Today sees the release of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life on Blu-ray and I must say that more than any other studios films, you need to get Pixar’s films on Blu-ray. For as many great special features there are on the disc, the transfer of the film alone is worth all the money you’ll spend.

But that’s not what I want to talk about now.

What I do I want to talk about how great this film since it is, perhaps, the most under-appreciated Pixar film to date.

I suppose no appreciation of A Bug’s Life would be even halfway competent if we didn’t begin with Akira Kurosawa. If you don’t know who Akira Kurosawa is, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Kurosawa is the Japanese filmmaker whose films directly inspired movies like Star Wars, the Leone westerns (most notably A Fistful of Dollars), The Magnificent Seven, and many, many others. As a filmmaker, Kurosawa pioneered techniques in storytelling and cinematography that are used to this day in virtually every film, consciously or otherwise.

A Bug’s Life borrowed a lot more than just storytelling and cinematography from Kurosawa, in this case, they blended the classic tale of the grasshopper and the ants (you can watch that here, but it’s also on the Bug’s Life disc) into a thrilling and satisfying family version of Kurosawa’s masterpiece Seven Samurai.

Both films center around agrarian cultures who are beset by bandits at the beginning of the film who are intent to steal their harvest, even though it would mean their eventual doom in the winter. In Seven Samurai, that part fell on Rikichi, a lowly farmer with a dark secret. In A Bug’s Life, the responsibility falls on Flik, a young inventive ant who’s constantly bucking the traditions of his elders and causing more problems than he seems to be worth.

The brilliant part of any adaptation from one medium to another is to switch the culture or time period to somewhere equally appropriate. Kurosawa’s Yojimbo was turned into both a western (A Fistful of Dollars) and a prohibition era shootout (Last Man Standing). Seven Samurai was also remade into the western The Magnificent Seven. But the tone of the source material was largely intact. The brilliance in what Pixar did with A Bug’s Life is that they were able to transplant the story into a different culture (ants vs. grasshoppers) but they were also to change the tone in order to make it palatable to the genre they were making. True, there were spots of comedy in Seven Samurai, but they turned the story on its ear enough to make it seem fresh and engaging to even the most ardent fans of Seven Samurai.

The two major departures in the story have to do with the harvest and the Rikichi/Flik character, and the Samurai themselves. In the source material, the harvest has yet to be reaped and the bandits will be arriving to take it from them as soon as they’ve done so. In A Bug’s Life, the harvest is complete and before the grasshoppers are able to receive their annual tribute, Flik accidentally dumps it into the creek.
As for the Samurai in this picture, they’ve been recast as down on their luck circus bugs who when they’re offered a job as warrior bugs gladly take it.

The major dilemma in the film comes not from how well they’ll defend the ant hill from the grasshoppers, but how long will it be until they’re found out as imposters.

The subtlety and skill with which the screenwriters are able to bend this film to their will and explore dilemmas not previously present in a pairing of already classic stories. And it’s so easily relatable, it makes you wonder why no one had done it before.

I think a perfect double feature night would be Seven Samurai and A Bug’s Life for anyone (or any group) over the age of 10 or 12, since Seven Samurai is subtitled. But it would be a great family night for culture and art.

In short, buy them both. Seven Samurai and A Bug’s Life.

You won’t regret it.