article

A Bug's Life is a computer animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution in the United States on November 14, 1998, and in the United Kingdom on 5 February 1999. It's also the second Disney/Pixar feature film. It tells the tale of an oddball individualist ant who hires what he thinks are "warrior bugs" (actually circus performers) to fight off greedy grasshoppers. The film was directed by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton.

The story of A Bug's Life is a parody of Aesop's fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper. It is similar to the comedy ¡Three Amigos!, which is about out-of-work actors defending a town while thinking they're merely giving a performance, and it gives an obvious nod to Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (as well as its Hollywood remake, The Magnificent Seven), which is about Japanese villagers hiring a rag-tag group of swordsmen to fight off rampaging bandits.

Reviews for A Bug's Life were overwhelmingly positive at the time of the film's release, and it has remained popular since, although it is worth noting that it and Cars are the only films from Pixar not to place on IMDB's list of the top 250 films.

Plot synopsis

Flik is an oddball, an individualist and would-be inventor in a colony of ants that is oppressed by a gang of marauding grasshoppers, who arrive once a season demanding food from the ants. While working with an invention to pick fruit more efficiently, Flik accidentally destroys the offering that the ants were putting together to appease the grasshoppers. Given a temporary reprieve by the grasshoppers, the ants agree to Flik's plan to recruit "warrior bugs" to fight off the grasshoppers—Flik actually believes the plan, while the other ants see it as effectively exiling Flik.

Flik finds his way to the "big city" (The Garbage under a trailer), where he mistakes a group of circus bugs, whose act collapses into chaos, for the warrior bugs he's seeking. The bugs, meanwhile, mistake Flik for an agent who wants to book their act, and agree to desert the act and travel with him back to Ant Island.

Flik eventually realizes his mistake and develops a new plan. He advocates building a fake bird to scare away Hopper, the leader of the grasshoppers who's deeply afraid of bug-eating birds. The ants unite behind Flik's plan until the circus' ringmaster, P.T. Flea, arrives to retrieve the circus bugs, blowing Flik's cover.

The ants try desperately to pull together enough food for a new offering to the grasshopper, but it can't possibly be enough. Dot, a tiny royal ant who idolizes Flik, overhears Hopper's plan to kill the queen after the offering and gets her friends to put Flik's bird plan back into action. It all nearly works of course, but when a confused P.T. inadvertently incinerates the bird, Hopper knows he's being had. He's about to kill Flik when Flik declares, "Ants don't serve grasshoppers! It's you who need us. We're a lot stronger than you say we are...and you know it, don't you?" It's then the ants realize, by outnumbering the grasshoppers 100-to-1, they need not be oppressed by grasshoppers ever again. They chase the grasshoppers out, but not before Hopper attempts his final vengeance. Thanks to some quick thinking by Flik, Hopper ends up being eaten by a real bird that also inhabits Ant Island. Flik is welcomed back to the colony, and all the circus bugs join him in a celebration before departing Ant Island.

Box office

A Bug's Life made approximately $162 million dollars in its U.S. theatrical run, easily covering its estimated production costs of dollar|$" target="_blank" >*45 million. The film also earned £28,824,239 in its United Kingdom theatrical run.

Video release

The DVD of the film is the first wholly-digital transfer of a feature film to a digital playback medium. No analog processes came between the creation of the computer images and their representation on the DVD.

As well, the pan and scan or 'full screen' version of the video (on the DVD as well as VHS releases) has been reframed; rather than sacrifice image in some parts of the film, the frame has been extended or objects moved to fit the narrower aspect ratio. Pixar continued this process on its later video releases. Also, the different characters (Flik, Dot, Francis, etc.) were on one (by themselves) cover of the video cover, considered a collectible in many cases.

A laserdisc version was also released in Japan by Pioneer, one of the last.

