A Bug's Life (stylized in all lowercase) is a 1998 American animated comedy film directed by John Lasseter and written by Andrew Stanton, Donald McEnery, and Bob Shaw. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, it stars the voices of Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Hayden Panettiere, Phyllis Diller, Richard Kind, David Hyde Pierce, Joe Ranft, and Denis Leary. In the film, a misfit anthropomorphic ant named Flik looks for "tough warriors" to save his ant colony from a protection racket run by a gang of grasshoppers. However, the "warriors" he brings back are a troupe of Circus Bugs. The film's plot was initially inspired by Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper.
Production on A Bug's Life began shortly after the release of Toy Story in 1995. The ants in the film were redesigned to be more appealing, and Pixar's animation unit employed technical innovations in computer animation. Randy Newman composed the music for the film. During production, a controversial public feud erupted between Steve Jobs and Lasseter of Pixar and DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg due to the parallel production of his similar film Antz, which was released the month prior.
A Bug's Life premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 14, 1998, and was released in the United States on November 25. It received positive reviews for its animation, story, humor, and voice acting. It became a commercial success, having grossed $363 million at the box office. It was the first film to be digitally transferred frame-by-frame and released on DVD, and has been released multiple times on home video.
Plot
A colony of ants, led by the elderly Queen and her daughter Princess Atta, lives in the middle of a seasonally dry creekbed on a small hill known as "Ant Island". Every summer, they are forced to give food to a gang of grasshoppers, led by Hopper. Simultaneously, the distrusting ants distance themselves from Flik, a kind-hearted inventor who is prone to incompetence. One day, he unintentionally spills the food offering with his grain harvester. Hopper discovers this, and demands twice as much food as compensation. When Flik earnestly suggests the ants enlist the help of bigger bugs to fight the grasshoppers, Atta sees it as a way to get rid of Flik and sends him off.
Flik travels to "the city", a heap of trash under a trailer. There, he mistakes a troupe of jobless Circus Bugs for the warrior bugs he seeks. The bugs, in turn, mistake Flik for a talent agent, and agree to travel with him back to Ant Island. During a welcome ceremony after their arrival, the Circus Bugs and Flik discover their mutual misunderstandings. The Circus Bugs attempt to leave, but are pursued by a nearby bird; while fleeing, they rescue Atta's younger sister Dot from the bird, gaining the ants' respect. At Flik's request, the Circus Bugs continue the ruse of being "warriors", thus enabling them to continue enjoying the ants' hospitality. Learning that Hopper fears birds inspires Flik to build a crude ornithopter disguised as a bird to scare away the grasshoppers. Meanwhile, Hopper reminds his gang of the ants' higher numbers, warning them the ants will rebel if not kept in line.
The ants finish constructing the fake bird. During the subsequent celebration, the Circus Bugs' old supervisor, P.T. Flea, arrives, seeking to rehire them and blowing their cover; believing that the plan is doomed to fail, Atta foolishly advises Flik and the Circus Bugs to leave which Flik sadly does. The ants desperately try gathering food for a new offering. Hopper returns, sees the small offering, and takes over the island. He then demands the ants' own winter food supply, planning to execute the Queen afterward. Overhearing the plan from one of the grasshoppers, Dot persuades Flik and the Circus Bugs to return to Ant Island.
After the Circus Bugs distract the grasshoppers long enough to rescue the Queen, Flik deploys the bird. It initially fools the grasshoppers, but P.T., who is also fooled, sets the bird on fire. Realizing the deception, Hopper has Flik publicly beaten and proclaims the ants are lowly life forms who live only to serve the grasshoppers. Flik asserts Hopper knowingly downplays the ant colony's strengths and capabilities. This inspires the ants and the Circus Bugs to fight back against the grasshoppers, driving all but Hopper and his affable brother Molt away.
The ants shove Hopper into the circus cannon to shoot him off of the island, but rain suddenly begins to fall. In the ensuing chaos, Hopper frees himself from the cannon and abducts Flik. The Circus Bugs and Atta pursue, with the latter catching up to Hopper and rescuing Flik, who lures Hopper to the real bird's nest. Believing the bird is another fake, Hopper taunts it, until it grabs him and feeds him to its chicks.
With the anthill now at peace, Flik improves his inventions to help gather food for the ants. Flik and Atta become a couple. P.T. and the Circus Bugs begin their new tour with Molt as a strongman and some of the ants as acrobats. Atta and Dot become the new queen and princess, respectively. The ants celebrate their victory and congratulate Flik as a hero as Heimlich emerges from a cocoon with just butterfly wings as Francis and Manny carry him off. They then bid a fond farewell to the circus troupe.
