A Bug's Life is a 1998 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's second feature-length film, following Toy Story (1995). The film was directed by John Lasseter, co-directed by Andrew Stanton (in his feature directorial debut), and produced by Darla K. Anderson and Kevin Reher, from a screenplay written by Stanton, Donald McEnery, and Bob Shaw, and a story conceived by Lasseter, Stanton, and Joe Ranft. It stars the voices of Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Hayden Panettiere. In the film, a misfit 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 were a troupe of Circus Bugs. The film's plot was initially inspired by Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper.[5][6]
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.
A colony of ants, led by the elderly Queen and her daughter Princess Atta, live 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.
One day, Flik, a courageous but clumsy inventor ant, inadvertently destroys 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. Flik 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 crewed ornithopter disguised as a bird to scare away the grasshoppers. Meanwhile, Hopper reminds his gang of the ants' superior 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; the ants exile Flik and the Circus Bugs, and desperately try gathering food for a new offering. Hopper returns, sees the mediocre offering, and takes over the island. He then demands the ants' own winter food supply, planning to execute the Queen afterward. Overhearing the plan, 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 actually fears the colony, because he has always known what they are capable of. This inspires the ants and the Circus Bugs to fight back against the grasshoppers, driving all but Hopper and his 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, and proceed to send Hopper's affable brother Molt and a few ants to help P.T. and the Circus Bugs on their new tour. Atta and Dot become the new Queen and Princess. The ants celebrate their victory and congratulate Flik as a hero. They then bid a fond farewell to the circus troupe.
During the summer of 1994, Pixar's story department began turning their thoughts to their next film.[8] 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.[9] 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.[9] 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.[10]
As Stanton and Ranft discussed the adaptation, they rattled off scenarios and storylines springing from their premise.[9] 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.[9] During an early test screening for Toy Story in San Rafael in June 1995, they pitched the film to Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Eisner thought the idea was fine and they submitted a treatment to Disney in early July under the title Bugs.[9] 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.[11] 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.[11] 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.[12]
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.[9] Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft hit on the notion that the grasshopper could just take the food.[9][13] 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.[12] 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.[14] Although the film was already far along, Stanton concluded that the story needed a different approach.[12]
Stanton took one of the early circus bug characters, Red the red ant, and changed him into the character Flik.[14] 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 with Stanton.[15] The characters "Tuck and Roll" were inspired by a drawing that Stanton did of two bugs fighting when he was in the second grade.[13] Lasseter had come to envision the film as an epic in the tradition of David Lean's 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.[14][16]
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). Joe Ranft, member of Pixar's story team, played Heimlich the caterpillar at the suggestion of Lasseter's wife, Nancy, who had heard him playing the character on a scratch vocal track.[17]
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.[17] Kevin Spacey met John 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.[14]
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.[18]
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.[5] 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".[19] 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".[12][20] 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.[12]
The transition from treatment to storyboards took on an extra layer of complexity due to the profusion of storylines. While Toy Story focused heavily on Woody and Buzz Lightyear, with the other toys serving mostly as sidekicks, A Bug's Life required in-depth storytelling for several major groups of characters.[15] Character design also presented a new challenge, in that the designers had to make ants appear likable. Although the animators and the art department studied insects more closely, natural realism would give way to the film's larger needs.[16] The team took out mandibles and designed the ants to stand upright, replacing their normal six legs with two arms and two legs. The grasshoppers, in contrast, received a pair of extra appendages to appear less attractive.[16] The story's scale also required software engineers to accommodate new demands. Among these was the need to handle shots with crowds of ants.[16] The film would include more than 400 such shots in the ant colony, some with as many as 800. It was impractical for animators to control them individually, but neither could the ants remain static for even a moment without appearing lifeless, or move identically. Bill Reeves, one of the film's two supervising technical directors, dealt with the quandary by leading the development of software for autonomous ants.[16] The animators would only animate four or five groups of about eight individual "universal ants". Each one of these "universal ants" would later be randomly distributed throughout the digital set. The program also allowed each ant to be automatically modified in subtle ways (e.g. different color of eye or skin, different heights, different weights, etc.). This ensured that no two ants were the same.[20] It was partly based on Reeves's invention of particle systems a decade and a half earlier, which had let animators use masses of self-guided particles to create effects like swirling dust and snow.[17]
The animators also employed subsurface scattering—developed by Pixar co-founder Edwin Catmull during his graduate student days at the University of Utah in the 1970s—to render surfaces in a more lifelike way. This would be the first time that subsurface scattering would be used in a Pixar film, and a small team at Pixar worked out the practical problems that kept it from working in animation. Catmull asked for a short film to test and showcase subsurface scattering and the result, Geri's Game (1997), was attached alongside A Bug's Life in its theatrical release.[21]
During the production of A Bug's Life, a public feud erupted between DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Pixar's Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. Katzenberg, former chairman of Disney's film division, had left the company in a bitter feud with CEO Michael Eisner. In response, he formed DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen and planned to rival Disney in animation.[22] After DreamWorks' acquisition of Pacific Data Images (PDI)—long Pixar's contemporary in computer animation—Lasseter and others at Pixar were dismayed to learn from the trade papers that PDI's first project at DreamWorks would be another ant film, to be called Antz.[23] By this time, Pixar's project was well known within the animation community.[24] Both Antz and A Bug's Life center on a young male ant, a drone with oddball tendencies that struggles to win a princess's hand by saving their society. Whereas A Bug's Life relied chiefly on visual gags, Antz was more verbal and revolved more around satire. The script of Antz was also heavy with adult references, whereas Pixar's film was more accessible to children.[25]
It was clear that Lasseter and Jobs believed that the idea was stolen by Katzenberg.[10][22] Katzenberg had stayed in touch with Lasseter after the acrimonious Disney split, often calling to check up. In October 1995, when Lasseter was overseeing postproduction work on Toy Story at the Universal lot's Technicolor facility in Universal City, where DreamWorks was also located, he called Katzenberg and dropped by with Stanton.[22][26] When Katzenberg asked what they were doing next, Lasseter described what would become A Bug's Life in detail. Lasseter respected Katzenberg's judgment and felt comfortable using him as a sounding board for creative ideas.[26] Lasseter had high hopes for Toy Story, and he was telling friends throughout the tight-knit computer-animation business to get cracking on their own films. He told various friends, "If this hits, it's going to be like space movies after Star Wars" for computer animation companies.[10] Lasseter later recalled, "I should have been wary. Jeffrey kept asking questions about when it would be released."[22]
When the trades indicated production on Antz, Lasseter, feeling betrayed, called Katzenberg and asked him bluntly if it were true, who in turn asked him where he had heard the rumor. Lasseter asked again, and Katzenberg admitted it was true. Lasseter raised his voice and would not believe Katzenberg's story that a development director had pitched him the idea long ago. Katzenberg claimed Antz came from a 1991 story pitch by Tim Johnson that was related to Katzenberg in October 1994.[10] Another source gives Nina Jacobson, one of Katzenberg's executives, as the person responsible for the Antz pitch.[24] Lasseter, who normally did not use profane language, cursed at Katzenberg and hung up the phone.[27] Lasseter recalled that Katzenberg began explaining that Disney was "out to get him" and that he realized that he was just cannon fodder in Katzenberg's fight with Disney.[10][24] For his part, Katzenberg believed he was the victim of a conspiracy: Eisner had decided not to pay him his contract-required bonus, convincing Disney's board not to give him anything.[24] Katzenberg was further angered by the fact that Eisner scheduled Bugs to open the same week as The Prince of Egypt, which was then intended to be DreamWorks' first animated release.[24][27] Lasseter grimly relaye