This week for Disc Dive I’m pulling something off the shelf that doesn’t get brought up nearly enough when people talk about Tim Burton’s best. Let’s fix that. It’s Mars Attacks! (1996).
Title: Mars Attacks!
Director: Tim Burton
Released: December 13, 1996 (Canada and the United States)
Runtime: 1 hour 46 minutes
Mars Attacks! opens with a quiet rural stretch that’s quickly interrupted by a herd of cattle, inexplicably ablaze, stampeding through town as a UFO retreats into the sky.
From there, sightings begin to increase. Reports come in from across the country, building until it’s confirmed through the Hubble Space Telescope that a large number of flying saucers are approaching Earth.
At the center of the response is President James Dale (Jack Nicholson) addressing the public while working with his administration to determine the next steps. The scientific community is brought in as well, including Professor Kessler (Pierce Brosnan), who begins analyzing transmissions coming from the ships. The messages prove difficult to interpret, consisting largely of repeated “ack ack” transmissions.
As the situation unfolds, different groups across the country react in their own way as the arrival becomes unavoidable. Attempts are made to understand the Martians’ intent, but with limited success.
Still, a message is believed to have been deciphered, and plans for a peaceful first contact move forward. The entire world gathers to witness the moment.
As the ships descend, the Martians arrive. Are they friend or foe?
Tim Burton has never been subtle, and Mars Attacks! might be the clearest example of that. From the title sequence onward, the camp is the point, and he commits to it completely, from the production design to the casting and every last detail of the Martians themselves.
I can’t not spend some time talking about this cast. This is a stacked ensemble in the truest sense, though Mars Attacks! makes no promises about how long anyone sticks around. Danny DeVito gets a casino scene and vanishes. Pam Grier appears and disappears just as quickly. Jack Black is here briefly, in a role that sticks despite how little time he’s given. It’s an ensemble in the spirit of the B-movies it’s paying tribute to, where everyone serves the film, not the other way around. Jack Nicholson, pulling double duty as both the President and a Las Vegas developer, seems to be having an absolute blast, bringing that signature dry intensity to a role that was practically written for him. Pierce Brosnan, in peak Bond-era form, plays it completely straight as the optimistic scientist, which is exactly the right call.
It’s the key to why Mars Attacks! works as well as it does. For all its absurdity, nobody winks at the camera. Everyone plays it straight, with no meta-commentary or nudging of the audience. It’s a quality that feels increasingly rare in comedy, and it’s precisely what the old sci-fi pictures it’s lampooning did, unintentionally, of course. Burton and company do it intentionally, and the discipline pays off.
The Martians themselves are a triumph of tone. Industrial Light & Magic leans into a deliberately cheap, almost tactile quality that feels ripped from a 1950s serial, and the ray gun effects carry that same welcomed cheesiness. The flying saucers look exactly as they should. Once the Martians reach the White House, Burton’s production design gets room to fully breathe. The interior of the flying saucer is pure Burton, with bizarre geometry and garish color doing exactly what they should. Small details reward attention too: the infiltrating female Martian never blinks once while in disguise, and her beehive hairdo is a period-accurate nod to the era being parodied.
At 1 hour and 46 minutes, this moves at a clip that never drags. The ensemble structure keeps things shifting, and the humor is varied enough in both type and placement that it doesn’t wear out its welcome. The legislative branch being a room full of old white men, for example, gets a laugh that unfortunately still lands.
The one caveat worth naming: if you’re coming in cold on the old alien invasion pictures this is in conversation with, some of what makes Mars Attacks! fully click might not land the same way. The affection buried in the parody is real, and fluency in what it’s riffing on deepens the experience considerably.
Mars Attacks! doesn’t necessarily come to mind first in the Burton canon. It should though.
This was a fun one to revisit. Always curious how it lands for others.
Logging this and others over on Letterboxd.