system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is the budget for a cartoonish CGI movie (toy story 3) higher than a realistic CGI movie (Pacific Rim)?

I just gave those as example but overall the costs are pretty equal and Pacific Rim looks very realistic and it was 190 million and toy story 3 was 200 million. I also looked up other realistic ones like Transformers Age of extiction (210million) and avatar (234 million). The last two are more expensive but still in the same ballpark. So why aren't they massively more expensive, they look like they took more time to make?

Captain America Winter Soldier (170 million).

EDIT- Thanks for all the explanations I've marked it as explained.
gpt
Think about it like this - in a movie like Pacific Rim if you need a car in a landscape shot you pick a place to shoot, gather your actors and crew, rent a car, and shoot it. 

In an animated movie you have to build the land, the road, the sky, the clouds, your characters, literally everything - then hire your actors to voice the part, pay technicians to make the characters be able to move, pay animators to make them move, this goes on and on...

TL;DR: You literally have to build and move everything.