A Bug’s Life: That Other Movie about Ants (Part 4)

Looks like we've come to the last of the blogs for A Bug's Life. I've certainly enjoyed this look at  everything Pixar did for this movie. I'm glad to know this under-appreciated story has aged well.

Music

Randy Newman composed several distinct themes for A Bug’s life. I counted 6: The Ant Theme, the “Relax” Theme, Flik’s theme, the “Army” Theme, The City Theme, and The Circus Theme. Each has its own character and purpose in commenting on the movie. I was lucky to find a DVD that included the option of listening to the soundtrack without dialogue or sound effects. It’s fascinating to see which themes appear at particular moments. The whole thing plays out like a classical symphony, with subjects and developments.

Except for the Ant Party music. It breaks the flow like a poorly-timed ringtone. The winds and percussion remind me of the tribal music the Ewoks played at the end of the un-tampered Return of the Jedi movie. The ants play it, of course, at celebrations when the “Warrior Bugs” arrive and when the fake bird is completed. It might be the liveliest part of the soundtrack, and that’s good and bad together. I’m fascinated by the Copeland vs. Gershwin approach that Newman used on the whole score, but the Ant Party Music sounds very natural. The ants could very well have written it themselves and created the instruments seen. It’s also a bit too catchy for only a couple helpings. I think it was just too far beyond Newman’s comfort zone to make the whole movie sound like that, or at least a mix of orchestra and tribal music. I’ll have time in later blogs to talk about it, but the other composers with Pixar would incorporate different musical styles a bit more thoroughly into the scores. Having pointed out his Road Not Taken, I will say that within Randy Newman’s musical language he does heighten emotion and compliment the film’s story quite nicely.

The Ant Theme (beginning at 4:19) plays during the opening title cards and over our first shot of the ants picking grain and berries. Inspired by Aaron Copeland, it is bright, majestic, and smells like a ripe harvest. Perhaps it’s a little overplayed, but every time it plays it comments appropriately on the movie. We also hear it while the ants build the fake bird, and it reminds us of an Amish barn-raising. Then there are hints of it when Flik arrives at the huge river bed. We only hear fragments at first because Flik is a little stumped. The theme comes in full and majestic when Flik sails through the air on a dandelion seed, shouting “For the Colony, and for oppressed ants everywhere!”

One reason the Ant Theme feels overplayed is that Newman also derives a few subthemes out of the Ant Theme. Here’s the original:

Now, here’s the “Relax” theme:

This one plays when The Queen tries to get Princess Atta to calm down about running the offering. It comes back when Flik tries to tell Dot it’s okay to be small.

Then there’s the “Army” Theme:

It comes along in the second half when two young ants come in the Circus Bugs’ room to get autographs of their warrior heroes. From then on, they pose as true warriors, and we hear less of the “Circus” Theme until P.T. Flea comes in to shatter the illusion.

The audience can look at these themes a couple ways. Either Newman ran out of ideas, or he thought like an opera composer. I do think he could have switched up the notes a little more for variety, but I give him props for creating such a large yet coherent work.

The City Music and the Ant Theme complement each other, like George Gershwin’s music does to Copeland. These composers were born two years apart, and both created a distinct American sound, but from different backgrounds. While Copeland was classically trained, Gershwin made his living writing pop songs. The City Music distills the essence of Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin’s first “serious” work. In the movie we get a taste of it the first time we see Flik using a mechanical harvester. It comes in as such a shocking contrast to the heroic Ant Theme that came before that we know Flik is out of place. When Flik arrives at the Bug City, there’s a sense of awe, but also a feeling that Flik feels at home, despite never having been there before. In the film’s epilogue we hear the City music again because the colony now uses Flik’s harvester, but it doesn’t play for Flik because he knows he belongs with the colony.

We hear the melody of “Time of Your Life” in the movie as Flik’s theme. It works to describe Flik because it’s clumsy and goofy. Sadly, the lyrics don’t add much to it, and make the song sound pointless. Saying “You may only go around one time, as far as I can tell” sounds too insecure for the tune, and the backup singers make it worse by adding “He could be wrong about that.” The verses basically describe the movie without adding any insights to it:

Was a bug, little bug, hardly there. How he felt, what he dreamed, who would care?

At least in Toy Story Newman wrote from the point of view of Woody and Buzz, making more poetic comments like “I will go sailing no more” or catchy one-liners like “You’ve got a friend in me.” This makes me want to take a closer look at his songs to see if I was too lenient on him.

Theme
Well, this has been very fun for me. There were plenty of parallels I could draw with this movie and real-life situations. Developing talents, emotional abuse, being true to yourself. I found videos on YouTube that explained A Bug's Life as an allegory for economics (the 99% and all that.) That's a hard thing to accomplish if you're writing a story. That's what makes the movie so impressive to me. The story is accessible because it reminds us of real experiences in our lives.

