{"id":4580,"date":"2026-01-20T15:00:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4580"},"modified":"2025-12-09T21:38:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T04:38:27","slug":"movie-a-bugs-life-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/movie-a-bugs-life-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: A Bug’s Life (1998)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AA Bug’s Life
<\/u><\/strong>Year: 1998
Rating: G
Length: 95 minutes \/ 1.58 hours<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting how Pixar pulled ideas from some much more serious movies for their first few films. While Toy Story<\/em><\/a> (1995) has a vibe straight from The Defiant Ones<\/em> (1958), A Bug\u2019s Life<\/em> (1998) more directly aligned with Seven Samurai<\/em> (1954). And while the visuals of A Bug\u2019s Life haven\u2019t held up nearly as well over the years, the plot truly rings truer today than it did at the end of the last millennium. After all, what if we\u2019re all suffering because a select few people are taking all our hard-earned efforts for themselves?<\/p>\n

The decision to animate bugs with stiff exoskeletons was likely because of the technical limitations of the time (similar to why Pixar chose toys for Toy Story<\/em>). But with the natural scenery for this setting, you could see the need to innovate here and there to produce something that looked good. And for 1998, it looked good. A few scenes still hold up, but there are still quite a few more that are a good \u201cbefore\u201d picture to show how far computer animation has progressed in the nearly 30 years since then.<\/p>\n

While A Bug\u2019s Life is still ultimately a movie aimed at entertaining children, the main conflict between the ants and the grasshoppers is the kind of lesson everyone should learn. Even if you don\u2019t necessarily want to apply it to oppression from a ruling class, knowing that small actions from a large enough group of like-minded people can add up to significant change makes addressing bigger problems that much easier. If we realize that one small action is easy to accomplish, then it\u2019s not so hard to perform that action if everyone else is doing so to affect the world.<\/p>\n

Aged computer graphics that still have an important lesson to teach, I give A Bug\u2019s Life<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This film appears in the following posts:<\/em>
Cinema Connections #117. Hired Warriors<\/a>
Cinema Connections #118. The Circus<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Bug’s LifeYear: 1998Rating: GLength: 95 minutes \/ 1.58 hours It\u2019s interesting how Pixar pulled ideas from some much more serious movies for their first few films. While Toy Story (1995) has a vibe straight from The Defiant Ones (1958), A Bug\u2019s Life (1998) more directly aligned with Seven Samurai (1954). And while the visuals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1199,2],"tags":[2128,3103,6,4389,3102,13,193,8,3099,4388],"class_list":["post-4580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-animated","category-movie","tag-2128","tag-a-bugs-life","tag-disney","tag-grasshopper-and-the-ant","tag-hired-warriors","tag-movie","tag-pixar","tag-review","tag-seven-samurai","tag-the-circus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4587,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions\/4587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}