Purdue News

November 20, 1998 Bugs are good movies stars, entomologists say WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Hollywood knows that bugs make good box office. Two full-length animated movies starring insects will be in movie theaters this Thanksgiving, and leading bug experts say that isn't surprising. Just as three years ago every hip kid in elementary school knew the difference between a Tyrannosaurus and a Brontosaurus, this year's budding naturalists will quickly correct you if you mistake an ant for an arachnid, said Tom Turpin, professor of entomology at Purdue University. "Insects are the new dinosaurs for kids," he said. "Already museums around the country have special insect exhibits and bug festivals, so they're already pretty popular. But these movies are going to just make them even bigger." May Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois and the nation's top expert on insects in films, said that rather than abandoning dinosaurs, kids will find room to enjoy both bugs and dinos. "Dinosaurs are extinct -- that's part of their appeal," she said. "Insects are all too real. What other kind of wild animal can you see without leaving home?" Earlier this fall DreamWorks studios released the movie "Antz," which received good reviews. "Antz" was aimed at a somewhat more sophisticated audience. The movie starred "Z," a whiny ant voiced by Woody Allen, who complains to his therapist that he was ignored by his parents, pointing out that he was the "middle child in a family of five million." The latest Hollywood effort is "A Bug's Life," which was produced by Disney and Pixar, the studio that created "Toy Story." "A Bug's Life," a loose retelling of Aesop's fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper," is scheduled to be released Nov. 25. This new Disney movie contains a menagerie of creepy-crawlies, including pillbugs, a chubby caterpillar, and a male ladybug who has "issues." The lead character in the movie is an ant named "Flik," which is voiced by Dave Foley. Turpin said that bug movies aren't a new invention by Hollywood. "There was a whole batch of these in the 1950s with 'Mothra' and 'The Fly,'" he said. "It's not really a new phenomenon." In fact, there have been enough bug movies that each year the University of Illinois holds an Insect Fear Film Festival, and in recent years Purdue has held showings of popular bug flicks as part of its annual Bug Bowl. Berenbaum said that insects as good guys in movies aren't all that new, either. "There's actually a rich tradition of good-guy insects that people tend to forget about," she said. "Jiminy Cricket probably started it off in 1940 with Pinocchio." Other films from that era with insects as the good guys include "Once Upon a Time" and "Hoppity Goes to Town," which was a full-length animated film like "Antz" and "A Bug's Life." There are other good-guy insects in films. In "Godzilla vs. The Thing," for example, Mothra was a good guy. However, in recent years insects have been portrayed as evil aliens in a host of movies. For example, in "Starship Troopers," giant arthropods try to take over Earth; in "Men in Black," giant insects threaten to take over Earth until they are overwhelmed by the cool projected by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Turpin said insects are a natural choice to play the alien villains in these movies. "The look is the key," he said. "They're totally differently from us. They have an exoskeleton. They're robotic in the way they think; they're different in all of their behaviors. A dog can smile at you and lick you with its tongue, but there's no such connection with insects. They're as different from humans as a creature can be." Turpin added that moviegoers are predisposed to root against any character in a movie that is fashioned after an insect. "We hate insects anyway, so it's very easy to make them the antagonist in a movie," he said. "As soon as we see an insect in a movie we know that something bad is going to happen. We already have that mindset; we're ready to believe the worst." One staple of the horror genre is the building-sized giant insect-like creature, such as the monsters Will Smith vaporized in "Men in Black." This monster is a staple of alien movies and cheesy genetic-experiment-gone-awry B-flicks, but Turpin said that we have nothing to fear when it comes to giant insects. "Technically they can't become larger than they are because their structure just won't let it happen," he said. "The weight of the exoskeleton would be prohibitive to carry around, and the diffusion system that they use to distribute oxygen through their bodies wouldn't work and they would suffocate. Those two things prevent insects from becoming the size of elephants. Instead they try to overcome us with numbers. That's how they battle us for supremacy on this planet." Sources: Tom Turpin, (765) 494-4568; e-mail, Tom_Turpin@entm.purdue.edu May Berenbaum, (217) 333-7784; e-mail, maybe@uiuc.edu Writer: Steve Tally, (765) 494-9809; e-mail, tally@aes.purdue.edu Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu To the Purdue News and Photos Page