The Little Things - “A Bug’s Life” - Grant Hiskes
Picture from DeviantArt.com (JAMNetwork)
In one of the most unforgettable power lunches in the history of power lunches, a few of the greatest storytellers of all time, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Joe Ranft, sat down and came up with ideas that would define the next decade of Pixar. Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and (the movie I found myself watching Sunday night) A Bug’s Life. A Bug’s Life would be the next film Pixar Animation Studios would release, and now, despite the various advances that have been made in animation, the film still echoes a great lesson in the importance of persistence and outside-the-box thinking in progressing our society.
For those who have not seen A Bug’s Life since your younger years (like me), Flik (Dave Foley) is an innovative ant that has a reputation around his colony for inadvertently messing up. Seconds before the grasshoppers make their annual dining stop that the ants have spent all season prepping for, Flik knocks over the food pile. The grasshoppers and their head honcho, Hopper (Kevin Spacey), are pretty frickin pissed off that the food isn’t there. They demand that the ants have more food for them later on their tour, but the ants rely on that food to feed themselves. Flik must then go look for other bugs to help defend his colony from the grasshoppers upon their return. He travels to the city where he mistakes a gaggle of circus bugs, not suited for any defense whatsoever, for “tough bugs”, which he brings back to the hill.
From a technical perspective, one thing that sticks out to me is the way the animators make the ants representative of humans. Ants typically have six legs, but in this film, those six legs are replaced with two arms and two legs. Could this just be to make the film more aesthetically pleasing? Sure, it’s hard to tell because neither Pixar nor Dreamworks had come out with a film at this time with an animal as the main character. The animators also developed software that made sure no two ants looked the same. These effects make for a more human resemblance in the film among the ants
Another slight edit made by the creators of the film is the addition of the as mentioned in David Price’s 2008 book The Pixar Touch was the additional appendage on the grasshoppers to make them less attractive. Indulging in the film without visuals, the viewer would still perceive the grasshoppers as the villains in the story, but these edits certainly enhance the roles. The grasshoppers are villains in this story, and I also think they represent another “enemy” in the real, non-animated world - the upper class.
When the grasshoppers make their first appearance, they fly in from the ceiling of the ant’s hideout. Hopper illustrates the “Circle of Life” to the colony; the sun makes the food, the ants pick the food, and the grasshoppers eat the food. Hopper goes on another rant to his fellow grasshoppers when they don’t fret about Flik standing up to Hopper back at the hill, “You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up. Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1, and if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life. It’s not about food, it’s about keeping those ants in line”. This quote follows strikingly similar rhetoric to the criticism of the systemic injustice of our political system and economic structure in the United States, the notion that the wealthy are rigging the system so that the majority does not have the same platform or economic prowess to rival those already in control and pulling the strings.
It’s possible there may be no resonance behind that villain-defining quote from Hopper, but I would strongly contest that those words were carefully selected. This is principally because of the scene in the pub, where Flik is looking for “tough bugs” to bring back to defend the colony. The ladybug (Denis Leary) calls himself Robin Hood and calls over “Little John” (Heimlich (Joe Ranft) the caterpillar). “Little John” is a reference to Robin Hood’s sidekick in the classic story of robbing the rich to feed the poor, foreshadowing precisely what the ants and circus bugs are plotting to carry out against the grasshoppers.
So now that the film’s creators have set the stage for the big insect ‘coup d’etat’ in comparison to the modern economic structure, we have to sniff out the answers as to what makes this particular story a success for the ants in the end. The two primary factors to success that Lasseter, Stanton, and Ranft seem to highlight in this story are thinking ‘outside of the box’ and persistence.
From the movie’s get-go, we quickly come to realize that Flik is an outlier in his colony. Not because he always seems to be messing up necessarily, but because he seems to be the only ant receptive to change or a new way of doing things. We see Flik using quite the apparatus for collecting food, a method he says that is far more efficient so that the ants can also ensure they have enough to eat just like the grasshoppers they are feeding. However, Flik is ridiculed. Some elder members and the queen of the colony are steadfast in the old process because that is the way they have always done it. When the elder member speaks these words though, it is said in a manner that does not sound wise, but more like annoyingly stupid, another subtle, yet conscious choice. Flik’s other ‘out there’ idea later in the movie, creating a fake bird to scare away the grasshoppers, ends up playing a critical role in the ants’ victory over the grasshoppers.
Persistence is also integral to the ants’ victory. Persistence is symbolized throughout this film by a rock. The first time the rock comes into play is when the little sister of Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), Dot (Hayden Panettiere), follows Flik back out to the grass after catching heat for his food collection machine. Dot complains to Flik about being young and not having her wings yet, but Flik tells her that it’s not all that bad being young. Flik hands her the rock and tells of her to think of it as a seed. Pointing to a large tree, Flik illustrates the great power that a small seed brings, but it always has to start as a seed like Dot. The rock then reappears as Dot catches Flik after he is asked by Atta to leave town with the circus. Dot begs him to come back to save the colony and protect her mom, even though Flik is thinking of himself as a failure, as she hands him the rock. Just before the film’s ending, the rock reappears again as one of the circus bugs gives the rock to now Queen Atta before the circus hits the road again.
The rock almost serves as a gift from the film’s creators to the audience, passing on a token of persistence to us to use in our everyday lives. What makes Pixar so unique and powerful is the beautifully crafted stories that draw the audience in with breathtaking visuals and then instill a moral handbook into our minds almost seamlessly. Disney and Pixar seek to put good in the world, and by creating movies for all ages, their message is so powerful, and they have a lot of influence on young kids. A Bug’s Life is not the most invigorating or visually spectacular Pixar film, but it should be appreciated for the precedent it set among Pixar movies for telling stories with morals intended to make the world a better place. A Bug’s Life shows that equality is attainable through thinking outside of the norm and persisting in the endeavor, characteristics echoed through Pixar films to come like Ratatouille, Up, and Brave.
