FOR THE DOGS: 2026

11 minutes ago

5 min read

The movies have really gone to the dogs in 2026. And I mean that as a compliment.

With the release of the new Brad Pitt survival adventure Heart of the Beast, featuring a very memorable dog named Odin, it suddenly occurred to me that this has been an unusually strong year for dogs at the movies.

I'm talking about actual dogs, CGI dogs, animated dogs, heroic dogs, vicious dogs, funny dogs and, in a couple of cases, dogs that are easily more interesting than most of the human beings they're sharing the screen with.

Dogs and movies have gone together almost from the beginning. Two dogs can be spotted in the Lumière brothers' Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory all the way back in 1895, and by 1905 a collie named Blair was essentially starring in Rescued by Rover, tracking down a kidnapped baby and becoming one of cinema's first genuine animal heroes.

Then came Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepherd rescued from a World War I battlefield who became such an enormous star during the silent era that he helped turn Warner Bros. into a major studio.

From there, movie dogs basically became their own genre. Lassie arrived in Lassie Come Home in 1943 and became one of the most famous animals in popular culture. Disney emotionally destroyed generations of children with Old Yeller.

Benji showed up in the 1970s. Then the '80s and '90s gave us an explosion of dogs in family movies, comedies and adventures, including Turner & Hooch, Beethoven, Air Bud and Homeward Bound.

Filmmakers figured out something audiences had known forever: put a good dog in a movie and we're probably going to care about that dog more than almost anybody else in the story.

There have been so many great movie dogs that everybody probably has their own favorites. Einstein from Back to the Future has always been one of mine. There's Toto in The Wizard of Oz, Bruiser in Legally Blonde, Asta in The Thin Man, Jack in The Artist, Snoop in Anatomy of a Fall and Brandy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

There are all the dogs in Christopher Guest's Best in Show, including Winky, and of course there's Baxter in Anchorman, whose encounter with Jack Black remains one of the most unexpectedly shocking moments in one of the funniest movies ever made.

And you obviously can't talk about dogs in recent action movies without mentioning John Wick. The entire franchise essentially begins because somebody makes the worst possible decision and kills John Wick's dog. That little dog represents his dead wife and the last piece of the life he had before becoming the most dangerous man on Earth again.

That's a pretty good demonstration of just how powerful the human relationship with dogs can be in movies: kill somebody's dog and suddenly four movies' worth of people have to die.

Last year I wrote about scary movie dogs because of Good Boy, the terrific horror movie told largely from the point of view of a dog. That got me thinking about all the ways dogs have been used in movies, as heroes, monsters, companions, comic relief, emotional support and occasionally the smartest character in the room.

This year, though, I started noticing something different. Dogs kept showing up in movies I was seeing, and they kept stealing them.

Odin in Heart of the Beast is the latest example. Brad Pitt may technically be the movie star, but Odin is absolutely one of the characters you remember. And he's part of a surprisingly large pack of great 2026 movie dogs.

Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars, which I thought was a terrible movie, has Jasper, the dog belonging to Jacob Elordi's character. Jasper was actually played by three different dogs trained for different kinds of scenes, and somehow the combined performance creates one completely believable character. Whatever I thought of the movie around him, Jasper was easily one of its best elements.

Then there's Max in Evil Dead Burn, played by a dog named Dax. Max is terrific, charming and immediately likable, which unfortunately means anybody who knows the Evil Dead universe is probably going to start getting nervous the second the dog appears.

His fate involves one of the nastiest and, for me, most unnecessary moments in the movie, but Max himself is memorable enough that he stayed with me long after plenty of the human characters disappeared from my memory.

Krypto the Superdog also returned in Supergirl, and I thought he was used much better this time around. I felt there was way too much Krypto and way too much obvious CGI in Superman, but Supergirl figures out how to use him sparingly.

He's funny, he's charming, the effects work better, and he actually feels like part of the movie rather than something constantly demanding your attention.

Even The Sheep Detectives, one of my favorite movies of the year, gets in on the act. A movie largely populated by celebrity-voiced sheep somehow also gives us Caleb's vicious guard dogs, who become some of the most threatening characters in the entire thing.

And Monsters and Minions even brings back Gru's bizarre little dog Kyle for an amusing post-credit appearance.

But my favorite movie dog of 2026 is Starbuck from The End of Oak Street.

I love this dog.

The End of Oak Street is a terrific throwback to those 1980s Amblin-style family adventure movies, except this particular suburban family is trying to survive an attack by dinosaurs.

Starbuck, the family dog, is played by two dogs named Buzz and Brisket, and the filmmakers do such a great job with them that you never think you're watching two different animals.

Starbuck gets laughs, creates suspense, participates in the action and ultimately becomes a genuine hero. There's a moment when he comes roaring back into the story and helps save the teenage son from a flying dinosaur, and I swear it's one of the most purely crowd-pleasing moments I've seen in a movie all year. I was completely in the tank for Starbuck by that point.

That's the thing about great movie dogs. They don't need dialogue. They don't need a monologue explaining their motivation. They don't need some elaborate backstory.

A good filmmaker and a well-trained dog can establish personality in about five seconds through a look, a movement, a bark or the way the animal reacts to the person standing next to it.

And somehow 2026 has given us a ridiculous number of them.

For the cat people, I haven't forgotten you either. I'm throwing in a bonus at the end because The Wrong Girls, the very uneven Kristen Stewart stoner comedy, features two scene-stealing cats named Dio and GG, voiced by Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani.

Dio is named after Ronnie James Dio and GG after punk lunatic GG Allin, which is already funnier than a lot of the movie. Those cats are terrific and deserve a little representation among all this canine domination.

But make no mistake about it: 2026 belongs to the dogs.

So here are some of my favorite canine characters from the movies of 2026, along with some trailers and scenes that demonstrate exactly why these dogs walked into their movies, wagged their tails and stole the damn things.