A Bug’s Life is the technological marvel Pixar left behind

A Bug’s Life has become the Jan Brady of Pixar. Three years after Toy Story, the bar was set astronomically high for the company’s second feature-length outing with Disney—and while the film about the little ant that could raked in just $10 million less than its predecessor’s worldwide box office total of $373 million, it never seemed to step out of the shadow of its big brother. But to write the film off as a “sophomore slump” would be doing a disservice to the storytelling and pioneering digital animation of the Bug’s Life team.
The success of A Bug’s Life is most evident in the film’s climax, in which inventor ant Flick (Dave Foley) and Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) rally their colony to rise against the evil grasshopper gang led by Hopper (Kevin Spacey, unfortunately). Originally inspired by Aesop’s The Ant And The Grasshopper, the Pixar crew molded the simple fable into an epic that concurrently celebrates the powers of the individual and banding together. In many ways, the image of the colony locking their arms together as a united front against an oppressor is more relevant to U.S. audiences today than it was in 1998. And the revolt that ensues weaves together moments that progress multiple storylines in a way that most Disney animation hadn’t up until then.