Awesome / Children of Time (2015)

• In the medieval era, Bianca invents a weapon to use against the ant supercolony. Portia and her compatriots have to infiltrate the ant fortress, which is a living breathing structure made from the bodies of countless ants, to drop the bombs at precise positions. What is the payload? A "null scent" that erases all ant instructions, allowing the spiders to reprogram them. In the next era, the spiders are using the ant colonies as factories and computers.
• In the religious era, Fabian discovers a way to improve ant scent instructions; it's as big an improvement as going from vacuum tubes to microchips. His price? Equal rights for males. When Portia denies him, he uses his suborned ants to escape, frees Bianca from confinement (she was going to be executed as a heretic) and goes to Seven Trees. Once Great Nest starts its crusade, Fabian becomes a general leading his tiny groups of ants against much larger armies, and winning with minimal losses. Once they've won, Seven Trees agrees to give Fabian the rights he demanded.
• The finale:
  • The Gilgamesh returns to find that the spiders have built an orbital ring made of webs around the world. Every single human can't help but stare, because how they hell could they have anticipated that?
  • The key crew decide, grimly, that they have to assume the worst about Kern, and shoot down her satellite. It's a mournful moment for the spiders, as the vessel of the Messenger is lost forever. Then we see that Kern was downloaded into an ant colony long ago, and the Gilgamesh gets a message.
    Kern: MISSED.
  • The spiders throw rocks at the Gilgamesh. They turned their orbital web-ring into a catapult capable of launching asteroids at speeds enough to damage the ship. And that was all just a distraction to get the commandos on board.
  • After the spiders have disabled the hull censors, trapped everyone sent after them, evaded all lockdowns, and cut through every shut door, we discover their secret bioweapon: A modified version of the nanovirus, making use of its ability to let infected organisms empathize with each other. The humans wake up, now realizing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the spiders are people and can be treated with reasonably. Because the spiders don't destroy, they work alongside anything that could be useful.