MARS ATTACKS! (1996)

Director: Tim Burton

Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman, Jim Brown, Lisa Marie, Sylvia Sidney

Mars Attacks! is based on a set of rather horrific bubblegum cards which I must confess to collecting as a kid. They no doubt heralded the start of my long descent into darkness, but the important thing is that I’ve given up chewing bubblegum. The series was launched in 1962 and sold briefly before being taken off the market for being too shocking. According to Zelda’s Mars Attacks! website (see below) the cards are now worth $2000. Too bad I didn’t keep them.

In the film, as in the cards, people are melted to skeletons by death-rays, but this is a kitsch comedy horror. It satirises 50s sci-fi B movies with their anti-alien paranoia and gung-ho military response, but although the reviews I’ve seen didn’t pick this up, it also satirises the ‘pro-alien’ sentimentality and naïveté of films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Stephen Spielberg, 1977), in which aliens are presumed to be well-intentioned because they are highly advanced. And it’s the release of a dove by some hippy ‘peacenik’ that actually provokes the Martians to start shooting, not that they really need much excuse. The Martians are certainly the bad guys, although you can’t help admiring them for their cruel sense of humour.

It’s as if some of the characters in the film have 50s mindsets, whilst others belong to the 60s and later. The time in which the film is supposed to be set is also uncertain. One might presume that it’s more-or-less ‘present day’, but communication is by telephone, not the Internet. In fact, it’s a world without computers and the translation machine which turns Martian barks into English is a retro icon of 50s gadgetry.

Mars Attacks! is not only a satire on sci-fi genres but, like the work of Tarantino, a postmodern pastiche of them. The swapped heads recall Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Martians in a flying-saucer gibbering with glee appear to have assimilated the ‘Smash’ advert, itself a parody of the sci-fi genre. The Martian enthusiasm for cruel pranks recalls the bad human-aping behaviour in Gremlins. There are many more. And, of course, the film is so extreme as to be a self-parody.

But the film doesn’t stop at satirising sci-fi films, or even films in general. It’s also a satire on the American way-of-life. The cringing false sincerity of the President’s last speech can be found in thousands of American films and TV series, not to mention in the mouths of quite a few ‘real-life’ politicians. And whilst most of the characters respond to the Martians with wishful-thinking or hostility, the President plans and delivers soundbites, concerned only with making PR capital or engaging in damage limitation. For the President, playing to the gallery is not an adjunct to the game of politics: it is the game. (The problem in the Clinton era is that political reality has become so absurd that it is now difficult to satirise it!)

The comic-strip character of the bubblegum cards is perpetuated in the film by melodramatic over-acting and the complete absence of human characterisation. The Martians and all the leading human players are caricatures – symbols of character types and attitudes but not real characters, and the director manipulates these to make satirical and ironic points. The same postmodern superficiality is reflected in the almost non-existent plot. There’s no explanation for the Martian invasion – it’s done just for the hell of it.

The film itself is an irony, enjoying a bigger budget and a more expensive cast than many of the films it satirises. But the cliché of film stardom itself is also subversively targeted by the film’s satire. The big stars function only as cardboard cut-outs before being snuffed in various unpleasant ways. This fate contrasts dramatically with that of the lesser stars who escape and realise a demotic triumph. A further postmodern twist is introduced with the appearance of crooner Tom Jones, playing himself. This inverts the sci-fi genre of the fantastic entering the real and presents us with a scene of the real entering the fantastic.

I’m not suggesting that all this turns the film into a profound postmodernist statement, but the signs are there for those who care to read them.

• ZELDA’S MARS ATTACKS HOMEPAGE http://www.marsattacksfan.com/homepage.htm

Mars Attacks! ~ DVD Jack Nicholson Usually ships in 24 hours Mars Attacks! ~ VHS Widescreen Jack Nicholson Usually ships in 24 hours Mars Attacks! ~ VHS Jack Nicholson Usually ships in 24 hours

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