My take of A Bug's Life

I’m writing today about a Pixar movie that now falls in the vast realm of the Disney franchise. A Bug’s Life (1998) is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated Pixar movies around. The rag tag cast of bugs that saves the day is such a great group of characters.

For starters, the protagonist, Flik starts off as an outcast. No one really likes Flik because he is always causing trouble around the colony. He has an extremely bright mind, but none of the other ants are accustomed to change. Their stubbornness makes Flik even more of an outcast because no one will accept his idea. This is what makes Flik such a great character: he doesn’t follow the norms, he thinks outside the box. It is this very trait that ends up saving the day for all the ants.

Next, the circus bugs that Flik stumbles upon when he goes to the city create such a more interesting climax to the movie. At first, they are terrified of the impending grasshopper invasion and want nothing to do with it. However, they each in their own way develop a bond with the ants and feel compelled to stay. I nearly felt my eyes tear up when they decided to stay and help Flik. Then the owner of the circus comes back around and the ants realize that they aren’t the warrior bugs they thought. They immediately lose all faith in Flik’s ingenious plan and revert back to their old submissive ways.

I am not lying when I say I literally jumped with joy when Dot (the aspiring queen ant) gets Flik to come back and save the day. It is such a heartwarming moment when he decides to help the colony right after they banished him. It takes a special kind of person to help those who directly betrayed them. Flik comes back and makes some of the most heroic rescues in any Pixar movie. He ends up saving the entire colony and defeating the most evil grasshopper names Hopper (clever name Pixar).

The movie itself has a pretty exciting and entertaining plot, but Flik is really what makes the movie so great. He constantly challenges himself and those around him the become better and smarter. He resembles many great inventors and brilliant minds from history as well. There have been so many geniuses who were rejected because they were just so far ahead from the rest of the people around them. Darwin after discovering evolution, was terrified to tell anyone because he knew it would be rejected; Pythagoras in 300 BCE declared the earth to be round and everyone just laughed at him; Louis Pasteur hypothesized that disease was spread through germs to which people just ignored at first. Flik in many ways resembles these people who were leaps and bounds ahead of their time and that is why he is so motivational to the audience.