This 1996 satire sci-fi thing from Tim Burton is an oddly rejected time of it.

We saw Mars Attacks! in the cinema with our mate Craig and his dad. Despite being baffled by a lot of the on-screen happenings, we enjoyed it and were delighted to see the likes of Michael J. Fox doing his thing. This, sadly, turned out to be one of his last major film roles due to his rapidly progressing Parkinson’s disease.

There was an all-star cast here (including Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, and Pierce Brosnan), but Burton’s mix of black humour in the mix seemed to throw off critics and cinemagoers. The result is one of the most curious box office flops of the 1990s.

The Oddball Dark Humour of Mars Attacks!

This film launched the same year as the chest thumping patriotism-fest of Independence Day. That Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum vehicle was all about destroying those bloody aliens and USA, USA, USA! 🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸

Then Tim Burton turned up with this satirical, dark oddball comedy that spends a lot of its time taking the piss out of American ideology.

Perhaps it’s not a big surprise it did flop.

However, since 1996 there have been retrospective reconsiderations on Mars Attacks! It isn’t perfect, sure, but its take on schlocky 1950s sci-fi (see Angry Red Planet from 1959) is often very amusing. And there’s a general vibe of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), even if that film is far superior.

Mars Attacks! Plot and Character Arcs and Aliens

Okay, the film begins with Martians from Mars turning up on Earth. US President James Dale (Jack Nicholson) addresses the nation about the arrival and this kicks off a media frenzy.

Talk show host Nathalie Lake (Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City fame) interviews Professor Donald Kessler (Pierce Brosnan) about the issue and, whilst flirting outrageously, are promptly cut off by the alien leader and its shrill voice.

The aliens land in Pahrump, Nevada, where a big old ceremony is prepared.

However, they don’t come in peace and the whole thing turns into a bloodbath. Nathalie’s pompous boyfriend Jason Stone (Michael J. Fox) is wiped out with many other people.

We mention that as we remember being delighted to see the Back to the Future star in the film. But his movie career did abruptly come to an end after his appearance in this scene (see the excellent 2023 documentary Still).

After the mayhem an all-out assault on the bloody swines commences.

But the aliens consistently manage to infiltrate and blast away any military assaults. Then the aliens get deep into the secret defences to President Dale. He makes an impassioned speech for peace, which is promptly ignored by the aliens.

Again with Independence Day, but there’s a famous US President speech from that. Delivered by Bill Pullman, it’s a notorious chest thumping time of it. Hell yeah!

Kudos to Nicholson for taking this role. Playing a bit of a pompous POTUS who’s wiped out mid-egotistical speech. This one is almost as good as Samuel L. Jackson getting wiped out in Deep Blue Sea (1999).

Not that Mars Attacks! is dark enough to let the aliens overthrow the planet.

Humans do prevail. Just for one very out there reason. It turns out the aliens are susceptible to Slim Whitman’s song Indian Love Call (1952), which causes their brains to explode.

That’s one of the more bizarre, humourous elements of the film we think works really well.

Although if they did a remake of this film for 2025 we’d change the music to rap or chart music of some sort (showing our age there, we guess, bah humbug).

So, yeah, the old lady inadvertently saves the day and the music is beamed around the world. Humanity saved! Hurray! Huzzah! Whoo! USA! 🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸

A good fun, daft, moderately relevant film then. Mars Attacks! does feel more relevant now than in 1996, to be honest, what with rampant nationalism on the rise (across the world, not just in the US). And this remains something of an ignored gem, even if it does have its flaws.

But we must mention, as that plays out, you’ve got the Sarah Jessica Parker and Pierce Brosnan subplot. Both are very good in this film!

At the end, Brosnan ends up disembodied as a floating head and Parker has had her head transplanted onto her pet dog’s (see Bulgakov’s The Heart of a Dog for potential influences there). Very dark, but a cute ending as the pair conclude the film with a passionate kiss. Still in love with each other, despite their disabilities.

As they kiss, the alien spaceship they’re in crash lands into the sea in bloody mayhem. Hurray! But, yeah, it’s stuff like that that probably led to the film bombing.

The Production of Mars Attacks!

The idea for this film was first pitched in 1985. It was finally greenlit in 1993 and Tim Burton took directorial control. He and screenwriter Johnathan Gems watched The Towering Inferno (1974) together for creative inspiration.

As Burton was preparing for the excellent Ed Wood (1994), he felt Mars Attacks! would be a brilliant homage to Wood’s notoriously bad B movie flops.

That and other dreadful (in a good way) 1950s sci-fi films. Stuff like the epic badness of Angry Red Planet (1959).

Burton was able to compile a ensemble cast for this one. Most of the A listers have cameo roles, but you get the likes of:

• Tom Jones
• Natalie Portman (very young at the time and pre-fame)
• Annette Bening
• Danny DeVito
• Martin Short
• Rod Steiger
• Pam Grier
• Jack Black

We always found it unusual (get it!?) Tom Jones was in the film. But there we go.

Anyway, even by 1996 standards this thing had a mammoth budget to cover the (for the time) cutting-edge special effects. It was upwards of $100 million. And yet it returned $101.4 million at the box office.

A failure, then, perhaps due to Independence Day. It had a $75 million budget and made a whopping $817.4 million at the box office. But that launched in the summer of 1996, Mars Attacks! was in December.

Burton has said he had no idea Independence Day was in production and it was just a badly timed coincidence.

Its commercial failure was aided by a mixed critical reception. Film critics really weren’t sure what to make of it, some classing it as too dark. But it’s since had various reappraisals as a cult classic—a status we feel most deserving of its goofy, misanthropic antics.