Speaking of the old and the new, breaking from tradition comes to mind. Flik saw that life could be better and set out to make it so. It was practically his duty because no one else had the vision. The workers accepted their lot in life, and the elders viewed Flik's vision as distraction from daily tasks. Yes, it's cheesy to say you can make a difference. I'll repeat that Flik wanted to help, not just express his individuality. That's the key. People who are quirky just to be unique do nothing but beg for attention. Flik's nature was to help others--unsuccessfully at first, but he got better.

In Toy Story, Woody couldn’t stop life from changing. A Bug’s Life gives an example of change that someone had to seek. Atta would have eventually taken over the colony, Dot’s wings would have grown in, and Heimlich would have turned into a butterfly. That was all inevitable. But life would have continued pretty much uninterrupted if Flik hadn’t set out to make a difference, not just wait for it. Grasshoppers would have gone on bullying the ants, Queen Atta might not have been quite ready for her crown, and so on. If Flik hadn’t kept trying he wouldn’t have been ready to seize the opportunities that came his way. Then Atta, Dot, and the rest might not have realized how rewarding it is to rise up to their challenges. In that light, I feel that The Moral of Our Story is that change will come if we’re ready for it or not, so we might as well shape our lives to our liking before the world shapes them for us. We never know in what ways or to what extend we'll find success.

Gee, if only Randy Newman had gotten that to rhyme.

A Bug’s Life: That Other Movie about Ants (Part 3)

Interesting and likeable characters make Pixar stories worth watching, so let’s look at them:

The Elder Ants work together as one entity that knows more than you whippersnappers. The ones with actual roles in the colony—the Queen, Thorny the line supervisor and Mr. Soil the disaster specialist are assertive and confident. Dr. Flora apparently works in Ant Services, whatever that is. She and Cornelius have nothing to do in the film, but they both have seats on the Ant Council. Cornelius interests me more than he deserves to. I had to confirm his name by reading the cast list using process of elimination. He has literally no role other than acting old and peevish. It’s as if he just hangs around the leaders as a friend—you know, like the kind of people that like to hang around leadership to feel important. He has less function to the colony than Flik, yet he has more clout than Flik, chiefly because of his age. That really says something about what defines status in the ant colony.

The elder ants coddle the Queen’s daughter, Atta, while she watches them make most of the decisions. Princess Atta goes from helpless to helpful in the course of the movie. She doesn’t see how effective or useful Flik’s inventions are at first. As his inventions and plans begin to work, though, she becomes impressed and inspired to lead the colony without elderly advice. At the movie’s high point Atta pursues Hopper in flight when he abducts Flik. Flik and Atta do start to like each other during the movie, but their attraction thankfully doesn’t become the focus on the film. Instead it’s one of those cases where romance happens naturally as the characters go about their lives. Their chemistry is more believable that way.

The ants harvest grain for a gang of grasshopper bandits led by Hopper. He’s quite a villain.  He talks down to the ants, warning them of “insects out there who will take advantage of you.” Manipulation! He’s the one taking advantage of them. Not to mention he’s a liar. The city ants barely notice Flik when he ventures there, despite his conspicuous look. Hopper also explains that ants naturally serve grasshoppers, but none of the other grasshoppers really care whether the ants provide grain or not. They rough up the ants because they’re following Hopper’s lead.

Hopper doesn’t have much respect for his fellow grasshoppers, either. Some grasshoppers dare ask him why they bother harassing the ants when they already have plenty of food for themselves. Hopper responds by burying them in a huge pile of grain. We never see them climb out from under it. He’s not allowed to hurt his brother, Molt, thanks to his mother’s dying wish, and so when Molt riles him up he punches some random henchman instead. Does it weaken Hopper’s character that he’s true to his mother? Maybe, but without that quirk he’s 100% mean, and a little out of place for the mood of the movie.

I might as well discuss Hopper’s brother, Molt. He’s completely harmless, offsetting his brother’s nastiness and revealing that not all grasshoppers think they’re bosses of everything. He has a short attention span, and doesn’t seem to understand how serious some situations are. As Hopper tries to instill fear on the ants, Molt reminds everyone about birds and the one that almost ate Hopper. On the surface it looks like Molt is a pointless character, but by the end of the movie he joins the circus bugs as a roadie:

Molt: (sings) The circus! The circus! I love the circus!

That shows further that grasshoppers didn’t play villains in the movie just because they’re grasshoppers. Lots of groups get upset when movies portray them unfavorably, so it’s nice to know Pixar doesn’t condone bugism. It’s also interesting that Molt brings up the one thing Hopper fears, and Flik uses that info to affect the second half of the film.

