredibles. I loved the action scenes, such as the Omnidroid fights, Dash's chase scene, and the climactic battle in the city. However, I did not understand the intricacies of the movie until I was about 12 years old.

The dialogue is very sophisticated and includes topics that not many kids will understand, such as a mid-life crisis and even adultery. What I never realized about this movie is how intense it is for a children's film. Here's just a taste of how intense The Incredibles actually is: dozens of people die over the course of the film. The main plot is triggered by the main character stopping a suicide attempt, and the villain of the movie commits genocide against an entire group of people all because he was rejected by one of them when he was a kid.

So, yeah. Brad Bird doesn't play around.

WALL-E is a movie that begins by showing us that Earth as we know it is no longer inhabited, and we caused it to be in that state. I don't know if I'm alone on this, but the concept of this movie freaked me out when I was a kid. The idea that this movie was set in a tangible future that could actually happen made me think really hard about my life and our species.

Throughout most of the runtime, this uneasy feeling stayed with me, and it still kind of gives me the creeps to this day. Also, Pixar took an interesting approach by not having any dialogue for the first half of the movie. It was a risky decision that could have lost the interest of smaller kids, but it ended up being one of the greatest decisions they ever made as a studio.

There aren't many movie concepts as abstract as representing the human mind. Yet, Inside Out perfectly manages to create a visually interesting and well-crafted story about growing up and the human condition.

Inside Out is one of the few animated movies where a main character actually dies and is not revived in any way. Bing Bong is dead, and we'll never see him again. This works beautifully with the message the film is trying to convey. It may be scary and upsetting, but growing up is something we all have to do. Certain elements of our childhood need to be let go of for us to become the people we are today.

That is some heavy psychological stuff to tackle in a kid's movie. But Inside Out is not your average, run-of-the-mill kid's movie. And Pixar is not your average, run-of-the-mill kid's movie studio.

We all know about the opening of Up. It's not just one of the most famous moments in Pixar history. It's one of the most famous moments in film history. When I saw this movie for the first time, I was 11 years old and understood enough to properly feel devastated at Ellie's death.

I don't know if younger kids watching Up will understand the beautiful tragedy of the film's first 10 minutes. It's a short sequence and obviously done without any talking, but I highly doubt that any little kid will understand the concept of a woman having a miscarriage and finding out she's infertile. That is some serious adult stuff right there. It goes to prove that there aren't many subjects Pixar can't tackle and excel at.

In terms of its tone and mood, Toy Story 3 is most likely Pixar's darkest film. There's an overarching element of dread and claustrophobia that is not present in any of their other movies. At many points in this movie, it feels more like a thriller or horror movie than a typical animated family comedy.

That's one point I'd like to mention about Pixar as a whole. I consider the majority of their films dramas before I consider them comedies. Are they funny? Yes, definitely. I've had so many laughs with Pixar films over the years. It's just that their dramatic moments are where they excel the most. And Toy Story 3 is a movie where the drama is definitely well-executed and effective.

This movie begins with a man's wife and unborn children being massacred. I know that they're fish, but that is exactly what happens in Finding Nemo's opening. Just imagine if Finding Nemo were to take place in Los Angeles, California, and the barracuda was replaced with a gangster. The movie would get an R rating, no question about it.

Outside of its intense opening scene, Finding Nemo is a rare kids' movie where the message is directed at the parents instead of their children. The major theme of the film is to let your child grow and let them experience life for themselves. And like all of Pixar's other messages, it's executed phenomenally.

If I were to pick a Pixar movie where my perception changed the most as I've aged, it would be Ratatouille. When I first saw this movie at nine, I liked it but found it a little boring and confusing at parts. I could barely understand what the characters were talking about.

Nowadays, I love this movie and personally consider it to be Pixar's most underrated project. Ratatouille was written and directed by Brad Bird (the same guy who did The Incredibles), and it shows. The dialogue throughout the film is so much more sophisticated than most children's animated films.

Ego's speech at the end of the film is probably one of my favorite monologues in movie history. The words he says are so thought-provoking, not only for critics but for anybody looking to judge anything. And it's meant 100% for the adults in the audience.

Jessie's backstory, in my opinion, is the first major tear-jerking moment in Pixar's history. Sure, there were emotional scenes in both Toy Story and A Bug's Life, but this was the first real occasion where they tried to rip your heart out of your chest and stomp on it. What the Toy Story movies do magnificently is mirror real-life growing up with poignant symbolism of childhood.

Similar to Bob Parr in The Incredibles, Woody is going through an existential crisis over the course of Toy Story 2. He's conflicted about whether he should remain with Andy, only to lose him at some point in the future, or sacrifice being closely loved by one person to be adored by millions of random people across the world. That's about as deep as you can get.

Toy Story is essentially about somebody's existential crisis over no longer being good at what they were put on the planet to do. For a studio's first-ever film, that's a huge topic to start off with. However, the studio silenced its naysayers and created one of the most popular films ever made. And like other Pixar movies, its screenplay has no reason to be as good as it is.

The characters, despite being children's playthings, act like real people and react in situations as anyone in the real world would. What makes Pixar so amazing is that they manage to make any character of any background or personality likable. That's a skill that not many other filmmakers are able to accomplish.

Pixar has always taken ideas we have always thought about and turned them into great premises for movies. What do my toys do when nobody's around? What goes on inside my head? In Monsters, Inc., the studio has great fun with the "monster in your closet" concept that we have known all our lives and puts such a unique spin on it.

Having the world of monsters be about as predictable and normal as the world we live in and giving the characters normal names like "James P. Sullivan" and "Mike Wazowski" is actually great satire that many younger kids would not understand. The deepest and strongest emotional scene in the movie has to be Mike's "Doesn't Matter" speech in the cave.

Very dark and violent for a kids' movie.

This is the Pixar film with the highest on-screen kill count, so there's that.