Top Ten Tuesday: Greatest Animated Movie Characters

With this weeks release of ‘Up’ we decided it was only fitting to have a Top Ten list for the Greatest Animated Characters. We reached out to everyone we could find, I even asked my grandmother but she wasn’t sure what an animated character was. Without further ado here is the list:

10. Shrek (‘Shrek’)

While not the first, animated film to be released by DreamWorks, ‘Shrek’ was the first film produced by the DreamWorks Animation department.   Its lead character, the green ogre with the tubular ears, has become the iconic symbol of the company, DreamWorks answer to Disney’s Mickey Mouse.   Of course, not just any character can become the icon of a whole production company.   Shrek is a likable, animated character who is, more importantly, funny.   The only way this character, voiced by Mike Myers, could have possibly been funnier was if Chris Farley had survived long enough to voice him, as was originally planned.   Most people prefer Donkey, but, personally, I don’t think there is a freshly funnier character seen in the past decade.

9. Dory (‘Finding Nemo’)

‘Finding Nemo’ was just one of an incredible string of great Pixar films which has lots of great characters, but the one that stands out for almost everyone in this film is that of the amnesiac fish Dory. Voiced by comedienne Ellen Degeneres, Dory becomes the comedic life of the film as she accompanies Nemo’s father on his quest to rescue his son. There are many other funny characters, including the current-surfing sea turtles and the gulls that say “mine” but Dory is the most quoted of them all. Would you quit it? “What, the ocean isn’t big enough for you or something like that? You got a problem? Huh? Do ya, do ya, do ya? You wanna piece of me? Yeah, yeah! Ooh, I’m scared now! What?”

8. The Grinch (‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’)

It isn’t often that the villain of a film is the most likable character in the whole thing.   Leave it up to the amazing trio of Dr. Seuss, Chuck Jones, and Boris Karloff to bring such a character into animated reality.   Even before the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes too big, he brings a smile to the face of the movie’s viewer regardless of their age.   And you can forget about ‘Halloween is Grinch Night,’ ‘The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat,’ and, especially, that live-action retread starring Jim Carrey.   None of them have the same level of care and craft that went into making the original, motion animated Grinch such an unforgettable character.

7. Sully (‘Monsters, Inc.’)

James P Sullivan is grizzly blue “monster” known as Sully. He was voiced by John Goodman and is the top scarer at Monsters, Inc., meaning that every scare and scream that he generates provides the power that runs Monstropolis. Sully accidentally lets one of the little children he was supposed to be scaring back through into the monster world and realizes that children arent the evil little monsters they have been led to believe. There are alot of characters that could have made the list from ‘Monsters Inc.’ but Sully is definitely the best and most lovable to children and adults alike.

6. Chihiro (‘Spirited Away’)

At the heart of Miyazaki’s most beloved feature film is a 10-year-old girl.   While moving to a new town with her family, Chihiro stumbles onto the entrance to the spirit world.   It is through her adolescent eyes we view this world and the events that transpire there.   As all of this takes place, we also witness the girl mature from the spoiled child she is at the beginning of the film to the aged, young woman she becomes before the end.   Human, lead characters are rarely this interesting.   In fact, Chihiro is the only human character that appears on this list.   Just one more reason why Miyazaki’s work is always breathtaking and why this character is so rounded and emotionally connecting.

5. Cheshire Cat (‘Alice in Wonderland’)

Does this pick even really need any explanation? By far, one of the coolest, least typical Disney characters ever to grace the big screen and small, the Cheshire Cat is cunning, shifty and that big toothy grin is enough to keep anyone looking over their shoulders when he’s around. Sterling Holloway was the perfect voice for the Cheshire Cat and that voice still lingers in the back of my head today. From the brilliant but questionably sane mind of Lewis Carroll, this is still arguably the best, and least-typical, Disney animated movie (non-CGI) of all time featuring the coolest crazy cat ever to be drawn and colored.

4. Woody (‘Toy Story’)

Say what you want about Buzz Lightyear and his “To infinity and beyond…”.   It is Sheriff Woody that is the emotional centerpiece in PIXAR’s maiden voyage into the world of feature films.   The pull-string doll has everything going perfectly until his owner, a young boy, decides he would rather be into space and astronauts than cowboys and indians.   Voiced by Tom Hanks, Woody is everything to this film.   He’s funny.   He’s sympathetic.   Yes, he even spends a slight amount of screen time as a possible villain.   Much credit has to go to the changes the character goes through for ‘Toy Story 2,’ as well.   In the almost 15 years PIXAR has been serving out feature film magic, the character of Woody has only been superceded in the last year, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

3. Roger Rabbit (‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’)

I wore out my Roger Rabbit NES game after hours of non stop playing, I still to this day cant figure out some of those damn jokes! When the ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ movie came out it revitalized the whole scene for animation in both film and cartoons. Roger Rabbit lives in Toontown and back in 1947 hollywood and cartoons coexist because they arent just drawn animations, they are real.   Roger Rabbit also has a sexy wife named Jessica Rabbit who is caught cheating on him with Marvin Acme. When Marvin Acme is found dead the prime suspect is Roger and he is forced to prove his innocence or face “the dip”.

2. Jack Skellington (‘Nightmare Before Christmas’)

What would become the first of many incredible stop-motion animated characters created from the collaborative mind of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, Jack Skellington is the ultimate dichotomy of good and evil in it’s most natural form. Jack’s not a bad guy, it’s just his nature to have a twisted mind having come from Halloweenland. So naturally, when he stumbles upon Christmasland he finds himself both mesmerized and driven to make this new discovery his own. Jack is both playful and likable and at the same time frightening and potentially cruel. His slim, tall and knobby design with his massive skull head is iconic and will continue to penetrate our visions of the two opposing holidays for decades to come.

1. Wall-E (‘Wall-E’)

Although Wall-E is the newest character on this list he is also the greatest animated character(in our opinions, which are the ones that matter right?). This movie cleaned up at every award ceremony for 2008 movies and will go down as one of the greatest animated movies of all time. Pixar creates these characters that know exactly how to pull on your heartstrings and Wall-E is the best example of this. Just watching the trailer made this girl cry!

Now doesnt that in of itself make Wall-E the greatest animated movie character of all time? I think so.