It wouldn’t be fair for me to gloss over Thumper, the rabid grasshopper. I’m at a loss as to his story. The grasshoppers keep him on a leash because he acts like a wild animal, but why? Parental issues? Do Grasshoppers catch rabies? Is he mentally disabled and lash out at things out of frustration? I guess grasshoppers don’t have anything they could use in real life like aphids or anything like that. Kind of a shame.

Everyone in A Bug’s Life is affected by Flik. He stands out from the colony, and it’s his own fault. All he wants is to make a difference. It’s a credit to the writers that he never tries to explain why making a difference is important. It would have turned the movie into a “life lesson,” and would have insulted the audience’s intelligence. Plus, Flik wants to make a helpful difference, not just to validate his individuality. He’s proud to be an ant, and his inventions are attempts to improve the ant way of life. Nothing works at first, though. Thorny and Hopper both order him to get “back in line" at different points. Flik seems so helpless when others push him around. That’s why it’s so powerful when he stands up to Hopper at the end. The grasshoppers kicked him around leaving him badly beaten, but he stands back up, and with little strength, gasping for air, he calls Hopper’s bluff:

Flik: We’re a lot stronger than you say we are. And you know it, don’t you?

He found his strength by seeing how hard his colony works and how willingly they step up to their challenges. The colony in turn draws strength from him when they hear his words of praise for them. He has the same effect on the Circus Bugs. This connection takes up the span of the movie, so we hardly notice it as it happens.

We meet Atta before her younger sister, but I tend to think of Dot as the second most important protagonist in the movie. She and Flik share their frustrations about being kicked around well before Princess Atta reveals her insecurities. The movie also spends as much time developing her story as they do with Flik’s. Dot also articulates best how we’re supposed to feel about Flik:

Dot: (giggles) You’re weird, but I like you.

When she gets into trouble the circus bugs scramble to her rescue under Flik’s direction. (Since she’s played by Hayden Panettiere I’ll go ahead and say it: Save Dot, save the world.) But she got into trouble because she was concerned enough about Flik to follow him secretly. Then there’s my favorite visual moment in the entire film: Flik is riding away with the circus in exile from the colony. No one can console him. This is where Dot changes from helpless to helpful. She tries to encourage him to return to save the queen, but he refuses. Then Dot picks up a rock from the ground. The look on her face is amazingly precise. It says “I don’t know how this would work, but he tried to cheer me up with it, so it’s the best idea I have.” She sets the rock next to Flik:

Dot: Pretend that’s a seed, okay?

That does the trick. With Flik back to his senses she leads the Blueberry Scouts as they help bring Hopper down. One of the smallest characters plays one of the biggest roles in the Revolution.

The Circus Bugs have followed their dreams and have nothing to show for it—so they get along naturally with Flik. They are literally much more colorful than the ants, have much more personality, and play more essential roles than the Elder Ants. Francis the manly ladybug helps sell their act to the ant colony, and sees Dot falling from a dandelion soon enough to catch her. Manny the Shakespearean mantis uses his transformation act to whisk the Queen away to safety. Slim the underworked stick bug, fakes out the grasshoppers with fake wounds from the fake bird. Heimlich the obese caterpillar, probably the least useful, gets used as bait to lure the real bird away from Dot and Francis. Gypsy the glamorous moth distracts the bird so the rest can escape, and helps Manny in the transformation act. Rosie the kind black widow spins a net to airlift Dot and Francis, and ties the joints together on the fake bird. The Queen stows away inside Din the bulky beetle, a strong workhorse. Tuck and Roll the immigrant pill bugs are obnoxious but their bickering keeps the grasshoppers interested enough in the circus to let them stay, enabling the Queen’s rescue.

Lastly, we have P.T. Flea (It’s John Ratzenberger!) the circus ringleader. He fires everyone because their demands and quirks cause the show to fall apart.

From there his character helps move the story along because he has no clue what’s going on in any scene he appears in. While the Ants celebrate the fake bird’s completion he bursts in looking for his old circus team, exposing the “warrior bugs” as phonies. The scandal leaves Flik to ride off with the circus. When P.T. first sees the fake bird scaring the grasshoppers he sees the fake wounds on the circus bugs and sets the fake bird on fire, thinking he’s protecting his cast. It’s kind of curious that the first time he played “Flaming Death” it was to save the circus show and the second time it makes everything fall apart.


...Well, that takes care of the characters. Next time we'll wrap up with talk about the soundtrack, and then some final thoughts about what the movie seems to be saying overall. End of part 3.

A Bug’s Life: That Other Movie about Ants (Part 2)

So A Bug’s Life is about an ant from a village seeking help against a gang of bully insects, and mistakes some bad actors for true warriors. It reeks of The Three Amigos and a few others. What makes this movie stand out from them? Pixar makes it real and compelling.

