Adorkable: Z is very quirky and neurotic, but still lovable nonetheless.
Alas, Poor Scrappy: Muffy. She's condescending and nauseating, but she doesn't deserve to get crushed by a flyswatter — complete with a shot of her dead body (if anything, she's killed because she wanted to give Z and Bala some food, but is briefly distracted by some snuggly time with her husband Chip). Even Z and Bala, who were uncomfortable around the two wasps, are shocked and dismayed after witnessing her death, with the latter breathing, "Oh, no!"
Aluminium Christmas Trees: It seems outlandish to portray ants drinking fluid from the orifices of other insects (aphids). They actually do.
Animation Age Ghetto: The film was highly successful both financially and critically despite being rated PG (a rarity for animated films at the time). But nowadays, bowdlerised versions of it get aired on TV channels geared toward children.
Complete Monster: General Mandible is a megalomaniac ant soldier who views worker ants as inferior vermin and soldiers as superior. He manipulates the Queen into rejecting peace negotiations with a hostile colony of Termites and sends all the soldiers loyal to her on a suicide mission to attack the Termites and secure his power. Both sides are destroyed in the fight except for Z, which irritates him to no end. He then engineers a new dig for the miners so they will hit a water source that will drown every ant in the colony including the Queen, except for his small faction of army loyalists who will be blindly obedient to him. He tortures Weaver to find Princess Bala after Z took her away, threatens to kill Azteca if he doesn't comply, then orders Z killed seconds after he promised not to do so and arranges Weaver's death as well. To start his new ideal colony he plans to force Princess Bala to marry him after he has killed her mother and everyone else.
It's rather odd to see Woody Allen and Sharon Stone play love interests when, only two years later, they would star in Picking Up The Pieces playing Husband and Wife where the Wife gets murdered by the Husband in the beginning of the film. It's also ironic considering Stone's feature film debut was in Stardust Memories as an actress on a train flirting with Allen.
Once Original, Now Common: Owing to PDI's history as a studio heavily involved with the burgeoning VFX industry before making the movie as one of its frontrunners. A lot of technical achievements they accomplished with the film (notably the fluid and crowd simulations) can be taken for granted these days thanks to computer animation in general being improved upon in the years since.
Overshadowed by Controversy: Despite being the second American All-CGI Cartoon feature ever as well as Dreamworks’ first feature release, the heated tensions the movie caused between Dreamworks and Pixar is perhaps its biggest legacy when discussed today.
Christopher Walken as the sane and hyper-competent Cutter, causing an expressive and eccentric voice with what is supposed to be a stern secondary character.
Despite the uncredited rewrites he did to suit his style, it can still feel weird to hear Woody Allen's voice coming out of an animated character. And while the film isn't necessarily for children, the action-adventure plot is clearly meant more for audiences younger than the typical jaded adults who are used to the kind of banal, Slice of Life stories he's often associated withnote It's also an example given the sexual assault allegations made against him by Mia and Dylan Farrow were already well known by 1998. And, even if you believe he's innocent, he also comes off as out of place given Z seems to be in his 20s or 30s and Allen already had an old man voice by 1998, not helping that he was in his early 60s when he worked on the movie.
Squick: In-universe, Z sees the ants drink aphid beer out of the anuses of live aphids this way. When Weaver drinks one, said aphid is squirming.
John Lasseter felt double-crossed when he heard about this film being produced, considering he discussed the general idea of A Bug's Life with Jeffrey Katzenberg before he left under bad circumstances to form DreamWorks. The fact that Katzenberg then offered to stop production if Disney rescheduled the Pixar film away from his major film, The Prince of Egypt, ticked him off more as blackmail. The experience didn't help Lasseter's relationship with Disney boss Michael Eisner either: Eisner had ordered A Bug's Life to open the same day as The Prince of Egypt a la Don Bluth's old strategy and withheld a $90 million bonus in an attempt to bankrupt DreamWorks out of the gate, which was one of the reasons for Antz's creation. A federal judge ordered Disney to pay up the bonus and tripled it, foiling that plan.
It should be said though that apart from having talking insects and having ants as main characters, the two films are overall incredibly different movies. They have almost nothing in common. Even their Aesops are different; one is about finding individuality, and the other is about working together as a team.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The worker revolution that starts up once word begins to spread that Z went against the ant colony's system pretty much disappears completely after General Mandible's speech wins back the workers.
Too Cool to Live: Barbatus, one of the few soldiers loyal to the Queen and bites the dust after finally being reduced to a head.
Despite being The Faceless here, the human that Z and Bala encounter still falls into this due to the stretched out proportions to make him look giant, and being only a lower torso with a stiff walking animation.
What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: This film is considered to be one of the most mature movies DreamWorks has made. While it's rated PG, it's a much harder PG than, say, Shrek — a couple of "damns" wouldn't shock most people, but the humor is more in line with Woody Allen's other, more clearly adult-aimed work ("You know, I was gonna let you become part of my most erotic fantasies..."). And then there's the violence. Not helping is that the vast majority of merchandise is aimed at children.
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