With a slate of wonderful films in 2021, Disney Animation is currently outdoing Pixar, widely considered the modern powerhouse of elite American animation. While Pixar hasn't made a particularly bad film, their slate within the last decade has been a little hit and miss, despite their misses still generally being considered high-quality films. Disney Animation, on the other hand, has been consistently improving its content over the last decade, pumping out hit after hit, and their 2021 slate is a shining example of this.

Outside of Pixar's sequels such as Incredibles 2 or Toy Story 4, their output hasn't been quite as consistent as Disney's. For every excellent film like Coco or Inside Out, there's a Cars 3 or The Good Dinosaur—films that, while still good enough in their own right, don't meet up to the standard that Pixar has set over its long and successful run. But on the other side of the fence, Disney has only improved their content, with remarkable films such as Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia, Big Hero 6, Moana, and the mega-hit Frozen filling up their slate. Disney's 2021 slate is just another example of how they have been excelling over Pixar for the last decade, with their films Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto proving Disney a serious threat to Pixar's throne.

Whereas Disney had two excellent films under their belt in 2021, the only film produced by Pixar in 2021 was their Studio Ghibli-inspired Luca. The film is about two sea monsters who come out of their underwater habitat to enter a Vespa race on the Italian Riviera. It's a sweet story with a lot of heart, but it by no means reaches the heights of Pixar's finest efforts, nor does it measure with to Disney's two big hitters of 2021.


Disney's first film of 2021 was Raya and the Last Dragon, a fantastical adventure about a princess on a quest to return her world to its original state of harmony after humanity had divided itself long ago, meeting a cast of colorful characters along the way. Raya and the Last Dragon shares a different message for Disney movies, teaching the benefits of trusting others, which already makes it a wholly unique effort for Disney. The film contains some incredible world-building and a strong and memorable heroine in Raya. It's perhaps the weaker of the two Disney films of 2021 but in comparison to Pixar's Luca, it's a more solid effort all around, sporting a beautiful story and more complex and mature themes, while still maintaining that special magic that Pixar's lesser films can't quite capture properly, as is the case with Luca.

Rounding out Disney's excellent year was Encanto, a wonderful story of a Colombian girl named Mirabel who lives in a family where every member has a magical power apart from herself. Featuring foot-tapping musical numbers by Lin Manuel-Miranda, Encanto is a celebration of individualism and community all in one. The film is one of Disney's best of the decade, with a terrific ensemble of likable characters, a surprisingly mature narrative that tackles heavier themes than most Disney films, and a fun adventure that manages to maintain the excitement and magic of classic Disney adventures while remaining in one location for most of the story. Pixar's Luca is a charmingly light and breezy film to watch once, but a film like Disney Animation's Encanto or Raya and the Last Dragon are layered adventures that beg for repeat viewings to further engage with the characters and themes they explore.