Visuals and Storytelling 

Except for Thumper, and the fact that the ants have only four limbs, just about everything in A Bug’s Life makes sense. The ants follow a specific line when they travel to and from their hole. City furniture is made up of bits of garbage. Anything technological in the film comes from the insects creating what they need from what they have. Even the mushrooms used as lamps come from a phosphorescent type of mushroom in the wild. Because of those details the movie seems like it could have been filmed with real insects. Pixar plays with this idea to the point where the movie screens outtakes involving the characters making mistakes on camera. When live-action movies do that it shatters the movie’s illusion, but in a cartoon it adds to the illusion because it comes across as evidence that this world exists off-camera.

The groundbreaking visual technique in this movie is crowd movement. This was the first movie that employed hundreds of extras, all acting like individuals. They focus their eyes on different things, react at different moments, and show more individuality in their actions. If you want to see a beautifully crafted mob scene, check out the rainstorm at the climax of the film. Watch as the entire colony scrambles in all directions at once. Or watch the beginning where all the ants huddle in the anthill, fidgeting as they wait for the grasshoppers.

Speaking of the grasshoppers, how amazing is their entrance? I’ll tell you: An alarm sounds and everyone makes a final sprint to drop their grain off at the offering pile before “they” arrive.  Everyone makes it into the anthill before something approaches the Offering Stone with a menacing hum that farmers know too well. Inside, the ants gasp to hear someone above them yell “Where’s the food?” Flik tries to explain that he ruined the offering, but there is no time; the ceiling comes crashing in. First an ugly foot, then several ugly feet, then scores of grasshoppers dive-bomb into the anthill, starting a panic. I tip my hat to the screenwriters for never actually using the word “grasshopper” up till now. We knew the ants were gathering an “offering,” but nobody said what for. For one thing, they already knew what for, and explaining just for the audience’s sake that ants gather grain every year for grasshoppers to feed would have sounded too unrealistic, and would have slowed the story’s pacing down. Not only that, it helps build suspense, the same way the toys in Toy Story couldn’t see the present Andy was so excited to get, then we could only see the box’s silhouette, then the box itself, until Woody climbed up Andy’s bed to see the ankles, legs, torso, and finally the face of Buzz Lightyear.

One of the clever story-telling devices in A Bug’s Life is the use of leaves. After the bird flies across the sky we see a leaf land on water. That immediately gives us the time of year because leaves are falling. The leaves remind the ants how much time they have to work before rainy season, and before the grasshoppers come to claim their ransom. When the colony begins constructing the bird, however, leaves have a different purpose. The ants use the color leaves as plumage for the bird. We even see them air surfing on the leaves that fall. It’s like time is now on the ants’ side.

The bird itself is impressive as well. The real bird, I mean. It's the very first thing we see after Pixar's logo. There are many movies about small characters where big things move more slowly than usual. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a good example. In a pivotal scene the father is eating Cheerios, and scoops the spoonfuls into his mouth quickly and chews at the same speed anyone would. Then when one of the shrunken kids falls into the bowl, the dad slowly scoops him up, and veeeerrrrrryyyyy ssslllloooooowwwwlllly opens his mouth. It isn’t slow motion; everyone else moves at normal speed. I guess it was supposed to create suspense, or something, but it gave the dog plenty of time to come barking and nibbling the father’s ankle so the father can notice the kid swimming in his milk. The opposite of suspense.

In A Bug’s Life, the Bird is huge and cold-looking, but moves and twitches as fast as a real bird his (her?) size. That makes it an even scarier monster to the bugs—who have little hope of dodging its pecking. I honestly jumped the first couple times I saw Hopper’s demise when the bird bowed at an instant and plucked him up into her beak without any warning. And the bird has no idea of the horror she inflicts on the bugs. Hopper was right; it’s one of those “circle of life” things. She wasn’t trying to make life hard for the insects; she just wanted to feed her young. If it acts a little mechanical, the blooper reel helps justify the animation by showing the “bird machine” break down.

Along the same lines as the falling leaves, the weather in the background helps to comment on the story. The ants frequently mention the rainy season. Toward the end of the movie, a fog has hit the island. The rainy season must be approaching because the air is more humid than before. It creates a very bleak and desperate atmosphere. The grasshoppers use it to make a horrifying entrance as well, fading into view on foot through the fog. Then just as it looks like the fight between ants and grasshoppers is over, raindrops fall like mortar shells. The rainstorm is an excellent moment of chaos, and Pixar's writers set us up for it all along. The movie may have felt less fulfilling if everyone kept mentioning a rainy season that never came.

...You know, this whole thing is even bigger than I thought it would be. We'll have to pick this up again next week with the characters. End of Part 2.