Cartoon Movies List

Children like to watch cartoons and animated movies because they are transported, for those two hours, into another world where their fantasies come true, where fairytales are possible, and where their imagination is not restricted. Also, with animated movies getting more realistic in presentation, the interest is only going to go up. Entertainism presents a comprehensive list of cartoon movies for your perusal.

“When we constantly ask for miracles, we’re unraveling the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracles would not be a world, it would be a cartoon.”
―Douglas Coupland

Animated movies take you to a different world altogether. With cartoon movies, the storytellers can portray surreal universes, alternate realities, and fantastic situations and stories. This was somewhat limited a decade ago, but with the recent progress in CGI technology, the difference between animated movies and feature films is thinning. They have begun to use motion capture technology to display accurate facial expressions in animated movies, making the characters seem life-like.

However, even if the plot is serious, animated movies are supposed to be relaxed and entertaining, although they are fiercely critiqued by the critics. The primary target audience are children and young moviegoers, although more mature themes and scripts are attracting adults too.

Cartoon movies contain good humor, song and dance sequences, and most importantly, the content is not violent and explicit. This makes them safe to be watched by children of all ages, although the movies with adult themes do require parental guidance. They also are a testament of immense creativity of storytellers where a new movie with an innovative storyline is released almost every two years. This makes the job of making a list of best animated movies all the more difficult.

Old Cartoon Movies

(1940 to 1979)

These movies laid groundwork for a whole generation of cartoons that spanned almost 5 decades. The techniques used here ranged from the exhaustively rich detailed full animation by Walt Disney to the efficient and budget-friendly techniques used by Hanna-Barbara. Unlike today’s computer-aided graphics, these movies required painstaking effort, in the way of cartoon drawings, manually drawn. In good quality animation, as many as 18 frames would be used per second. So, you can imagine the number of sketches that would be required for a full length feature! Next time you watch these classics and crib about the lack of detail and how they don’t measure up to today’s high standards of filmmaking, just think about the effort the cartoonists have put into it.

1940-1949

1950-55

1956-60

1961-63

1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

Modern Classics

(1980 to 1999)

There was this time between the late 1980s and 1990s where there was a transition in the style of cartoons. Computers were just being used to aid animation effects. Although a fully computer-aided animated movie named Toy Story  came out in 1995, filmmakers did not abandon the traditional style altogether. A classic example of this is the Batman: The Animated Series franchise and its spin-offs. Enthusiasts still prefer the old 2D style of animation for DC comics superhero movies. Although they do use computers to render graphics, but that only adds to the rich detail of 2D techniques. The following movies are from this era, a time in transition, where people finally began to accept the digitization of cartoon movies.

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

Modern Animation

(2000 to 2014)

Exquisite detail―that’s what any cartoon film buff says if he is asked about the animation movies of today. Special computer farms are used to process how thousands of strands of hair will behave as the character moves in the animated universe. The character of Mike Sully in the movie Monsters Inc. had reportedly five and a half million strands of hair on his body, and a single computer took 670 hours to render one second of the movie with the character in it. Such is the extent to which the filmmakers are going to entertain the audience. Computers have revolutionized animated feature films, a luxury the past could not afford. Yes, there have been movies with less emotion and more techniques, but filmmakers have kept the essence of the animated movies where it should be―the heart.

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014