All 58 Walt Disney Animation Studios Films Ranked From Worst To Best [Part One]

(Welcome to Walt Disney Animation Ranked, a three-part series where we're ranking all 58 feature-length animated films released by the Walt Disney Company. This is part one of three.)

What must it have been like to live in a time when feature-length animated films were perceived as folly? Growing up in the era of the Disney Renaissance means that feature animation was always just part of the family-movie landscape. But the Walt Disney Company, now one of the biggest behemoths in all of the corporate world, was once on death's door and hoping beyond hope that a hand-drawn animated film would make a profit. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," once dubbed "Disney's Folly", became a massive worldwide hit, and so a new storytelling medium was born. With the arrival of "Frozen II," Walt Disney Animation Studios has released 58 animated features over 82 years. Consider this the definitive, legally binding (sorry, I don't make the rules, I just follow them) ranking of all of those 58 films.

The first end of hand-drawn animation at Disney came pretty swiftly. In the summer of 2002, the studio had a solid hit in the quirky original "Lilo & Stitch," but by the spring of 2004, they'd released the baffling and annoying "Home on the Range," to both critical and audience displeasure. For over five years, there were no hand-drawn animated projects at the studio, in part because of the creative and financial failure of this story of a group of wily cows who go horn to head against a cattle rustler. The cast is, whatever else is true, unexpected: Dame Judi Dench, Roseanne Barr, Jennifer Tilly, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Randy Quaid all play some of the main characters, making for a...uh...unique aural experience. But the homespun story is a head-scratcher more than anything else. Whatever compelled Disney to make this film isn't clear from the final result.

"Home on the Range" has nothing on "The Black Cauldron" in terms of how potentially disastrous it was for Disney Animation. Yes, the former film paused the hand-drawn animation unit for a few years. But "The Black Cauldron" nearly killed Disney feature animation entirely. Arriving in the summer of 1985, this single-film adaptation of the multi-title "Chronicles of Prydain" book series by Lloyd Alexander is one of the more notable flops in Disney history, bringing in less than half of its $44 million budget. At that time, it was the most expensive Disney animated film ever, even after new executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg tried to right the ship, having been aghast at its quality and cost overruns. The film that was unceremoniously released in theaters is dimly animated, poorly developed, and generally as misbegotten as its reputation suggests.

This is the part of the list where I should emphasize the obvious: this is all subjective. I say that because depending on your age and your personal preferences, my placing "Robin Hood" this low on the ranking is borderline heretical. Some kids who grew up with this 1973 retelling of the legend of Robin Hood and his merry men, this time with all animals instead of humans, would grow up to place it very highly among the films of Disney Animation. Though this "Robin Hood" is not without its charms — Roger Miller's laconic music, for one — the animation style is aggressively familiar and bordering on lazy. (YouTubers have already made enough videos comparing the animation in the "Phony King of England" sequence to earlier Disney films, showcasing how the 1973 film traced over previous frames.) Despite the film's spot in many people's hearts, and the way it inspired a whole swath of the furry community (Google it, and don't blame me for what you find), this movie's laid-back style ends up being its worst enemy.

On paper, "Brother Bear" felt like the kind of late-stage Renaissance film that wouldn't be able to miss. It's another hand-drawn affair, and this one's targeted to the young male audience with a story of how a callow Eskimo youth (voiced by Joaquin Phoenix) learns humility and other valuable life lessons when he's transformed into a bear. Like the hit film "Tarzan," this featured music from British rocker Phil Collins. But despite the names associated with "Brother Bear," and its largely decent widescreen animation, the 2003 film had the misfortune of being a few years too late to the party, arriving after so many other Renaissance films that told similar stories. And, for whatever odd reason, the film was released on a Saturday — Halloween fell on a Friday that year, and the studio just had to open it that weekend — meaning its box office was pretty disastrous. Ticket sales aside, "Brother Bear" has an unavoidable seen-it-all-before stench that's impossible to shake.

A decade after their directorial debut "Beauty and the Beast" led to Disney receiving its first Best Picture nomination for an animated film, Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale told a much different story. "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" is a purportedly rousing adventure all about the mythic underwater city, with a voice cast including Michael J. Fox, James Garner, Leonard Nimoy, and more. While the idea is intriguing, the key word in the preceding sentence is "purportedly". The finished product, despite aiming to blend CG and hand-drawn animation more ambitiously than in previous efforts, is somewhat lifeless and is a case of Disney struggling to cater to a slightly older crowd than in its usual family-friendly fare. "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" was a costly failure; neither Wise nor Trousdale have directed another feature since, separately moving onto other short projects.

John Musker and Ron Clements had, by the turn of the 21st century, proven their worth as filmmakers and then some. They'd already directed "The Little Mermaid," "Aladdin," and "Hercules," the former two of which were massive successes and Oscar winners to boot. One reason why they'd agreed to make the 1997 film "Hercules" was that they were promised to finally pursue their passion project afterwards: a retelling of "Treasure Island" set in space. The result is "Treasure Planet," a film that unquestionably bears the mark of being a pet project of gifted directors. But while the passion driving the film is undeniable, the characterization and storytelling isn't quite up to par with Musker and Clements' previous films (or their latter efforts, "The Princess and the Frog" and "Moana"). The idea is intriguing, but the execution isn't.

Talking about dark periods in Disney history, there's also the time leading up to the release of "The Fox and the Hound." In 1979, animator Don Bluth led a couple handfuls of his cohorts to walk out of Disney to create a rival studio. His main complaint was that the generational divide between older and younger animators was too great, with older animators winning out over newer, fresher creative voices. The push and pull between old and new is represented in the film in production when Bluth left the studio. "The Fox and the Hound" is about two mismatched friends, a hound dog and a friendly fox who lives nearby. They're, of course, bound to be on opposing sides of the hunt, but as youths, they're thick as thieves. The wistful nature of the friendship doesn't jibe with the film's sometimes-intense violence, as in a climactic battle with a vicious bear. And it's nothing short of inexplicable to consider that the adult characters are voiced by Mickey Rooney and Kurt Russell. (The original odd couple!) Maybe in a different, younger era, "The Fox and the Hound" could've stood out more than the messy story that was presented instead.

The 1940s-era package films from the Walt Disney Company existed in no small part to help keep the lights on in the studio as they recuperated from the financial blow of working almost exclusively on World War II-era propaganda for the U.S. military. The package films have a varying impact — a couple of the films (which we haven't mentioned yet) have die-hard fans, while others are easily forgotten. For a certain subset of theme park fan, though, "The Adventures of Ichabod" and "Mr. Toad" is unforgettable because it led to one of the most beloved dark rides, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, inspired by the first half of this film, an adaptation of "The Wind and the Willows." The other half is an agreeably spooky take on "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," climaxing with a scary encounter with the Headless Horseman. This film has its charms, but they're mostly surface-deep.

In Western literature, few stories are as ever-present as that of Arthur, the boy who would become the King of England. So it's natural that Disney took the story and gussied it up for feature-length with the 1963 adventure "The Sword in the Stone." This version keeps Arthur as a youth not-affectionately known as Wart throughout. Wart's relationship with the kooky wizard Merlin makes up the backbone of the story, with animation that's both appropriate to the time being depicted and visually a little too dull even for its own good. "The Sword in the Stone" didn't mark the beginning of an era of blandly animated films for Disney, but feels now like an odd curiosity (down to the random meta references to the 20th century in the finale) in spite of being inspired by one of the most memorable hero's quests ever put to paper.