The Academy Awards as a whole haven't exactly been kind towards the medium of animation when it comes to nominations. For the most part, they limit animated films to the Best Animated Feature award, and they rarely nominate animated films for Best Picture, even when they deserve it. However, it only makes it stand out that much more when a great animated film is able to break from the mold and get nominated in even more categories than what is expected.

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Some animated features get nominations for their screenplay, their original score, or even the highest honor of Best Picture. The Academy has shown time and time again that they are willing to extend their honors to pay tribute to some of the best films that animation has to offer.

1 'Beauty and the Beast' (1991)

Beauty And The Beast

One of the landmark titles in Disney's renaissance era, Beauty and the Beast soon became one of the most famous and well-known Disney movies of all time. It's a film that fans still return to after so many years, a testament to how well this timeless story was translated into animation.

For the 64th Academy Awards in 1992, Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature to receive a nomination for the highest honor, Best Picture. The film also ended up getting nominations for Best Original Score, Best Sound, and three separate nominations for Best Original Song. It would end up winning the awards for Original Score, as well as winning Original Song for the song, "Beauty and the Beast".

2 'Toy Story' (1995)

'Toy Story'

Pixar's first-ever feature film, Toy Story was a film that changed how we view animated feature films forever. Even to this day, the original Toy Story is well regarded as not just one of the best animated films of all time, but one of the best overall films of all time.

Similar to Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story was released at a time before the Best Animated Feature category would come to exist. Despite this, it earned nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Musical or Comedy Score, and even Best Original song for "You've Got a Friend in Me." While it didn't win these awards, director John Lasseter did earn a Special Achievement Award for his work on the technology that allowed the film to be made.

3 'Shrek' (2001)

Mike Myers as Shrek and Eddie Murphy as Donkey looking confused from 'Shrek'
Image via DreamWorks

DreamWorks' first foray into computer animation, the original Shrek was massively well-regarded and beloved upon release. The film acted as a parody of the classic fairy tale stories famous for the animation genre, while still telling its own story and getting audiences invested. While the Shrek franchise would see its ups and downs over the years, the original Shrek was a game changer for how we look at animation to this day.

While Shrek would go on to win the very first award for Best Animated Feature, the film would also secure a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Although it would eventually lose this award to A Beautiful Mind, the nomination in itself is still a testament to Shrek as a whole.

4 'Finding Nemo' (2003)

Marlin and Nemo from "Finding Nemo", holding fins
Image via Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Finding Nemo was one of the defining films during the studio's golden years. Finding Nemo follows Marlin, a single father clownfish, on his quest across the Great Barrier Reef to find his lost son, Nemo. It's become one of the most beloved films in Pixar's lineup and even spawned a sequel 13 years later with Finding Dory.

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At the 76th Academy Awards in 2004, Finding Nemo would be nominated for three additional categories on top of Best Animated Feature. The film ended up nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Sound Editing. While it did not win these three categories, it did take home the main award for Best Animated Feature over the likes of Brother Bear and The Triplets of Belleville.

5 'The Incredibles' (2004)

Bob and Helen in The Incredibles
Image via Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Following Pixar's massive hot streak of the early 2000s, The Incredibles was another smash hit for the animation studio. To this day the film is regarded as one of Pixar's best, and it became such a fan favorite that it also received a sequel 14 years later with Incredibles 2.

At the 77th Academy Awards, The Incredibles was nominated for and won the Best Animated Feature Award, but it was also nominated for 3 other awards. The film picked up nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing. It even managed to pick up a win in Sound Editing, making it the only animated film to win a Sound Award.

6 'WALL-E' (2008)

WALL-E gazing at the stars
Image via Pixar

It's hard to understate just how much love surrounded the film WALL-E both on release and to this day. Its lack of a nomination for Best Picture (in combination with The Dark Knight) played a major part in the Academy increasing its nomination count to a max of 10. The love still continues to this day, as the film just recently became the first Pixar film to be entered into the Criterion Collection.

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The film secured nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Score, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Original Song for "Down to Earth". If the 81st Academy Awards had allowed 10 Best Picture nominees as we see nowadays, there's no question that WALL-E would have been among the nominees.

7 'Waltz with Bashir' (2008)

Ari Folman looking out at the water beside a car in 'Waltz with Bashir'

The heartbreaking Waltz with Bashir is an animated war documentary to come from Israel and documentarian and Israeli army veteran Ari Folman. The film acts as an animated retelling and visualization of Folman and his friends and former soldiers' experiences and memories of the 1982 Lebanon War. The film specifically uses its animation as a way to illustrate and visualize their recollection of real-life events that happened in their lives, as well as their dreams.

The film did secure a nomination for Best International Feature, representing Israel on top of being the first Animated film to be nominated in this category. It's also one of the rare R-Rated animated features to receive a nomination at the Academy Awards

8 'Up' (2009)

Russell is holding binoculars while Carl is rolling his eyes

One of the most sensual and emotional films to come from Pixar, Up was a massive critical success upon release. The film follows the story of elderly Eric Fredricksen (played by Ed Asner) on his journey with boy scout Russell to Paradise Falls. It's a film that proved to a lot of people, including the Academy, that animated films could have the same high-reaching emotional beats as an adult drama.

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Up broke the nearly decades-long streak by becoming the first animated film since Beauty and the Beast to be nominated for Best Picture. The film was also nominated for three other non-Best Animated Feature awards at the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010. It received nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Editing, and Best Original Score. It would even end up winning the award for its original score written by Michael Giacchino.

9 'Toy Story 3' (2010)

The toys in Toy Story 3 huddled together
Image via Pixar

Pixar's Toy Story 3 acted as the then final conclusion of the Toy Story series. The film follows the classic Toy Story cast years later, as Andy has grown up and is ready to head off to college. It pulled a lot of heartstrings for audiences who had grown up with the characters and made a splash at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Just like with Up, Toy Story 3 was able to land the highest honor of a nomination for Best Picture, becoming the most recent animated film to accomplish this. The film also got three more notable nominations aside from Best Animated Feature, which it would end up winning. It wound up securing nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound Editing, and ended up winning Best Original Song for "We Belong Together".

10 'Flee' (2021)

Flee - 2021-1

Flee is an animated documentary going over the interviews and events of Amir, a man who as a child traveled as a refugee from Afghanistan to Denmark. Nearly 20 years later, we see his modern life, and he is about to be married to his long-time boyfriend, yet he has been hiding this secret from him all this time. The film cuts between stories of Amir's past and struggles as a minor with the inner struggle he faces in modern times as we get a portrait of Amir's life as a whole.

Flee ended up getting nominated for two additional awards on top of Best Animated Feature at the most recent 94th Academy Awards. It received nominations for both Best Documentary Feature and Best International Film, representing Denmark. It is the first and only film so far to have received this combination of three nominations, although it did not end up winning any of the awards it was nominated for.

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