10 Pixar Moments That Will Reduce You To Tears

Pixar have recently released their 17th feature film, Finding Dory, the much-anticipated sequel to their 2003 instant classic Finding Nemo. The studio’s longevity is due to the impressively consistent quality of their movies, each of them getting you emotionally invested in the animated antics of the characters - be they toys, fish, robots, superheroes etc. Just about every Pixar film contains at least one scene that is guaranteed to reduce the hardest audience member to a sobbing wreck; Ellie’s posthumous note to Carl in her book, the final time Andy plays with Woody, when Merida thinks her mother is stuck as a bear forever. Those are just some of the moments that didn’t quite make it onto our list. So, without further ado, get ready to cry your eyeballs dry over inanimate pixels as we count down the top 10 Pixar movie moments that reduced us to tears. You might want to have a box of tissues standing by... 10) Somebody To Lava While mostly known for their feature length output, Pixar have produced a great many short films over the years, as well, which often get undeservedly passed over. Though they're a fraction of the length of their movies, Pixar’s shorts cram in just as much fun, wit and – yes – emotion. Perhaps the most touching Pixar short is 2014’s Lava. Set over thousands of years, it tells the tale of a lonely volcano who longs for companionship. A simple romantic narrative it may be (somewhat akin to previous short The Blue Umbrella, as well), it still hits the sweet spot. Watch the video above and tell us you didn’t get something in your eye by the end of it. 9) Mr. Incredible’s Darkest Hour A terrific action-orientated superhero film, The Incredibles isn’t often thought of as one of Pixar’s most emotionally taxing movies. Nonetheless, one scene in particular offers up a devastating, and really quite dark, moment. Captured by Syndrome, Mr. Incredible believes that the ubervillain has killed his family by blowing up their plane. Having a father think his wife and young children have been murdered is pretty bleak in itself, but Mr. Incredible’s subsequent violent turn – as he threatens to kill Syndrome’s henchwoman Mirage in retaliation – makes it even darker. Of course, Elastigirl and the kids survived the explosion and the family reunites soon after this. It has a happy ending, then, but the initial threat of their death is a shockingly dramatic turn for the movie. 8) Buzz Will Go Sailing No More While it doesn’t yank on your heartstrings quite as much as the following two instalments in the franchise, Pixar’s triumphant debut Toy Story still has its emotional moments. The most tear-jerking though has to be Buzz’s realization that he isn’t some cosmic superhero but a mere child’s plaything. Set to Randy Newman’s "I Will Go Sailing No More" (the exact opposite in tone to "You Got A Friend In Me"), Buzz denies the truth one last time by attempting to fly out the window. Instead, he crashes down the staircase and loses an arm. Once Buzz realizes he can’t fly and a horrified expression falls over his plastic face, we are essentially watching the beloved space ranger committing suicide. He comes to terms with being a toy in the end, but this moment will still have you crying to infinity and beyond. 7) WALL-E’s Reset Disney have had a great run of adorable robots in the past few years. The Force Awakens had BB-8, Big Hero 6 had Baymax and WALL-E had, well, WALL-E. The intrepid little waste disposal unit won our hearts in the 2008 Pixar movie… and then broke them come the film’s finale. After WALL-E sacrifices himself to ensure the Axiom ship can return to Earth, EVE fixes him up with some spare parts – but his personality is wiped. Just as the lady robot has fallen in love with him, the little guy doesn’t remember her – and nearly rolls over his cockroach buddy (that’s the bit that gets us). This robot romance was perhaps Pixar’s most endearing love story up to that point, so for it to turn so tragic was guaranteed to bring on the water works. 