Every Dreamworks Animation Movie Ranked
3. How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Budget: $165million
Worldwide Box Office: $494.9million
Starring: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, TJ Miller, Kristen Wiig, David Tennant
How To Train Your Dragon has been to the 2010s what Shrek was to the 2000s: a genre-defining picture in terms of overall cultural impact that has come to represent a generation of animated movies.
Owing largely to its presentation of dragon battles in the midst of fantastic scenery, this film is animated so well that much of it rivals Avatar (2009) and was somewhat of an awe-inspiring cinematic experience in 2010.
The titular dragon, Toothless, is perhaps the biggest draw for the movie as he is presented equally as being the cutest and most badass creature you could imagine, and many a spin-off merchandise line has been born from his immaculate design.
Contrary to this, and unlike much of Dreamworks’ output, How To Train Your Dragon successfully comes across as a story that needs to be told rather than a search for a sellable intellectual property, a feeling brought about by its charm and innocence within its storytelling.
It is this, and the undoubted connection that so many had to the film, that makes How To Train Your Dragon the number three movie in Dreamworks’ illustrious history.
2. Shrek (2001)
Budget: $60million
Worldwide Box Office: $484.4million
Starring: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow, Vincent Cassell
Perhaps the most iconic of all of Dreamworks Animation’s movies, Shrek has come to define the animated genre for many a millennial with some of the titular character’s best quotes becoming popular culture and its referential, and largely more adult, style of comedy coming to change animation for many years that followed.
Starring a red-hot Mike Myers, who’d just come off the back of huge success with Wayne’s World 1 & 2 and Austin Powers, as well as the iconic talents of Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz, Shrek was a promotional powerhouse that delivered in terms of creativity, spectacle and hilarity, and only misses out on the number one spot in this edition of Ranked solely due to how its animation doesn’t stand up to the test of time in quite the same way that our number one does…
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1. The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Budget: $70million
Worldwide Box Office: $218.6million
Starring: Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Danny Glover, Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren, Steve Martin, Martin Short
The Prince of Egypt was a spectacle of so-called ‘original hand-drawn animation’, in which Dreamworks seamlessly integrated computer-generated imagery to create one of the most epic, moving and timeless animated movies ever put to screen.
A picture for adults as well as children, the movie’s directors Brenda Chapman, Simon Wells and Steve Hickner put challenging material to screen in a way that had not previously been so accessible to people of all ages, and the musical accompaniment written by Stephen Schwartz and Hans Zimmer was both beautiful and tragic in its orchestral power.
Being based on a Judaic-Christian tale (a bible story no less), the worldwide appeal of this film wasn’t quite that of its Dreamworks contemporaries, but its thought-provoking nature and timeless world class animation clearly define it as one of the genre’s all-time greats and Dreamworks’ number one film of all time.
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Which Dreamworks Animation release is your favourite? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to bookmark our homepage, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, to never miss another list like this one from The Film Magazine.
Article originally published 3rd July 2017. Updated 18th November 2020 to include How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Abominable and Trolls World Tour.
Whilst I think The Road to El Dorado and Spirit should have been ranked higher (because those films are genius) I’m so glad The Prince of Egypt was ranked as number one! :)
Yeah man! Road to Eldorado deserves better than 28th!@
So under appreciated… 😞
Surely the cult status shoukd have boosted its ranking. Prince of Egypt does deserve top place tho
Definitely, Prince of Egypt has it all. And I’d agree, I always see posts and references to El Dorado online, particularly Tumblr :)
El Dorado is popular on Tumblr and with people our ages because we were conditioned to like it as kids (because of cheap VHS/DVD releases following how massively it bombed at the box office). The reality is that it wasn’t nearly as good as our nostalgia leads us to believe and it remains the only film in the studio’s history that LOST money.
Not to disrespect all the classics on here, but Dreamworls hasn’t half produced a load of shite
I actually disagree. I think a lot of these movies were fun. Apart from a few of the movies at the very bottom of the list, everything here is at least entertaining which is more than can be said for 9/10s of live-action films.
Jesus, i forgot Dustin Hoffman was in Kung-fu Panda 😂
I never even realised that Antz was the first feature length film. does this mean I’m older than Dreamworks??
Yeah it does! How crazy is that?! It’s a company that has lived fast and lived well, it would seem. Thanks for commenting!
Turbo needs to be higher. Malarkey