- “You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up. Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It's not about food! It's about keeping those ants in line!”
- ―Hopper
Hopper is the main antagonist of Disney/Pixar's 1998 film, A Bug's Life. He is the leader of the grasshoppers and is Flik's arch-nemesis.
Background
Personality
Ruthless and violent, but also cunning, Hopper thinks nothing of killing ants, whom he considers lower than dirt, and his manner of speaking to Princess Atta is reminiscent of an abusive boyfriend mocking his terrified girlfriend. He also beats up his own gang members and even presumably kills three of them to keep control of his gang. He dislikes being thought of as weak in any way.
Hopper is also briefly depicted as a very anxious character. Indeed, during the Mexican bar scene, he expresses his gang the necessity of getting respect and obedience from the ants because they are far more numerous than them. He explains one rebel ant is enough to cause an entire colony's mutiny (which, ironically, will take place at the end of the movie). It should reveal a huge fear toward ants, hidden by his ruthless and dictatorial manners toward ants and even his own troops.
In any case, Hopper sees mercy and compassion as weaknesses and relies mostly on fear to maintain control over both his own gang and the ants. Although, on the contrary, he is slightly compassionate and merciful when he gives the ants a second chance to provide food for him and his gang after Flik accidentally knocks all the food into a puddle.
Appearances
A Bug's Life
In the film, Hopper is a feared grasshopper who is blind in one eye due to a scratch caused by a past encounter with a bird. He leads his gang of grasshoppers, including his brother Molt and a restless, ruthless Thumper, who keep full control over the ants. Hopper, unlike his gang, does not underestimate the ants' strength; he knows that while weaker than the grasshoppers as individuals, the ants outnumber his gang a hundred to one.
During Hopper's first visit to the colony, the gang finds the food supply ruined, so he throws the blame on the ants and demands them to gather double the amount he has initially requested by the next season. Later, at their hangout in the desert, Molt tells Hopper about Axel and Loco's thoughts that there's no point in returning to Ant Island, much to his obvious angry disbelief; he explains to the others that the ants pose a major threat to them, because they outnumber them considerably, that they'll lose their entire way of life if the ants found out about this, and that their sole concern isn't food, but keeping the ants in line, which is the reason they are going back. When he is dissatisfied with the amount of offering the ants give him after a second chance, he usurps Ant Island and plots to kill the Queen after enough food has been gathered. After hearing from Dot about Hopper's plot, Flik and the circus troupe return to the island to rescue the Queen by putting his plan into motion. The circus bugs present their act in front of the grasshoppers to distract Hopper, who initially orders his henchmen to squish them, but later decides that they can use a little entertainment. After Manny takes the Queen for a magic trick, Hopper allows him to, even wanting Thumper down and gleefully thinking Manny will saw her in half. When he notices that the queen was missing after the act, he interrogates him to tell where she has gone by strangling him, only to be cut off by a fake bird, that the ants have made earlier in the season, which comes down swooping toward him.
Hopper is initially terrified at the sight of the bird, due to his fear of birds, but soon discovers the bird is fake when P.T. Flea helps him by setting it on fire. Hopper takes Dot hostage again. Furious and embarrassed, Hopper interrogates the ants, including Princess Atta, to find out who is responsible for the ruse. Flik then confesses that he is the one behind the plot, and Hopper signals to Thumper to savagely beat Flik until he signals him to stop, and asks Flik why he would do this to him; Flik reveals his foiled plan to squish the queen, horrifying all the ants. Hopper, disappointed about his plan being exposed, muses "I hate it when someone gives away the ending." and signals Thumper to kick Flik one last time. Then he declares how dangerous ideas can be and that ants are mindless, soil-shoving losers, who have put on this earth to serve the grasshoppers. But then, Flik manages to stand up to his feet and revolt against Hopper, revealing that ants are not meant to serve grasshoppers and are strong in number. Angered by Flik's defiance, Hopper knocks Flik to the ground. Now it's Hopper's turn to beat Flik savagely. Before Hopper can do so, he is stopped by Atta, who also stands up to Hopper, much to his amusement.
Inspired by Flik's speech, the entire colony of ants stands up against the grasshoppers. As the colony charges towards Hopper's gang, they abandon their leader and flee, leaving Hopper to be seized by the ants and trapped in a circus cannon, right at the time when a thunderstorm starts. Hopper then sees his chance to escape and shoots himself out of the cannon and activates his wings by rolling under Dim (who was knocked over by a raindrop) towards Flik and takes him hostage as he flies away with him in a plan to get revenge on the ant for embarrassingly humiliating him.
The circus bugs chase after them to try to save Flik, but they only succeed in pulling off one of Hopper's antennae. Atta intervenes and swipes Flik away from him. Hopper chases after the two across the stream. He corners Flik near a bird's nest, strangles him, and declares how much time has been wasted by Flik's tricks and that he will get more grasshoppers and be back next season, but Flik won't. But he never gets the chance to do so, since, at that moment, a bird pops out from the nest. This was the very same bird that wanted to eat Flik and the Circus Bugs before. Hopper, however, believing the bird to be another one of Flik's tricks and that there are little girls in that bird, taunts the bird until she shrieks at him, making it very clear that she is real. Now realizing that Flik had led him straight into a trap, Hopper screams and tries to flee, but the bird, however, being faster than him, blocks his path as she snatches him in her beak in one swift move and takes him to her nest, where he is eaten by her chicks.
At the end of the movie, Tuck and Roll are shown jabbering on about their fight with Hopper while holding the piece of his antenna, which is all that was left of him.
Video games
A Bug's Life
In the video game, even though Hopper is also the main antagonist, he only appears in the last three levels of the game. A cutscene from the movie, where he throws a big leaf with some food on it over the ants, also appears when it's game over for the player when he/she loses all lives. However, in the Nintendo 64 version of the game, the scene that appears is not a cutscene from the film but a still "Game Over" screen showing Hopper's evil stare if Flik loses his lives, which could indicate that he and the grasshoppers have won.
Disney Parks
Walt Disney World
Hopper appears in It's Tough to Be a Bug!, despite getting eaten in the movie.
In the show, Filk and Hopper compete with each other. While Flik believes that humans are the bugs' friends, Hopper believes that humans are the bugs' enemies. Later throughout the show, Hopper claims that no one can stop him, but a chameleon sneaks into the stage and foils him. Hopper manages to escape the show to avoid getting eaten by the chameleon and as the reptile leaves the stage.
Trivia
- Hopper's right eye got damaged after a bird nearly ate him.
- Hopper apparently had a soft spot for his mother, as he honors her deathbed wish not to kill Molt, despite being quite tempted to on various occasions, although many have debated if this is actual love or him simply trying to prove he can keep a promise.
- Hopper is the first Pixar villain to die, and the second Pixar character overall to die, after Combat Carl in Toy Story.
- Hopper is also the first Pixar antagonist who is an actual villain; Sid Phillips from Toy Story technically wasn't a real villain, he was just a kid doing what kids do to toys, not knowing that toys were sentient, intelligent beings who didn't like the way he was playing with them. Hopper, on the other hand, had many truly evil intents, such as making ants his slaves, forcing them to give him all the food on Ant Island thus starving the ants to death, and worst of all, killing their Queen.
- Kevin Spacey was not the first choice to voice Hopper. John Lasseter previously offered the role twice to Robert De Niro, who turned it down. Lasseter met Spacey at the 1995 Academy Awards (where Toy Story won the Special Achievement award and was nominated for Best Original Song and Spacey won for Best Supporting Actor) and offered him the role, which he accepted.
Gallery
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