Video for A Bugs Life

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Plot for It's a Bug's Life

Flik is an oddball, an individualist, and a would-be inventor among a colony of ants that is being oppressed by a Mafia-like gang of grasshoppers. The grasshoppers arrive once a season to extort food from the ants, supposedly in return for protection from "bigger bugs". While working with an invention by which to pick grain more efficiently, Flik accidentally knocks the annual offering into a stream. In exchange for a temporary reprieve from the grasshoppers, the head grasshopper Hopper, gives the ants until the end of autumn to produce an offering of twice the usual amount. Later Flik is admonished by the royal council of the colony, led by Princess Atta, the anxious princess of the colony and soon-to-be successor of the current queen. In an attempt to redeem himself, Flik immediately comes up with and proposes a plan to recruit "warrior bugs" from the city to fight off the grasshoppers. The council sees this as a convenient way of simply keeping Flik from wreaking any more havoc on their food-gathering activities and agrees to his proposal, causing Flik to believe they have actually accepted the merits of his plan.

Flik eventually finds his way to the "city"; an insects' metropolis built of discarded boxes and vessels. Here he mistakes a troupe of recently-unemployed circus performers whose latest act had collapsed into chaos, for the warrior bugs he seeks. The bug troupe similarly mistake Flik for a talent agent who wants to engage their act, and agree to travel with him back to Ant Island. Believing that Flik has indeed proven himself and they are truly warriors, the colony celebrates. Princess Atta, however, grows suspicious, especially when both Flik and the circus troupe become aware of their respective mistakes. As the troupe tries to leave, they see Princess Dot, Atta's younger sister who idolizes Flik, attacked by a hungry bird. The troupe and Flik pull off a daring rescue, causing Atta to believe they may be warriors after all. Slowly, she begins to sympathize and fall in love with Flik.

Caught between the opportunity to improve his fortunes within the colony and the knowledge that the bug troupe are not who they appeared to be, Flik discovers that Hopper is deeply afraid of bug-eating birds, and proposes they build a model bird to scare him away. The ants unite behind Flik's plan and build the bird successfully. But while they celebrate, the circus' ringmaster arrives to retrieve and rehire his performers, inadvertently exposing the truth which Flick and the troupe had tried to cover up. The colony decides that Hopper should never now about what happened while putting the bird plan on hold. Atta, however, is so hurt by Flik's deception that she banishes him from the colony, leading him to join the circus in dejection.

Having spent an enormous amount of time pursuing Flik's plan, the ants try desperately to gather enough food for the new offering. But due to the rapidly-approaching winter season, they cannot find enough food to meet the quota. When the grasshoppers return, they are enraged by the meager offering, and force them to work until all the food on the island is gathered. Dot overhears Hopper's plan to kill the Queen after receiving the full offering. She therefore goes after Flik; having found him, she convinces him and the circus bugs to return and put the bird plan into action. It nearly works until the confused P.T. inadvertently incinerates the bird while trying to "protect" his performers.

Hopper realizes he has been tricked and takes out his anger on Flik. After absorbing a savage beating, Flik realizes and declares that, in response to Hopper's claims of species superiority, Hopper is actually reliant on the ants for his own survival, but also fears their superior strength—the suppression of any cause of this fear being the true reason for his return. Becoming desperate, he threatens to crush Flik. However, the ant colony collectively realizes that they vastly outnumber the grasshoppers; therefore the ants all rise up in a wave of fury and chase the grasshoppers out forever. Hopper, alone and reduced to a bare minimum of rational thought, desperately tries to take revenge on Flik. A pursuit scene follows, where Hopper attempts to take Flik away and kill him while Atta and the circus performers try to retrieve him. The performers are left behind while Atta goes on to rescue Flik alone. Later Flik lures Hopper into the nest of the bird from whom Dot was rescued, whereupon the bird feeds Hopper to its chicks.

After these events, the colony adopts Flik's harvesting machine and bids farewell to the circus performers, who depart from the island. Atta is crowned queen of the colony, and she kisses Flik and chooses him as her mate.

Box office for A Bug's Life

A Bug's Life made approximately $162.7 million in its U.S. theatrical run, easily covering its estimated production costs of $45 million. The film made $200,600,000 in foreign countries. The film made a worldwide gross of $363.3 million surpassing the competition from DreamWorks's Antz.