10 Greatest Disney Movies That Are 10/10 Masterpieces

Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Published Nov 10, 2026, 5:56 PM EST Born with Autism (formerly classified as Asperger syndrome), Tyler B. Searle has been obsessed with storytelling since he was old enough to speak. He gravitated towards fairy tales, mythology, the fantasy genre, and animated movies and shows aimed at family audiences. When not writing, Tyler enjoys watching more cartoons and reading fantasy books in his home in Ontario, Canada. Sign in to your Collider account In 1923, brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney founded the Walt Disney Company to create their own run of animated shorts. From such humble beginnings, Disney has now grown to become perhaps the largest media conglomerate in the world, having absorbed the likes of Lucasfilm, Marvel, and 20th Century Fox. Though they now have their hands in everything from live action movies to theme parks, they still put effort into their animated movies, though recent years have seen them eclipsed by studios like DreamWorks and Sony when it comes to creativity and effort. Still, there's no denying Disney has created some of the most well-known and beloved movies of all time. Regardless of when they first released, these movies continue to delight new and old viewers thanks to their strong writing, iconic characters, catchy songs, and the sense of fun and classic "Disney Magic" that ties them all together. 10 'Aladdin' (1992) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Aladdin (Scott Weinger) is a street rat living in the city of Agrabah with his monkey Abu (Frank Welker), who longs for a life of wealth and luxury so that nobody will ever look down on him again. After he is arrested following a chance meeting with the rebellious Princess Jasmine (Linda Larkin), Aladdin is recruited by the Royal Vizier, Jafar (Jonathan Freeman), to go inside the Cave of Wonders (Frank Welker) and retrieve a magic lamp. Aladdin discovers that the lamp contains a genie (Robin Williams) who is bound to grant three wishes to whomever holds the lamp, which he plans to use to become a prince and woo Jasmine. Aladdin is one of the best examples of Disney's ability to combine comedy with heartfelt storytelling. Williams' performance as the Genie is so iconic that it changed how animated films handle celebrity voice actors, but when not throwing out rapid-fire jokes, he has a very sincere relationship with Aladdin that plays into the movie's themes about self-acceptance and integrity. The rest of the film is also great too: Jaffar stands tall as one of Disney's best villains thanks to his charisma, the animation is colorful and stylistic, and the songs catchy and all key to the story and characters. 9 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' (2003) Image via Disney While sailing from England to Port Royal, Elizabeth Turner (Lucinda Dryzek and Kiera Knightly) helps to rescue a young boy named William Turner (Dylan Smith and Orlando Bloom) from a shipwreck, and takes his golden medallion so he wouldn't be mistaken for a pirate. Years later, Elizabeth is kidnapped by the dreaded pirate ship The Black Pearl, and learns that the medallion is the key to freeing them from their curse of undeath. To save her, Will recruits the help of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), an eccentric pirate who has a history with the Pearl and its captain, Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is the most successful live-action adaptation of Disney’s theme park rides, and spawned an entire franchise of swashbuckling adventure stories. The movie is the perfect combination of memorable characters, fast-paced sword fights, high-seas action, and creative storytelling that weaves mythology and real history. Of all the characters, Jack Sparrow easily stands out the most thanks to Depp's phenomenal performance, and has cemented himself as one of the most iconic pirates in pop-culture history. 8 'The Little Mermaid' (1989) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Ariel (Jodi Benson) is the youngest daughter of the Sea King, Triton (Kenneth Mars), but, much to his frustration, she has a fascination with the surface world and regularly goes looking for human artifacts. One night, she rescues Prince Eric (Christopher Daniel Barnes) after his ship is caught in a storm, and falls deeply in love with him. The whole affair is overseen by the sea witch Ursula (Pat Carroll), who plans to use Ariel's emotional vulnerability in her plan to usurp control of the sea from Triton. The Little Mermaid is the movie that kick-started Disney's Renaissance, an era where Disney became the undisputed king of pop-culture. Even today, the movie still captivates audiences with its Broadway-style musical numbers by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, and the underwater world is so lavishly animated. Character wise, Ariel and Eric have a pretty solid romance thanks to the film giving them time to develop as a couple, Triton is a solid father who goes through an arch regarding letting his daughter live her own life, and Urusla is so deliciously evil with her showmanship and Carroll's bombastic voice. 7 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' (1937) Image via Walt DIsney Studios Motion Pictures When an evil queen (Lucille La Verne) learns that her stepdaughter, Snow White (Adriana Caselotti), is more beautiful than her, she tasks her huntsman (Stuart Buchanan) with killing her. The huntsman can't bring himself to do it and instead tells the princess to run into the woods and never return. With the help of woodland animals, Snow White arrives at a cottage inhabited by seven dwarfs, who agree to let her stay with them. