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.