Moviefone's Best Animated Characters
Toy Story, Fantasia, 101 Dalmations, Aladdin, Finding Nemo Top List
Jul 22, 2009
People love lists. People love lists about lists. Some people even love lists about lists about lists about . . . um, never mind.
Moviefone.com has compiled their list of they consider to be the most beloved animated characters of all time. They don't say what the criteria was (informal office poll? The writer pulling names out of a hat?) but, either way, they have decided that this list is the definitive ranking.
Disney Characters Top Moviefone's Best Animated Characters List
Here are Moviefone's 25 most beloved animated characters:
- Sheriff Woody - Toy Story
- Buzz Lightyear - Toy Story
- Mickey Mouse - Fantasia
- Cruella de Vil - 101 Dalmations
- The Genie - Aladdin
- Nemo - Finding Nemo
- Donkey - Shrek
- Thumper - Bambi
- Dumbo - Dumbo
- The Evil Queen - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
- Baloo - The Jungle Book
- Wilbur - Charlotte's Web
- The Penguins - Madagascar
- WALL-E - WALL-E
- Sebastian - The Little Mermaid
- Tinker Bell - Peter Pan
- Jiminy Cricket - Pinocchio
- Remy - Ratatouille
- Timon & Pumbaa - The Lion King
- Scrat - Ice Age
- Mike Wazowski - Monsters Inc.
- Lumiére - Beauty and the Beast
- Carl Fredericksen - Up
- Cheshire Cat - Alice in Wonderland
- Jessica Rabbit - Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Disney Characters Dominate List
Not surprisingly, the Mouse House provides the most candidates, with 21 out of the 25 entries having passed through the Disney factory.
Funnily enough, the two top characters are from the same movie: Woody and Buzz from Disney/Pixar's 1995 flick Toy Story. The only other Pixar character to make the Top 10 was Nemo from Andrew Stanton's Finding Nemo, surprising because his time on-screen is relatively short.
Other than The Genie from 1992's Aladdin, all the other Disney characters in the Top 10 are strictly classics: Mickey Mouse from Fantasia (1940), Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmations (1961), Thumper from Bambi (1942), Dumbo from the movie of the same name (1941) and the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
The lone non-Disney animated character is, surprisingly enough, Eddie Murphy's Donkey from DreamWorks Animation's 2001 film Shrek. That character is a real love-it-or-hate-it proposition: opinion seems equally divided over whether he's charming or only good for the glue factory.
Either way, this does not bode well for DreamWorks Animation, who is putting Shrek Forever After up against Toy Story 3 in 2010 in what promises to be the big showdown between the premier CGI animated franchises. Does this mean that the big green ogre is going to get hammered by a pair of toys next summer?
What! No Anime? No Wallace and Gromit?
It's probably better to call this list "The Best American Animated Characters." Anime fans will be shocked but not surprised to find that none of their favourite characters made the cut: not even such beloved characters as Sen from Spirited Away or Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle ("May all your bacon burn!").
It should be noted that no non-American characters (like Aardman Animation's Wallace and Gromit, or Fiver from Watership Down) were listed, either.
