Pixar's New Movie Debuts With Studio's Best Rotten Tomatoes Score In 11 Years

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Pixar is jumping for joy with their new movie Hoppers.

With a story heavily influenced by the Avatar franchise, the upcoming Pixar film (Piper Curda) finds a 19-year-old animal lover, Mabel, who gets transformed into a robotic beaver. However, when a developer plans to destroy the forest to build a highway, she works with the animals to stop it, so that they don't lose their homes.

With first reviews in, Hoppers debuted with a near-perfect 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes. While the score will fluctuate since it has 48 reviews at the moment, the current rating would make it one of Pixar's best since Inside Out, which was released in 2015. The film also ties with Toy Story 3 and Up.

Two beavers looking happy and one wearing a crown in Hoppers

Many critics are proclaiming that Hoppers is a major comeback movie for the studio, with praise ranging from the wild humor to the classic educational undertone of presenting a theme, which in this case was climate change.

In ScreenRant’s review of Hoppers, Gregory Nussen declares Pixar’s new movie as one of their best in recent years, despite being one of their “most bizarre outputs.” They admit that “Daniel Chong's lively, fast-paced, comically resplendent climate change allegory is pretty unhinged by children's film standards,” but that doesn’t take away the fact that the film is “magnanimous” and a “true joy.”

With a rating of 7 out of 10 stars, Hoppers is a “new direction Pixar can be expected to take moving forward,” but “it's a welcome return to a time of yore, when kids were trusted to pick up on important themes - all while laughing their heads off."

Hoppers' near-universal acclaim is a big win for Pixar, given the studio's hardship in recent years. While the animated studio has been known for bringing classics like the Toy Story franchise, WALL-E, and Ratatouille, it has suffered challenges since 2020, when the pandemic hit the movie industry.

Films like Soul, Luca, and Turning Red either went straight to streaming or had a simultaneous streaming release, but they were generally well-received by critics and audiences. However, things took a turn when Pixar released the divisive Toy Story spinoff Lightyear. Not only did it get a mixed reception from audiences, but it turned out to be a financial bomb after earning $226.4 million.

While Inside Out 2 joined the billionaire club and Elemental became a box office comeback story, the studio's most recent original movie, Elio, became another commercial failure after making just $154 million. Although reviews for the 2025 film were decent, with an 83% score, it didn't match Pixar's typical quality and sparked general concerns about whether the studio lost its touch.

The cast features Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, and Dave France. Hoppers marks Daniel Chong’s first directorial Pixar movie after previously working with the studio on Turning Red, Lightyear, and Elemental as a part of the senior creative team. Jesse Andrews, who wrote the screenplay, also has a history with the studio after writing the 2021 movie Luca.

Hoppers will release in theaters on March 5, 2026.