Trivia

It is widely believed that the bugs in this film live in the same universe as the toys in the Toy Story films - read below for multiple examples:

  • At the scene where the bugs are "riding" the can, you can see a Pizza Planet Cup from Toy Story.
  • When the two bugs are arguing about the light you can see a Pizza Planet Truck.
  • In the comical bloopers of Toy Story 2, Flik was on a leaf talking to Heimlich about "A Bug's Life 2". Sadly, it wasn't to be.
  • The Pizza Planet truck is parked next to the mobile home as Flik approaches the City.
  • A Pizza Planet cup from Toy Story is seen above the bar as Flik enters.
  • In one of the Outtakes at the end of the film, Flik cries out Buzz Lightyear's catchphrase "To Infinity And Beyond!".
  • The names on the boxes that make up the City are all the names of the writers' kids. A few examples are: JuJu's Litter, Hannah's Bananas, and PJ Pop.
  • The restaurant at Bug City is a can of "Low Fat Lard".
  • The cookies from the box that Flea's circus travels in contain 92 grams of protein per serving.
  • Actor Roddy McDowell's last film.
  • The DVD version is the first ever all-digital video transfer.
  • The face of Geri from Geri's Game (a Pixar short) can be seen modeled in the tree above the ant colony.
  • Woody from Toy Story appears holding the clapper in the second set of "outtakes".
  • The otherwise-unintelligible pillbugs, Tuck & Roll, shout "Reuben Kincaid!" while building the bird. It's barely understandable, but shows up in the captions. Reuben Kincaid was a character in The Partridge Family, which suggests that the bird they are building is a partridge.
  • The circus "train" is made of boxes of animal crackers called Casey Jr. This is also the name of the circus train in the movie Dumbo.
  • Atta is the latin name for a genus of leaf-eating ants.
  • The boxes in P.T. Flea's circus train have the name "J. Grant" on them. Joe Grant wrote Dumbo.
  • This was the 1st computer generated feature film to be presented in a scope ratio of 2:35.1
  • The film's plot is very similar to that of The Three Amigos. During the warriors' introduction Slim mumbles to Heimlich, "Wow, they sure are starved for entertainment" - a direct quote from the earlier film.
  • A poster for Disney's "The Lion King - On Broadway" can be seen in the upper right-hand corner of the screen when Flik walks through the city traffic in Bug City.
  • Dave Foley, who is Flik, originally tried out for the character of Slim, played by David Hyde Pierce.
  • The tunnel in a tunnel joke was made in reference to Steve Jobs' (CEO of Pixar and Apple) plan for Apple's "store in a store".
  • For the 1.33:1 video transfer, rather than pan-and-scan the original 2.35:1 theatrical image, Pixar actually re-used the original computer images, re-framed some scenes, and even to the point where they'd place characters to a different spot in the scene to fit into the 1.33:1 frame.
  • During the fake bird attack, Manny the praying mantis, voiced by Jonathan Harris, cries out "Oh, the pain!", a phrase often uttered by Harris' character Dr. Zachary Smith in the TV show "Lost in Space".
  • The two mosquitoes trapped in the light of the bugzapper ("Harry, don't go towards the light!" "I can't help it - it's so beautiful!") are the voices of the co-directors, John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton.
  • During the first visit by the grasshoppers, Hopper mentions the "circle of life", an obvious reference to the Lion King.

Other appearances

  • The characters Flik and Hopper appear in the 3D movie attraction It's Tough To Be A Bug which can be found at the Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park in Walt Disney World, as well as at Disney's California Adventure. The Disney's California Adventure park also has an area of rides for younger children called "a bug's land".
  • Flik and Heimlich also appear in an "outtake" during the ending credits of the Pixar movie Toy Story 2. Heimlich appears alone on a leaf in one scene of that film, but is too small to easily see.
  • A scene from the film is recreated with Volkswagen Beetles in place of the bugs in the ending credits of Cars. Mack, John Ratzenberger's character in Cars, comments on the familiarity of the voice of P.T. Flea, eventually leading into him mocking Pixar and Ratzenberger.

Voice cast

Attached short film

Main article: Geri's Game

Thaetrical and video releases of this film include Geri's Game, a Pixar short made in 1997, a year before this film was released.

External links

1998 films | Pixar feature films | American films | English-language films | Anthropomorphic films

Das große Krabbeln | Ζουζούνια (ταινία) | Bichos | 1001 Pattes | Egy bogár élete | バグズ・ライフ | Dawno temu w trawie | Ötökän elämää | Ett småkryps liv | 虫虫危机

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "A Bug's Life".

Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world