Buggin’ Out: The 25th Anniversary of “Antz”

Where were you for the big “Bug War of 1998?”

Whether or not you remember it, here is a refresher: In the fall of 1998, both DreamWorks Animation and Disney/Pixar had full-length, computer-animated features released, each one revolving around bugs. Disney and Pixar’s would be A Bug’s Life, and DreamWorks would be entitled Antz.

Jeffrey Katzenberg had left Disney in a much-publicized exit in 1994, forming a new studio, DreamWorks, SKG, with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. This venture would include a new animation studio, and they soon partnered with the computer animation production company Pacific Data Images to produce features with computer-generated imagery.

The first of these would be entitled Antz, which, as the title suggested, would take place in the insect world. Controversy was immediately sparked, as Disney and Pixar had their own insect-centered animated feature in production at the time, A Bug’s Life, inspired by the Grasshopper and the Ants fable.

Many wondered how DreamWorks had a “bug movie” in production, while Disney was readying theirs, particularly since the Katzenberg-Disney split was so recent. It seemed to be a major coincidence, as reported by writer Peter Burrows in a 1998 issue of Newsweek. Burrows wrote:

“…Pixar executives don’t believe that Katzenberg found out about the Bugs project while at Disney. Indeed, some are even willing to believe DreamWorks’ version of the facts that Katzenberg got the idea for Antz from Nina Jacobsen, a former Disney executive (now back at Disney) who pitched the idea while working for DreamWorks at the time.”

However it happened, animation fans reaped the benefits of two big movies from two significant studios opening during two months.

The plot of Antz borrowed heavily from several sources, such as George Orwell’s 1984 and director Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus. In a 1998 interview, Eric Darnell, who co-directed Antz with Tim Johnson, said, “We wanted to make the movie for ourselves. We weren’t selecting a certain demographic at the start and then trying to define everything we did based on what the expectations of that demographic might be. We never felt, even from the start, that this was a typical animated film by any means.”

The film centered on an ant named Z-4195 (or Z for short). Z is a worker ant who can’t seem to fit in and has come to question society around him, whereas the others in the colony have come to accept their mundane lives.

Meanwhile, Princess Bala, of the ant royal family, is also unhappy with her lot in life and ventures out of the palace to mingle among the common folk. She wanders into an ant bar and meets Z, who falls in love and will do anything to be closer to the princess. This includes disguising himself as a soldier ant and inadvertently heading into battle.

Z returns a hero, is honored by the Queen, meets Bala once again, and through a series of mishaps, the two fall out of a garbage shoot into the outside world. While Z and Bala are there, Z insists they search for a place called “Insectopia,” where all insects live harmoniously.

Meanwhile, within the colony, the film’s villain, Mandible, is building a “mega-chamber,” where he plans to trap all of what he considers the “weak and ineffective” workers. It’s then up to the unlikely hero of Z to go back to the colony and battle Mandible.

Computer animation developed in leaps and bounds in the 90s, continuously showing its possibilities. This provided the filmmakers behind Antz the opportunity to not only bring the ant world to life with new dimensionality but also craft the “outside world” with a new perspective, like puddles as big as rivers, dandelions the size of Redwood trees and a dynamic sequence where Z and Bala find themselves stuck to gum on the bottom of a sneaker.

“We didn’t want to emphasize how small the ants are,” said Darnell in 1998. “We wanted to show how big the world is. We wanted to show everything from their perspective. We imagined that Z wasn’t a fifth of an inch tall but that he was five-six or five-seven. We tried to make our camera work within his world.”

Bringing Antz to life was an all-star cast that rivals many of today’s Fast and Furious movies.

Providing voices were Sharon Stone as Princess Bala, Gene Hackman as Mandible, Sylvester Stallone as Weaver, Z’s buddy, Anne Bancroft as the Queen, Christopher Walken as Mandible’s second in command, Cutter, Jennifer Lopez as Weaver’s girlfriend, Azteka and Jane Curtain and Dan Aykroyd as a couple of wasps.

However, the biggest casting coup with Antz was the voice of leading man Z, provided by Woody Allen. “He brought so much to this character,” noted Darnell,” and re-invented this character. He would read what was on the page, but by passing it through his own ‘filter,’ lines that were otherwise mere exposition became real windows into his character.”

“My very first approach was drawing Woody Allen as an ant,” laughed Raman Hui, the film’s character designer, during a 1998 interview. “Basically, my first drawing was a caricature of Woody Allen with antennae.” Hui refined the look of Z and the other characters, creating over 3,000 drawings over the course of a year. “We went through so many different things,” Hui remembered. “We went from very human to very cartoony and Disney-like, then to very artistic and more like James and the Giant Peach.”

Antz moved quickly through production, aided by then-new technology, including an animation system for more expressive facial features and a “crowd system” that allowed 60,000 ants in one shot.

However, the filmmakers didn’t focus on the technology. “All of our discussions when we look at a shot aren’t computer speak,” said Rex Grignon, one of the film’s animation supervisors, in 1998. “It’s more emotional stuff like ‘Why is she blinking so nervously,’ or ‘His brow doesn’t seem tense enough.’ That’s the type of discussion that we have. As opposed to ‘That vector needs re-interpolation.'”

Antz, the first film released by DreamWorks Animation, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. It opened on October 2, 1998, and critics and audiences were very receptive. Entertainment Weekly called the film “…sophisticated, funny and joyously subversive…,” while Roger Ebert awarded Antz ***1/2 out of four stars. Antz was the number one movie at the box office for two weeks in a row, grossing over $90 million domestically by the end of its run.

Antz arrived in theaters over a month before Disney-Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, but as audiences would be able to see as the dust eventually settled on the “Bug War of 1998,” both films couldn’t be more different, not just in story but in tone. There was enough room for both of them.

Just before the release of Antz, Darnell noted how much he hoped the film would transcend the technology and connect with audiences, saying, “I like to look at it as just a film instead of an animated film. I hope when people come out of the film, they talk as much, if not more, about the story and the characters than about the wonderful images that they saw.”