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is not just the first Disney film, but also the first animated feature film in North America, and the first cell-shaded animated feature film. The movie set the bar for how to do fairy tale adaptations, with a story that plays on the audience's emotions to pull them into the character's struggles, hopes, and ambitions. The queen also set a very high bar for Disney villains thanks to her majestic and commanding presence in her normal form, and the cackling, bombastic villainy she exews upon transforming into her grotesque hag form. 6 'Bambi' (1942) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Deep in the woods on a spring's day, the son of a stag called the Great Prince of the Forest (Fred Shields) is born. Named Bambi (Bobby Stewart, Hardie Albright, John Sutherland, and Donnie Duunagan), he grows up in the care of his mother (Paula Winslowe) and makes friends with a rabbit named Thumper (Peter Behn, Tim Davis, and Sam Edwards) and a skunk nicknamed Flower (Stan Alexander, Tim Davis, and Sterling Holloway). However, things become more difficult as the seasons change, and a mysterious creature called Man comes to the forest. Bambi has gone from being a financial failure on release to one of the most beloved and respected animated animal films. It avoids excessive anthropomorphization of its characters, which, combined with the more realistic animal designs, presents the movie more as a snapshot of the natural world than a proper narrative. Its backgrounds by Tyrus Wong are also some of the most stylistic in any Disney film, using watercolor patterns to create a forest that feels all the more realistic and mysterious. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Fandom Should You Join? Harry Potter · Lord of the Rings · Star Wars · Star Trek Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you put on when you need cheering up, how deep you go into the things you love, what you argue about, what you keep on your shelf. Answer them and we will tell you where you belong. Four of the biggest fandoms on earth are taking new members, and they could not be more different from one another. ⚡Harry Potter(Wizarding World) 💍Lord of the Rings(Middle-earth) ⚔️Star Wars(A Galaxy Far Away) 🖖Star Trek(The Final Frontier) FIND YOUR PEOPLE → 01 What do you put on when you need cheering up? Nobody is brave about this one. AThe same thing I have watched a hundred times. BSomething long, slow and beautiful. CSomething big and loud with a great score. DOne clever episode of something hopeful. NEXT QUESTION → 02 How deep do you go into something you love? There is no shallow end here, only different deep ends. AI know every character and all the gossip. BI have read the appendices and studied the maps. CI have a ranked opinion on every instalment. DI want to know how the world actually works. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What do you and your friends actually argue about? Every fandom has one argument it has been having for years. AWhich one of us is which type. BWhether the adaptation got it right. CWhether the new stuff ruined the old stuff. DWhether the right thing was actually done. NEXT QUESTION → 04 How do you feel about a room full of strangers? Every one of these comes with a very big room. AGreat, and I will know everybody by the end. BFine, as long as they take it seriously. CBrilliant, especially if there is something to dress up for. DHappy, provided the conversation is interesting. NEXT QUESTION → 05 Where would you rather spend a week? Pick on instinct rather than on budget. AAn old castle somewhere rainy. BMountains, long walks, no phone signal. CA desert with an unbelievable night sky. DA city built around a university. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What do you believe about people, mostly? All four of these stories have an answer, and they disagree. AMost of them turn out better than expected. BThe smallest ones decide the biggest things. CAnybody can change, even very late on. DWe work it out if we keep talking. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What is actually on your shelf? Look over at it before you answer. AEverything I owned when I was twelve. BHardbacks, in order, read more than once. CFigures, posters, and a few things still boxed. DBooks about how things work, plus a model or two. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What do you actually want from a story? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your fandom. AA place I can go back to whenever I need it. BA world complete enough to get lost in. CSomething huge I can share with everybody. DAn idea that changes how I think. REVEAL MY FANDOM → Membership Confirmed Your Fandom Is…Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you would be having within a week. Harry PotterYou belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting you. You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within about five minutes and has never stopped. This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every single person in your life would be. The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you do with things you love. The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the arguments are about to start all over again. Lord of the RingsYou belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture. You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it. This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly alarming, and it has good reasons for that. Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all, which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes. Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make that argument. Star WarsYou belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity. You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that. Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly 1980 with no sign of resolution. The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score and the look of a used and dented galaxy. You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good time. Star TrekYou belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done. You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major franchise still willing to say the future might be better. The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else. Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar. You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you will always find somebody willing to have it. