The Dark World of Tim Burton-V
In the last post, i had discussed about Tim Burton’s homage to the B Movie genre with Ed Wood.
Tim Burton continued his homage to the B movie genre with Mars Attacks, a spoof on the B movie sci fi stuff, which Burton grew up on. If in Ed Wood, he paid a tribute to his idol, in Mars Attacks, he bases his story on the popular trading card series.
What are trading cards?
Basically a variant of playing cards, these would contain images of a famous sports person or movie stills, cartoon characters, TV characters etc. Generally used for exchanging with friends or associates, you had various games around them.
Trading cards
Mars Attacks was a popular trading card series of the 60’s, which narrated a story of Martian invasion of the earth, through the cards. The 55 card series, showed Martians destroying everything with Ray Guns and flying saucers. Tim Burton based his movie on the card series, creating a black comedy, parody of the 50’s Sci Fi movies. Nothing B grade about the ensemble cast though which includes Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Danny De Vito, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J Fox and Natalie Portman.
The plot of Mars Attacks, is somewhat similiar to that of Independence Day. Martians arrive on the earth, and the US President James Dale( Jack Nicholson) seeks to establish a friendship with them, in order to improve his image more. The Martians however reject his gestures, and go on a destruction spree by using their Ray Guns. Professor Donald Kessler( Pierce Brosnan) however feels the Martians are a friendly species, and assumes that if you could engage them with a peace treaty, it would be fine. The Martians however toy around with this, by inviting people for peace talks and totally massacring them. Some similiarites are there also with Independence Day, in that there is a group of people, who welcome the aliens, the White House is attacked and the President having a reluctance to use the nuke against aliens.
But where Independence Day takes itself way too seriously, and tries to be an epic style movie, Mars Attacks is a totally tongue in cheek look. What Burton does is mix up the B Movie sci fi Genre with elements of black comedy and parody.
Take the scene where the aliens go all around destroying everything, in Independence Day, it was like totally Hollywood epic style, with computer generated spaceships and ear splitting explosions, generally designed to sweep the audience off their feet. In Mars Attacks, however, though the effects are equally good, the rest of it is totally parody. The spaceships are a clear throwback to the 50’s Flying Saucers, and even the effects showing the space ships blowing up are a clear homage to the 50’s sci fi movies. Burton effectively uses black humour here. For eg when the Aliens destroy the Easter Island statue, they send a huge ball, that topples them over like a bowling pin, or my favorite part, the Aliens attack a trailer park, and in one of the trailers, a couple is making out, to the tune of Staying Alive. The aahhs ahhs in the song, are replicated by the Martians, who pant as they spy on the couple, and the female’s screaming on seeing the aliens, comes just at the right time.
Also the American General Decker( Rod Steiger) is a total homage to the character of Gen Jack.D.Ripper from Dr.Strangelove, in that both happen to be hawkish, delusional guys. The Martian characters, the saucer like spaceships, the green and white ray guns, the scenes of destruction, everything was taken from the original trading cards.
Also the final scene, where the Martians are defeated by using a piece of yodelling music, is influenced by another B movie spoof, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. , where the attacking tomatoes are blown up to the tune of Puberty Love.
Burton also pays homage to Dr. Strangelove, where he has Jack Nicholson playing a double role of a President and Art Land, a Las Vegas property dealer. Nicholson looks totally unrecognizable in the role, with his buck teeth,shades and cowboy hat. Though not a big hit in the US, it did very well in Europe and Australia, both with the critics and audiences. Certainly would not rate this as Burton’s best, but i still loved it much better than Independence Day, because it sticks to being a parody, and unlike ID, does not go into a message overdrive about July 4th being the Independence Day of the World.
The next post is on Sleepy Hollow, Burton’s tribute to Hammer Films.
Tags: 50's Sci Fi Movies, Black COmedy, Dr.Strangelove, Glenn close, Independence Day, Jack Nicholson, Parody, Pierce Brosnan, Space Movie Spoofs, tim burton
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I’m a huge fan of Tim Burton,
But I didn’t enjoy this movie that much,.
Some of the scenes are good
Music was great (thanks to Danny Elfman)
“Iconoclastic” Movie
Love the Opening Title ,.
oohhhh ooohhhh ooohhh
Nice Background Score
Good one. Just a suggestion, include the film name in the title since you are covering one film each part.
Mars Attacks. I didn’t know it was Burton until recently. And didn’t know the trading card thing until read it here. Just saw the sequence that you put, a grandly put together gargantuan fuck-up. I remember the aliens landing sequence from the multiple runs it had on TV. That was quite hilarious. And then the stars. They looked like having some fun! And then so many pop culture references. This was Burton having some large scale fun and we didn’t mind it. :-)
am loving mars attacks! with every consequent viewing.. each time some aspect grows on you.. Brosnan, Parker, Benning and teh Martians were constants.. then i identified Jack Black.. later it was Nicholson’s droll president who grew on me.. followed by the sleazy Vegas guy.. Tom Jones, when i first saw him, i was unimpressed.. later i got to know who he was and for a surprise emotion at the third or forth.. i finally got a sense of the absurd.. and very soon, in my personal books.. mars attacks! flew right past beetlejuice.. and the sense of word ‘cult movie’ dawned on me..
Did you just say Jack Black? BTW, you must know Walk Hard has him too. :-) And I should get the film by sat. Along with Pineapple Express, Super high me, Tropic Thunder, Blades of Glory & Step Brothers. Will try for Semi Pro too.
@ Shekar
Yeah it was not one of his best, in fact i hated it on first viewing. But after watching Independence Day and its “wanna be Spielberg epic” style, that left me totally cold, despite all the effects, i again rushed back to this, and loved it second time around. Or maybe due to the fact that it spoofed ID, a movie that i never really liked.
@ Tushar
In fact Mars Attacks is one of Burton’s lesser movies. But still worth a watch. Just love the one liners and jokes in it. And yeah the ensemble cast Nicholson, Brosnan, Bening, Sarah Jessica Parker, Danny De Vito, Michael Fox who as you said were having a ball of a time. Especially loved Nicholson’s double act as the Prez and a sleazy real estate dealer.
@Siddarth
Yeah like u for me Mars Attacks, was a movie that just grew on me slowly. In fact on first viewing i just hated it, but later begin to love it. Also the fact that too much of CGI stuff, was getting on me, it was just becommin too overwhelming, and all that heavy serious stuff in sci fi movies, put me off for some time. Mars Attacks did not take itself too seriously, and that is what i really loved about it.
Jack Black is one of the Frat Pack members, along with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaugh, Owen Wilson. Be Kind Rewind is a fabulous classic for sure, giving rise to term Sweded.
@Ratnakar, I don’t know who but someone always used to tell me Mars attacks is crap and all and I could never see it at a stretch in spite of multiple runs on TV. Although I never hated it whatever I saw of it.