
They then escape from a magnifying glass and hide. When Z finds that he has been cornered, he panics and pretends to take Bala hostage to trick the queen's guards into letting him leave rather than imprison him. There he meets Bala, who eventually recognizes him as a worker. He is also congratulated by the secretly irate General Mandible, and is brought before the Queen Ant. Z returns home and is hailed as a war hero, even though he did not do anything and was traumatized by the fighting. Before he dies, Barbatus tells Z to think for himself rather than follow orders all his life, leaving Z saddened and depressed. Following the battle, all Z can find of Barbatus is his head. At the base of a tree near nightfall, Z realizes he is actually marching into battle, and all of the soldiers except for Z are killed by acid-shooting termites. He is unaware that the army's leader and Bala's fiancé General Mandible (Gene Hackman) is secretly sending all the soldiers loyal to the Queen Ant (Anne Bancroft) to die so he can begin to build a colony filled with powerful ants. He marches with the ranks, befriending a staff sergeant named Barbatus (Danny Glover) in the process. To see Bala again, Z exchanges places with Weaver and joins the army.

Z meets Princess Bala (Sharon Stone) at a bar where she goes to escape from her suffocating royal life and falls in love with her.

_render.png)
His friends include fellow worker Azteca (Jennifer Lopez) and a soldier ant, Weaver (Sylvester Stallone). The protagonist is Z-4195 (Woody Allen), or "Z" for short, a neurotic and pessimistic worker ant living in a wholly totalitarian society who longs for the opportunity to truly express himself. The setting for the story is an ant colony in Central Park in New York City.
