Ed Wood

Overview

Mars Attacks! (1996)
Production Company: Warner Bros
Producers: Tim Burton, Larry Franco
Director: Tim Burton
Screenplay: Jonathan Gems, based upon the 1962 trading card series
Camera: Peter Suschitzky
Music: Danny Elfman
Production Designer: James Hegedus
Visual Special Effects: Industrial Light and Magic
Cast: Jack Nicholson (President James Dale, Las Vegas Real Estate Hustler Art Land); Glenn Close (Marsha Dale); Natalie Portman (Taffy Dale); Pierce Brosnan (Professor Donald Kessler); Annette Bening (Land's wife); Sarah Jessica Parker (MTV Correspondent); Martin Short (Press Secretary Jerry Ross); Rod Steiger (General Decker); Paul Winfield (General Casey); Lukas Haas (Richie Norris); Sylvia Sydney (Grandma Norris); Joe Don Baker (Glenn Norris); Jack Black (Billy-Glenn Norris); Christina Applegate (Billy-Glenn's Girl); Michael J. Fox (Jason); Barbet Schroeder (French President); Jim Brown (ex-boxer Byron Williams) Pam Grier (Byron's ex-wife); Tom Jones (Tom Jones); O-Lan Jones (Sue-Ann Norris); Danny DeVito ('The Rude Gambler')
Running time: 106 minutes

Based on the 1960s Topps trading cards, Tim Burton's campy sci-fi epic harks back to the Ray Harryhausen movies from the Fifties, Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers in particular. Instead of using stop-motion animation for the depiction of the alien invaders from the Red Planet (which was the original idea), Toy Story convinced the producers to use computer animation instead. The plot, such as it is, concerns a number of people from around the United States and the way they react to the violent Martians.

Mars Attacks! is a return to Burton's hit-and-miss structure of Beetlejuice, a showcase for the hilariously evil Martians and an all-star cast that is quickly decimated. In fact, the actors disappear off the screen so swiftly that the human charaters are reduced to little more than cameo appearances. Too tongue-in-cheek for most audiences and too messy and expensive for most critics, Mars Attacks! was a second failure for Burton, likened by some to the film Ed Wood might have made if he'd had a large budget to play with. The film's commercial failure is interesting when compared to the immense success just a few months previously of that other alien invasion film, Independence Day. Its politics and sensibilities are the exact opposite of Burton's: where mass destruction in ID4 is meant to awe its audience, and Bill Pullman's Clintonesque president is portrayed as a true leader, the Martians' gleefully destructive efforts are played purely for laughs by Burton, and Jack Nicholson portrays the President as a clueless, indecisive demagogue only concerned with popularity polls. His advisors are lecherous aide Martin Short, hysterical General Rod Steiger and hopelessly benevolent mad scientist Pierce Brosnan. The 'ordinary people' in Mars Attacks! also differ sharply from those in ID4 : these are people living in trailer parks, members of the NRA who gladly send their halfwitted son off to 'kick the Martians' butts', only to end up burnt to a crisp. True to form, the 'hero' of the story is yet another outsider, a gangly, tousle-haired Lukas Haas who accidentally finds out how to rid the Earth of the alien invaders. Jim Brown, playing a former boxing champion who ends up going thirteen rounds with the Martians, returns home like a hero, only to be upstaged by the final sight gag.