‘Mars Attacks!’ Was Tim Burton’s Ultimate Unregulated Experiment And It’s Stranger Than You Remember
‘Mars Attacks!’ Is Based On A Topps Card Series
Photo: Warner Bros.No matter how weird or disappointing, even the strangest big-budget film adaptations are based loosely on other forms of narrative content. Speed Racer is based on an anime of the same name, Old Boy is based on a manga, the list keeps going.
But Mars Attacks! is the only big budget film based on a set of underappreciated Topps cards from 1962. The cards present a world where big-brained Martians come to Earth and gruesomely eliminate its inhabitants with laser beams, until the US military nukes their home planet.
This narrative is only presented on the back of one of the cards, which explains why Burton’s adaptation is so fractured. Even if the cards did have a tightly constructed narrative, it’s risky to green-light an $80 million movie based on 55 trading cards.
The Aliens Are A Mix Of CG And Stop-Motion
Photo: Warner Bros.Initially, the aliens in Mars Attacks! were meant to be created via stop-motion animation, but after seeing a series of CGI tests performed by a team at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Burton flipped his wig and threw himself into the world of computer animation.
At the time of the ILM tests, the Mars Attacks! crew was already working with 12-inch, fully articulated figures, but the amount of time it took to change their facial features proved problematic. Each time an alien’s face changed, the shooting had to stop so puppeteers could take off their helmets and swap out eyes and mouths.
According to Jim Mitchell of ILM, he put together a quick test using a background from Jumanji and sent it over to a producer on Mars Attacks!. With the producer’s go-ahead, he created a more in-depth test that showed the aliens moving and acting pretty much how they do in the finished product. After Burton saw the test, he gave the team the okay, but still wanted the aliens to have a stop-motion feel.
To achieve this, the animators had to rethink CG animation. Mitchell explained:
So there was even talk at some point about, what is stop-motion? Well, to start with there wasn’t motion blur, at least not in a big way. There’s a staccato sort of quality to the look so we thought, should we just go that route?
He continued, saying the animators exaggerated keyframes (a location that marks when an animation starts and stops) to simulate "the stop-motion quality.”
The Film Is Full Of Mayhem
Photo: Warner Bros.Burton has never shied away from shocking imagery, but the action scenes in Mars Attacks! are so overwhelming that it’s no wonder it turned off some audiences. Much of the gore in the film is bloodless, with the Martians evaporating humans into red and green skeletons (this is a Christmas movie after all), similar to what happens in the original trading card series.
Viewers who don’t know that, however, are in for a rude awakening once a crowd of Americans is slaughtered after they gather to welcome the Martians. This is just the beginning, as Michael J. Fox is soon obliterated while holding his girlfriend’s hand, leaving only his charred skeleton behind.
Humans aren’t the only ones dispatched with nihilistic glee, as the Martians are destroyed in equally horrific ways. They have their minds literally blown in an increasingly gooey and disgusting fashion before their heads burst in the climax of the film. The most jarring act comes when two teens get in on the chaos after they pick up a ray gun while touring the White House.
Sarah Jessica Parker And Tim Burton’s Dog Switch Bodies
Photo: Warner Bros.It’s impossible to identify the “strangest” moment of Mars Attacks!, but one scene that’s in the running happens after the Martians wipe out their welcome wagon. First, they remove the head of Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Nathalie Lake, before putting it on her dog’s body and vice versa. Then, the Martians abduct Pierce Brosnan’s Professor Donald Kessler and take his head off too.
Kessler and Lake spend the rest of the film discussing their love for each other, with Kessler stating he wishes he had arms to hold Lake. It’s a truly bizarre series of scenes that have nothing to do with the rest of the plot. To top it off, Parker’s dog is actually Burton’s Chihuahua.
A Martian Dresses As A Sexy Woman To Seduce The Press Secretary
Photo: Warner Bros.Burton’s love of Tex Avery cartoons, specifically Bugs Bunny, shines in the absolutely bonkers scene where a Martian puts on a sexy lady costume and seduces the White House press secretary in order to get into the president’s bedroom and eliminate him.
Everything about this scene is pure weirdness, with Burton’s sensibilities turned up all the way. The way the “woman” walks, the way Martin Short tries to seduce her with his limited amount of power, and the overt cartoonish mayhem that breaks out once the jig is up. If there’s one scene to watch in this film, it’s this one.
Earth Beats The Martians With The Power Of Music
Photo: Warner Bros.In the end, the aliens are defeated when Richie Norris (Lukas Haas) plays a recording of Slim Whitman’s “Indian Love Call” over the airwaves of a Las Vegas radio station. After his grandmother discovers the Martians can’t stand the song, the two of them blast the track far and wide, then Burton cuts around to the rest of the world catching onto the trick.
It’s genuinely weird how little Burton cares about the way humanity communicates their knowledge of the song, but by this point in the movie, the audience is either in or out, so explaining it would be ridiculous.
Tom Jones Appears As Himself And Sings Surrounded By Woodland Creatures
Photo: Warner Bros.A key moment in the film occurs in the third act when the one and only Tom Jones appears to sing his hit “It’s Not Unusual.” Before he can get too far into the song, though, a group of Martians bust into his performance and start firing at everyone. Luckily, Tom Jones escapes.
