Tonight at 9:10 p.m. on RMC Story, it is a monument of satirical science fiction that we find with Mars Attacks!Tim Burton’s cult film which dynamites, literally and figuratively, the codes of the extraterrestrial invasion film. released in 1996, the feature film summons a string of Hollywood stars for an adventure as delusional as it is explosive. Jack Nicholson (in a tasty double role), Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny Devito, Sarah Jessica Parker or Michael J. Fox: all lend their talent to this great masquerade where the stuffing turned to the planetary tragedy. Behind her special effect blockbuster looks, Mars Attacks! is above all a creaky and jubilant satire of triumphant America of the 90s, blinded by his belief in his omnipotence and his naive faith in diplomacy.
In a scenario as absurd as they are lucid, Martians with a stocky head and with a nasal voice promised to be live on all the television channels in the world. Their message? A peaceful landing in the Nevada desert, in the hope of an intergalactic rapprochement. On the side of the White House, President James Dale (played by Jack Nicholson, excellent in chief of confused state) decides to play the opening card. While a scientist develops a machine to understand their language, the military and the media are mobilizing for what promises to be a historical event. But when the first saucers appear in the sky and the Martians finally leave their vessels, the good -natured atmosphere turns very quickly in a bloodbath. The message of peace was a lure: in reality, little green men just want to destroy everything. And they give themselves to heart.
A visual and narrative fireworks carried out drum beating by Tim Burton
Tim Burton, then at the top of his popularity after Edward with silver hands et Batman, the challengesigns one of his most crazy films here. Refusing to follow the conventions of the catastrophe -style film Independence Dayreleased the same year, he chose pastiche, assumed bad taste and biting irony to brocade as well the powerful and the people. His inimitable visual style – garish colors, kitsch sets, voluntarily retro special effects – serves this story perfectly where no one is spared. Neither the American government, hippies, soldiers, nor television stars. The Martians, armed with their pistols-detetters, stride everything that moves with the map, and the spectator laughs as much as he grimaces in front of the magnitude of the carnage.
-With its casting XXL and its voluntarily grotesque scenes, Mars Attacks! Makes the bet of excess. We are witnessing the disintegration of Congress, the digital beheading of Pierce Brosnan, the transplant of a human head on a dog body, or even the spectacular death of the American president in the oval office. This great visual delirium, inspired by a series of collecting cards from the 60s, never seeks to be credible, but rather to question with humor black our relationship to power, war, media coverage and fear of the unknown. It is in this exaggeration that the film draws all its relevance.
An absurd and brilliant final where the yodel becomes a fatal weapon
While humanity seems definitively lost, all institutions are destroyed and Martians dance on the ruins of the world, Mars Attacks! Choose a reversal of a situation as ridiculous as they are ingenious: the extraterrestrials have a fatal allergy … at Yodel. More specifically, the song Indian Love Call De Slim Whitman has a devastating effect on them. It is therefore enough for a somewhat lost teenager and his grandmother buzzing country music to sound the title to attend the explosion of the greenish skulls of the invaders. A deus ex hilarious machina which completes the film on a note as absurd as liberating. Because in this Burtonian universe, it is neither the army, nor the elites, nor the science that saves the world, but popular culture, in what it has most cheesy – and more universal.
With this improbable but madly effective conclusion, Mars Attacks! stands out as a unique film object, halfway between homage and parody. A film which divides as much as it fascinates, but which continues, almost thirty years after its release, to arouse bursts of laughter and acid reflections on our society. Tonight, on RMC Story, do not miss this replay which proves once again that science fiction can also be a playground for the most free minds.
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