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' (1988) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures In an alternate 1940s where humans live alongside living cartoon characters, Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) is a private detective who has fallen onto hard times after the death of his brother at the hands of a toon. The day after he photographs Jessica Rabbit (Kathleen Turner) playing patty cake with the owner of Toontown, Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye), he learns that Jessica's husband, Roger (Charles Fleischer), apparently murdered Acme in a jealous rage. Roger, however, seeks out Eddie to prove his innocence and protect him from the psychotic judge of Toontown, Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd). Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a revolutionary movie that has some of the best examples of mixing animated characters into live-action footage. This is thanks to the incredible level of detail that went into their creation, from using strings to move items the toon characters would hold to actively changing the shading on the characters to reflect changes in lighting. Beyond its technical achievements, it's also a very solid mystery with a strong film noir aesthetic, and some terrific performances from Hoskins and Lloyd. 4 'Fantasia' (1940) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures To repair Mickey Mouse's declining popularity, Walt conceived an animated short based on Paul Dukas' symphonic poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice. As the budget grew too big to justify, Walt decided to turn the project into a feature film that would combine multiple shorts based on classical music. Leopold Stokowski was brought on as conductor, and Deems Taylor served as Master of Ceremonies. The result was Fantasia, an ambitious film that combined music and animation like never before or since. The Disney animators put their all into each segment, matching the music with everything from proper narratives to simple abstract shapes that might come to one's mind as they hear the music. Disney would try to make similar films, but none of them ever matched the artistic creativity of the original movie. 3 'Mary Poppins' (1964) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Frustrated that his children Jane (Karen Dotrice) and Michael (Matthew Garber) have driven off another nanny, George Banks (David Tomlinson) places an ad in the paper for a strict nanny who will set them right. The next day, a wind blows away all the women who came to apply, and George instead hires Mary Poppins (Dame Julie Andrews), a woman who flew in on an umbrella, and meets the requirements of a separate ad made by the kids. Mary is indeed stern with the kids as needed, but also takes them on fantastical adventures with the help of her handyman friend, Bert (Dick Van Dyke). Mary Poppins was famously despised by the author of the original books, P. L. Travers, but to general audience, it is one of Disney's biggest successes. This is thanks to its ability to blend the fun, whimsical adventures that Mary Poppins takes the children through with the hard-hitting but relatable reality of a father trying to rebuild a relationship with his kids. The songs by The Sherman Brothers help to convey this wide spectrum of emotions, with one song in particular, "Feed the Birds," having the honor of being Walt Disney's favourite from any of his movies. 2 'The Lion King' (1994) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures All the animals of the Pride Lands travel to Pride Rock to celebrate the birth of the lion cub Simba (Johnathan Taylor Thomas and Matthew Broderick), son of King Mufasa (James Earl Jones). As he grows, Simba is educated by his father about the importance of maintaining the circle of life, but the young cub is too focused on how exciting it will be when he has the throne. Unfortunately, his uncle Scar (Jeremy Irons) lusts after the throne himself, and makes an alliance with a clan of hyenas to eliminate both Simba and Mufasa so he can take it. The Lion King began life as a side-project to fill a 1994 release slot while Disney's best talent worked on Pocahontas, but it has since gone down in history as one of the most beloved animated films, and the highest grossing traditionally-animated one. The movie uses bold colors, wide shots, and foreground tricks to make the African Savannah feel massive and epic in scale, which pairs well with the story's themes about duty, responsibility, and learning from the mistakes of the past. Scar is also widely regarded as one of the best Disney villains thanks to how seamlessly the animation by Andreas Deja mixes with Irons' performance, creating a cunning, vicious villain who actually gets further in his plans than most Disney antagonists. 1 'Beauty and the Beast' (1991) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures After refusing to shelter an old woman during a storm, a spoiled prince (Robby Benson) is turned into a beast and told to find love and be loved in return before the last petal of an enchanted rose falls, or he and his staff shall be cursed forever. Ten years later, he imprisons an inventor named Maurice (Rex Everhart) who trespassed during a storm, and meets Maurice's daughter, Belle (Paige O'Hara), when she comes looking for him. Belle offers to take her father's place as the Beast's prisoner, and, though things don't start off the best, the two do eventually come to see that there is more to the other than first appears. Beauty and the Beast overcame a brutal production to not only receive near-universal acclaim, but also become the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture—and remains the only 2D animated film and the only one from when the Oscars had five nominees instead of ten. The reason for this success is how seamlessly the movie weaves the classic themes of the original fairy tale with an updated story that gives all the characters more developed personalities, resulting in a believable romance and both Belle and Beast ranking among Disney's best characters. The animation is also beautiful, the songs by Menken and Ashman iconic, and its message about change and seeing what lies beneath the surface is timeless. Beauty and the Beast Release Date October 22, 1991 Runtime 84 minutes Cast Paige O'Hara Belle (voice) Robby Benson Beast (voice)