Aesop's stories are hardy and malleable, making it very easy to bring the settings up to date without watering down the moral. European folk and fairy tales have been Disney's wheelhouse for decades three years before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released, Disney tackled Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper in one of his more memorable Silly Symphonies shorts. Perhaps the biggest clue to this retreat is in the film's premise. It's still a technical marvel and remains enjoyably diverting, but it feels like a retreat into a somewhat Disney-shaped comfort zone rather than a stretch of all its legs. Confronted by Dreamworks' rebellious streak on the one side and a shoring up of the Disney renaissance on the other, Lasseter delivered a film which was less confident and less emotionally gripping than its predecessor. Having established themselves so emphatically with Toy Story, the studio was looking to consolidate its position, having access to Disney's distribution power but being creatively distinct from them. In a nutshell, A Bug's Life is PIXAR's difficult second album. What followed was months of allegations and horse trading, as both companies competed to finish their film first and to secure it a prime release date, avoiding competition from Disney's The Prince of Egypt. Lasseter felt betrayed, claiming that Katzenberg had stolen his idea, while Katzenberg claimed that the idea had been pitched to him as early as 1991. After Dreamworks acquired PIXAR's contemporary PDI, the trades papers announced that the studio's first project would be Antz.
Lasseter and co-director Andrew Stanton met with Katzenberg in October 1995, with Lasseter discussing what would become A Bug's Life. Katzenberg left Disney acrimoniously in 1994 after falling out with CEO Michael Eisner, but kept in touch with Lasseter and others at PIXAR while post-production on Toy Story was underway. The rivalry between A Bug's Life and Antz shaped the identity of both films so deeply that it is worth going over the story of what occurred. Where Antz was rough around the edges, politically savvy and surprisingly dramatic, A Bug's Life is an enjoyable but slight offering whose technical brilliance disguises a very thin story. But perhaps the most acrimonious example of Jeffrey Katzenberg edging out over John Lasseter would involve A Bug's Life, released in the same year as Dreamworks' Antz with a number of clear similarities. and the latter being a far more rounded barrel of fun than The Incredibles. That's not to say that Dreamworks has never come close to PIXAR in terms of quality: the first two Shrek films are great entertainment, with the former being on a par with Monsters, Inc. But PIXAR's output is not only more consistent, but has a better idea of what a proper children's film should be: while Shark Tale has a multitude of adult jokes which will go over youngsters' heads, designed solely to keep the paying parents awake, Finding Nemo pitches its story and characters at the same level for everyone, treating children as intelligent and the film as a family event. Both companies deserve credit for pushing the visual envelope with their character designs and for helping to usher in an age in which animated films can be taken seriously in the western world. The story has its problems and its lulls, but it's a surprisingly brisk and funny watch even all these years later.Īs a general rule, I have always preferred PIXAR's output to that of Dreamworks. The way bugs use things for their tools and survive their world is just fun to watch.
The movie's world is also just damn creative. Our villain Hopper actually doesn't even get that much screen-time, but he commands a presence, and his seed monologue is so good it's earned its resurgence in modern protests. All the characters are unique and memorable from the moment they're put on screen, and you really want to spend time with them.
#Caterpillar from bugs life movie
Sure there's a bit of a sophomore slump after the gamechanger that was Toy Story, and I loathe the liar revealed trope that this movie takes too much time with, but it wins with its creativity and characters. Watching it again, it surprisingly holds up really well.
I liked it well enough as a kid, but I always looked back on it as one of the "bad" Pixar movies (even though I will maintain a bad Pixar movie is still an overall good movie). For a long time I considered A Bugs Life one of the lesser Pixar movies.
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