Antz

Antz is a computer animated film produced by Dreamworks, released in 1998. It features the voices of well-known actors such as Woody Allen, Sylvester Stallone and Christopher Walken as various members of an ant society. Some of the main characters share facial similarities with the actors who voice them.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The story takes place in an ant colony in or around the city of New York. The protagonist is an ant named Z-4195 (Woody Allen). Z is a neurotic and individualistic soul living in a society that values strength and conformity. Rather than spend his life as just another worker ant, he falls in love with a princess, becomes a soldier (or, at least, gets swept up in a battle), an outlaw, and finally saves his colony from destruction.

Its cinematic release was somewhat overshadowed by Pixar's A Bug's Life, which was also a computer animated film based on the adventures of a misfit ant who falls for the princess of the colony. Antz is not as child-centric as A Bug's Life. It deals with slightly more complex themes, including conformity and war, and its imagery is less colorful and more realistic—for example, the ants' coloration is orange-brown rather than bright blue.