6) Sully Says Goodbye Pixar have a knack for getting us to care about creatures and inanimate objects that we normally wouldn’t. Take Monsters Inc, for example, which makes us love hideous monsters who break into children’s bedrooms at night and terrify them. No easy task, when you think about it. By the end of the film you’ve fallen for Sully and Mike, so the moment their adopted human child Boo has to be returned to her world is actually very moving. Thanks to John Goodman’s great performance as Sully and the moving script, the relationship has a lot of weight and it really feels like a parent being torn from their child. The belated prequel, Monsters University, was surprisingly fun, but the lack of a real tear-jerking moment like this one meant it didn’t reach the heights of the first movie. 5) Coral’s Death Doing something they would repeat again in Up, Pixar got us nice and teary in the first few minutes of Finding Nemo, as we see the origins of Marlin’s overprotectiveness and Nemo’s lucky fin. When settling in to their new anemone home, Marlin’s wife Coral and nearly all of their eggs are eaten by a vicious barracuda. With just him and damaged egg Nemo left, Marlin promises to never let anything happen to him. Cue enough tears from the audience to fill the ocean. With Thomas Newman’s tense music and the tragic outcome, the film briefly morphs into a horror movie rather than a wholesome Pixar flick. Disney’s The Little Mermaid said it was better under the sea, but this scene from Finding Nemo makes us think we’re safer up on land, thanks. 4) Bing Bong’s Sacrifice It’s no accident that last year’s hit Inside Out preached that it was OK to be sad, as Pixar seem obsessively keen on making the audience burst into tears. A film about personified emotions was naturally an emotional rollercoaster – and the worst part was the tragic self-sacrifice of imaginary friend Bing Bong. To save Joy and Riley’s core memory, Bing Bong elects to stay behind in the memory dump and gets himself erased from Riley’s brain. Unlike a lot of the moments on this list, there is hardly a silver lining to be had here. Yes, Joy and Sadness sort out Riley’s brain in the end, but Bing Bong remains forgotten. He never got to go to the moon. No, I’m not crying. These tears are imaginary, too. 3) When Somebody Loved Jessie Why do you hate childhood friends so much, Pixar? Before Bing Bong made the ultimate sacrifice, 2000’s Toy Story 2 gave Jessie the cowgirl a traumatic backstory in a scene that made us all feel differently about how we treated our toys when we were kids. With Sarah McLachlan’s desperately sad "When She Loved Me" playing over the top, a flashback sequence shows how poorly Jessie was treated when her owner got too old to play with her – she was carelessly flung under the bed for years before given a glimmer of hope… and then sent away to charity. The experience left Jessie with a fear of being boxed up and kept in storage. You never knew you were traumatizing your toys by putting them in that chest, did you? 2) The Furnace Releasing a third Toy Story 10 years after the last one was a very risky move from Pixar. Thankfully, Toy Story 3 was a moving reflection on growing up and letting go of your childhood. To ram this message home, they decided to turn the audience into emotional wrecks by threatening to kill all of your favourite characters. Thanks to evil stuffed bear Lotso, Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the gang are stuck in a junkyard, being inextricably drawn to the fiery pit of the incinerator. With no way out, the toys link hands and prepare for oblivion… In our heart of hearts, we knew they would survive but, in the heat of the moment, the toys’ fates did seem sealed. Naturally, after 3’s success, Pixar is set to do Toy Story 4, as well. How will you torment us this time, Pixar? 1) That Opening It’s hard to be even more harrowing than a scene in which our childhood heroes are almost roasted alive, but the traumatic opening to Up somehow manages it. Instead of bringing out the child in us all, this sequence showcases a very adult scenario that will nonetheless tug at the heart of viewers of all ages. Carl and Ellie have a happy married life together, but their life-long dream of travelling the world together tragically never happens. Ellie eventually dies, leaving an elderly Carl alone. Condensing a couple’s entire lifetime into ten minutes makes for a staggeringly emotional opening, and the whole thing is beautifully scored by Michael Giacchino. There is a case to be made that the strength of this sequence eclipses the rest of the movie, but what’s important is that this terrific filmmaking got the acclaim it deserved – plus an Oscar Best Picture nod to boot.