Dacey wrote:(Also, as I said elsewhere, the plot summaries for those films would've been available before their teasers debuted, so it seems unlikely it was part of some grand "anti-DWA" scheme)
Also, at least around here, it seems generally agreed that Antz was better than A Bug's Life. And that's not a shot at A Bug's Life, BTW)
Even so, it's my own particular complaint about Katz's sitcom-fueled thought processes that even when he DOES steal, he can't steal them right--Pixar knows how to delilberately throw that last-minute "feel"-wrench into their stories to keep them from becoming cliche's (which is why they never tell us about them ahead of time, heheh), and JK has his eye on the marketing and believes that reliable cliche' tropes make the genre turn 'round.
You can almost picture JK getting an early scoop of A Bug's Life's plot and...just not
getting it:
"Y'see, Flik doesn't quite fit in with the colony--"
"I get it! He's insecure! He's a WOODY ALLEN ant!"
"No, see, he's sort of a different thinker..."
"Because all the other ants are in the army! And they're jerks that lead repressive lives, just like in our grownup cities! And they're forcing him to
conform!"
"Well, he sort of likes Queen Atta, and he's trying to impress her with his new ideas..."
"So they get lost and end up together on a ROAD TRIP! We've got a hit! Eisner will be
begging for mercy!"