Voice cast
Production
Development
During the summer of 1994, Pixar's story department began turning their thoughts to their next film.Price, p. 157 The storyline for A Bug's Life originated from a lunchtime conversation between John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft, the studio's head story team; other films such as Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and WALL-E were also conceived at this lunch.Price, p. 158 Lasseter and his story team had already been drawn to the idea of insects serving as characters. Like toys, insects were within the reach of computer animation back then, due to their relatively simple surfaces. Stanton and Ranft wondered whether they could find a starting point in Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper. Walt Disney had produced his own version with a cheerier ending decades earlier in the 1934 short film The Grasshopper and the Ants. In addition, Walt Disney Feature Animation had considered producing a film in the late-1980s entitled Army Ants, that centered around a pacifist ant living in a militaristic colony, but this never fully materialized.
As Stanton and Ranft discussed the adaptation, they rattled off scenarios and storylines springing from their premise. Lasseter liked the idea and offered some suggestions. The concept simmered until early 1995, when the story team began work on the second film in earnest. During an early test screening for Toy Story in San Rafael in June 1995, they pitched the film to the Walt Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner. Eisner thought the idea was fine and they submitted a treatment to Disney in early July under the title Bugs. Disney approved the treatment and gave notice on July 7 that it was exercising the option of a second film under the original 1991 agreement between Disney and Pixar.Price, p. 159 Lasseter assigned the co-director job to Stanton; both worked well together and had similar sensibilities. Lasseter had realized that working on a computer-animated feature as a sole director was dangerous while the production of Toy Story was in process. In addition, Lasseter believed that it would relieve stress and that the role would groom Stanton for having his own position as a lead director.Price, p. 160
Writing In The Ant and the Grasshopper, a grasshopper squanders the spring and summer months on singing while the ants put food away for the winter; when winter comes, the hungry grasshopper begs the ants for food, but the ants turn him away. Stanton and Ranft hit on the notion that the grasshopper could just take the food, with Ranft saying "What if that grasshopper came back with a gang to thump on the ants".Pixar Animation Studios, official website, feature films, A Bugs Life, The inspiration After Stanton had completed a draft of the script, he came to doubt one of the story's main pillars: that the Circus Bugs that had come to the colony to cheat the ants would instead stay and fight. He thought the Circus Bugs were unlikable characters as liars and that it was unrealistic for them to undergo a complete personality change. Also, no particularly good reason existed for Circus Bugs to stay with the ant colony during the second act.A Bugs Life, DVD Commentary Although the film was already far along, Stanton concluded that the story needed a different approach.
Stanton took one of the early circus bug characters, Red the red ant, and changed him into the character Flik. The Circus Bugs, no longer out to cheat the colony, would be embroiled in a comic misunderstanding as to why Flik was recruiting them. Lasseter agreed with this new approach, and comedy writers Donald McEnery and Bob Shaw spent a few months working on further polishing the script with Stanton.Price, p. 161 The characters "Tuck and Roll" were inspired by a drawing that Stanton did of two bugs fighting when he was in the second grade. Lasseter had come to envision the film as an epic in the tradition of the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.
Casting The voice cast was heavy with television sitcom stars of the time: Flik was voiced by Dave Foley (from NewsRadio), Princess Atta was voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus (from Seinfeld), Molt was voiced by Richard Kind (from Spin City), Slim was voiced by David Hyde Pierce (from Frasier) and Dim was voiced by Brad Garrett (from Everybody Loves Raymond). Ranft played Heimlich the caterpillar at the suggestion of Lasseter's wife, Nancy, who had heard him playing the character on a scratch vocal track.
For Hopper, the film's villain, Lasseter's top choice was Robert De Niro, who repeatedly turned the part down, as did a succession of other actors. Kevin Spacey met Lasseter at the 1995 Academy Awards and Lasseter asked Spacey if he would be interested in doing the voice of Hopper. Spacey was delighted and signed on immediately.
A Bug's Life was the final film appearance of actor Roddy McDowall, who played Mr. Soil, dying shortly before the film's theatrical release.
Art design and animation It was more difficult for animators during the production of A Bug's Life than that of Toy Story, as Pixar's computers ran sluggishly due to the complexity of the character models. Lasseter and Stanton had two supervising animators, Rich Quade and Glenn McQueen, to assist with directing and reviewing the animation. The first sequence to be animated and rendered was the circus sequence that culminated with P.T. Flea's "Flaming Wall of Death". Lasseter placed this scene first in the pipeline because he believed it was "less likely to change". After Lasseter thought it would be useful to look at a view of the world from an insect's perspective, two technicians obliged by creating a miniature video camera on Lego wheels, dubbed the "Bugcam".A Bugs Life, DVD Behind the Scenes Fastened to the end of a stick, the Bugcam could roll through grass and other terrain and send back an insect's-eye outlook. Lasseter was intrigued by the way grass, leaves and flower petals formed a translucent canopy, as if the insects were living under a stained-glass ceiling. The team also later sought inspiration from Microcosmos (1996), a French documentary on love and violence in the insect world.