It turns out Jones can fly a plane, so he helps a few Las Vegas locals get to Lake Tahoe. As the film ends, the animals of the forest come out to greet Jones and his friends as he gets back to belting out “It’s Not Unusual.”
Tommy J sings this lounge classic while a falcon rests on his arm, and he’s flanked by elk, deer, and white doves. Sorry, Tom, but this is unusual.
The Martians Remake Mount Rushmore
Photo: Warner Bros.In classic disaster movie tradition, when the Martians are wreaking havoc on Earth, they go about destroying the planet’s monuments. They bowl a large rock through the heads on Easter Island, cut down the Eiffel Tower, and try to push the Washington Monument on top of a bunch of Boy Scouts.
But the best part of this montage is when the aliens use a giant laser to replace the faces on Mount Rushmore with their own ugly mugs. It’s some cartoonish flair after all the disintegrations, but it’s still super weird.
‘Mars Attacks!’ Is Pure Tim Burton
Photo: Warner Bros.For better or worse, Mars Attacks! is everything Tim Burton wanted. The film’s over-the-top mix of offbeat humor, ‘50s nostalgia, and comic book silliness is all the director’s obsessions in one package. Burton had a strange childhood, which led him to obsess over monster movies, specifically films from the ‘50s and ‘60s; Mars Attacks! is brimming with the stylistic flourishes of that era.
The reason the film is so anachronistic - both in storytelling and pace - is because Burton followed the blueprint set out by films like The Blob, The Phantom Planet, and even The Beginning of the End. That’s why Pierce Brosnan, a good actor, delivers pages of exposition while pointing to things on a diagram. Meanwhile, scientists routinely walk into a room to say things like, “This gum is made of NO2, that’s how the Martian could breathe in our atmosphere.”
The storytelling, acting, and pacing are so hyper-specific that it’s obviously made for an audience of one.
The Movie Is Very Mean
Photo: Warner Bros.One thread that runs through Burton’s films is sympathy given to the monsters of the world. None of that is present in Mars Attacks!. Instead, the Earth is populated with ugly Americans and idiots obsessed with donuts. One of the only characters who’s genuinely nice is General Casey (Paul Winfield), and he’s the first human to perish in the film. After his disintegration, the movie fills with excessively nasty characters to which it's impossible to connect.
It’s hard to tell if Burton wants the audience to cheer as the Martians destroy Earth, or if they’re meant to sit back and watch with the air of a casual observer. Whatever the case, it’s a strange move for such a sensitive director.
The Design Of ‘Mars Attacks!’ Is Excessively Trashy (In A Good Way)
Photo: Warner Bros.One thing critics were on board with from moment one was the design of the film. Burton changed up his storytelling style with Mars Attacks!, but his visual sense is stronger than ever. The colors on Earth are all bright pinks, teals, and gold, while the aliens drape themselves in regal reds and purples. Wynn Thomas's production design is especially fascinating, as he goes off the rails for his take on Las Vegas.
As art-deco-on-speed as the film’s Vegas is, nothing beats the set for Nathalie Lake’s talk show. It takes the space-age look of mid-century modern furniture and turns it on its head by increasing the size of her chairs by 50%.
‘Mars Attacks!’ Is A Disaster Movie About Disaster Movies
Photo: Warner Bros.Does it shock you to know Mars Attacks! came out a few months after Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day? While the films share the same basic plot - aliens come to Earth to destroy it - everything else is different.
Independence Day feels like a disaster film from the ‘90s. It’s got slick visuals, and its grandiose idea that humanity can come together to save itself in the face of adversity is populist escapism at its height.
Mars Attacks! couldn’t be any more different. Rather than bring its discordant characters together to fight for a greater good, it leaves them separate and trying to save themselves.
Burton’s film does the opposite of what every other disaster movie does. Instead of making the audience feel good by showing heroes who overcome adversity, it revels in the sadism of the Martians. It’s not a feel-good movie by any means, but at least it gives the cynics in the audience something for which to cheer.
Jack Nicholson Is The Reason There Are So Many Stars In ‘Mars Attacks!’
Photo: Warner Bros.In one of the many nods to Doctor Strangelove in Mars Attacks!, Jack Nicholson plays three different characters: President James Dale, Las Vegas tycoon Art Land, and the uncredited role of the scientist who screws up the alien translation early on in the film.
Each role is more ham-fisted than the last, and they all offer Nicholson a chance to do what he does best: go nuts. According to Dennis McDougal’s Five Easy Decades, Nicholson was brought onto the film and given free rein to get the rest of the star-studded cast.
Once Nicholson signed on, stars like Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Glen Close, and Annette Bening got on board, too.
The Film Has No Narrative
Photo: Warner Bros.Despite having a loose plot where Martians come to Earth, wipe out a bunch of people, and are defeated, there’s no central narrative running through the film. Instead, the movie is split into different sections where characters deal with various aspects of the Martian takeover. The characters never really cross into each other’s storylines, and if they do, it’s only briefly.
Surprisingly, the film Mars Attacks! shares the most DNA with is arguably Avengers: Infinity War. Not only is there a huge alien invasion, there are also characters who never speak to each other and entire plotlines that have nothing to do with one other outside of existing in the larger narrative.
Maybe someone at Disney should give Burton a Marvel movie; it could be interesting.
