Mars Attacks! (1996)
Directed by Tim Burton
A fleet of Martian spacecraft surrounds the world's major cities and all of humanity waits to see if the extraterrestrial visitors have, as they claim, "come in peace." U.S. President James Dale receives assurance from science professor Donald Kessler that the Martians' mission is a friendly one. But when a peaceful exchange ends in the total annihilation of the U.S. Congress, military men call for a full-scale nuclear retaliation.
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4 films that influenced Mars Attacks!
What critics say influenced Mars Attacks!
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Characters
Peter Sellers was funny in “ Dr. Strangelove ” (one of this movie's many inspirations) because the story was funny.
Rod Steiger does an amusing enough take on Dr. Strangelove's Buck Turgidson, Glenn Close brings some star power to the role of the First Lady, and Martin Short is a Presidential aide who meets the Martians in the White House's "Kennedy Room," a secluded nook where he unwittingly tries to seduce an alien dressed up as a big-haired, pointy-breasted sexpot (Lisa Marie, the Burton flame who played Vampira in Ed Wood) -- in an earlier scene, it's made clear that the aliens studied human sexuality in the pages of an old issue of Playboy.
Like Burton's Joker from the first Batman (or the anti-Spielbergian puppets of Gremlins), these screwball E.T.s are cultural anarchists, as eager to deface works of art as to blow up the world.
With bare brains glistening atop their grinning skull-faces, round egg-eyes with red pupils darting this way and that, these animated invaders are malevolence incarnate -- Joe Dante's Gremlins are the closest equivalent in recent memory, but Burton's little monsters are more inventive.
First he made “ Ed Wood ,” a tribute to the man fondly recalled as the worst movie director of all time.
It's Tim Burton's ("Batman"/"Ed Wood"/"Edward Scissorhands") goofy tongue-in-cheek parody on the B-film sci-fi genre, especially films from the 1950s like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and The Day the Earth Stood Still; it also skewers the pop culture scene, the army, religion, fashion, the media, politics and almost everything else about contemporary society.
Rod Steiger does an amusing enough take on Dr. Strangelove's Buck Turgidson, Glenn Close brings some star power to the role of the First Lady, and Martin Short is a Presidential aide who meets the Martians in the White House's "Kennedy Room," a secluded nook where he unwittingly tries to seduce an alien dressed up as a big-haired, pointy-breasted sexpot (Lisa Marie, the Burton flame who played Vampira in Ed Wood) -- in an earlier scene, it's made clear that the aliens studied human sexuality in the pages of an old issue of Playboy.
Best known as the director of the first two "Batman" pictures, Burton a few years back made "Ed Wood," a loving homage to the 1950s filmmaker considered a colossus of ineptitude for making his own peculiar movies his own peculiar way.
Most of his films come from pop-culture icons - Batman , Mars Attacks! , Planet of the Apes - or classic books that appeal to his surrealist sensibilities, such as Alice in Wonderland .
“Dark Shadows” feels like a throwback for Burton with a handful of visual references to his early work like “Batman,” “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Mars Attacks!”
The director of Batman (1989), Mars Attacks! (1996), Planet of the Apes (2001), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) has now gotten his hands on Dark Shadows, the supernatural soap opera that ran on ABC from 1966 to '71.
His Martians have a rude, palm-buzzer spirit that makes them successors to such Burton clown-devils as the Joker in Batman or the grimy ghost in Beetlejuice.
It's Tim Burton's ("Batman"/"Ed Wood"/"Edward Scissorhands") goofy tongue-in-cheek parody on the B-film sci-fi genre, especially films from the 1950s like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and The Day the Earth Stood Still; it also skewers the pop culture scene, the army, religion, fashion, the media, politics and almost everything else about contemporary society.
Best known as the director of the first two "Batman" pictures, Burton a few years back made "Ed Wood," a loving homage to the 1950s filmmaker considered a colossus of ineptitude for making his own peculiar movies his own peculiar way.