Alright libs, time for the ultimate struggle session: is Mars Attacks! good or bad?
Answer:
spoiler
It's good and if you disagree you're going in the :gulag: for film revisionism
They murder Congress and most world leaders, fail to see how the Martians are anything but based.
If only they stopped there, dabbed in unison, then left the planet. :sicko-wistful:
Mars Attacks is a classic and im gonna do that on cytube now. Gonna go find a link.
Hell yeah pls post when you do I want to watch too :party-cat:
A couple things that explain why this film was so great when it came out:
-
The "Atomic Age" of science fiction. The only sci-fi films I could see on TV as a kid were films like "This Island Earth", "Forbidden Planet" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and a bunch that were forgettable . You were lucky if they were in color and not black and white. But the aesthetic of those movies is evident and they took themselves VERY seriously, even when they were obviously over the top and silly.That was virtually ALL you had, in a vacuum, so there wasn't any point of view to criticize them in a way. I experienced Mars Attacks as satire, a little late to the cultural party, but a delicious send-up of Atomic Era sci-fi.
-
The awesome 60's trading cards. My brother and I used to bike down to the local bookstore and buy them when we had money. Here's a sample: https://www.cardboardconnection.com/1962-topps-mars-attacks-trading-cards. (the "bubble gum" was hard and thin and shattered if you bent the stick, awful stuff we threw away immediately) We loved the cartoon violence, it really made an impression on me when TV was filled with war dramas, cop dramas, cowboy dramas which took their violence very seriously, like asserting that it was good and right so they removed the blood so you didn't get viscerally upset and could acclimate to the post WW2 war machine/fascist police state culture. The Mars Attacks violence was like a childish lampoon of modern violence in American culture and I loved it and laughed my ass off.
-
Tim Burton. The over the top surreal and cartoony aesthetic of Tim Burton fit the 40's-50's Atomic Sci-fi aesthetic to a tee if you wanted a satire of the genre, which is what it was. It was Tim's magnum opus as far as a marriage of his personal artistic vision with a slice of genuine American film culture, if a little dated even at the time it was released.
-
Nostalgia for boomers was a big draw, I loved this when it came out and most folks at the time appreciated that it was a satire of a time that was passed but still in living memory.
The RLM guys saying that there was no plot were missing the point, the Atomic Era sci-fi was all aesthetic, it was all about scary science and evil aliens and hating commies, plot was treated like modern porn does.
I can't imagine a Gen X watching this film without all that context. It's a dumb, violent movie that doesn't go anywhere and has a bunch of Boomer cameos...that's what I would think today anyway, but the me I am loved it as a campy satire of a film genre gone by.
This site has the full run of cards with all the descriptions, it was pretty fun.
https://www.oldsportscards.com/mars-attacks-cards/
Nice find! Thank you very much!
#13 Watching from Mars is mood right now
Yeah, this. It was a satire of both America and of 50s and 60s science fiction. the dated tanks and vehicles shooting ineffectually at the aliens/monsters/whatever is a standard, the scientist who translates the alien language and is convinced they'll elevate us to a higher plane of existence, the completely bizarre celebrity cameos. The two kids who get hold of alien guns and start blasting things is a bit of an homage to 80s kids on bikes sci fi movies. The final resolution of the yodeling song making the alien's heads explode is tied to plot resolutions where some random mundane thing ends up being the undoing of the invaders, which goes all the way back to The War of the Worlds by HG Wells. Plus all the celebrities were popular at the time and it was fun watching them all follow the silly B-movie script and get blown up and disintegrated while hamming up their lines.
-
All I remember about Mars Attacks is aliens kill a bunch of people and say GAK GAK
Also that lady gets a dog body lol
Sarah Jessica Parker, who would go on to become the saint of 2000s era brunch liberals.
Maybe all he references to 50s and 60s science fiction and, well, 90s politics are just too remote now?
The uncanny weirdness of it all is very deliberate and, in retrospect, I think is supposed to be making fun of the Clinton Admin liberals being ineffectual liberals.
One of the Martians does a chicken dance after watching Jack Nicholson's speech telling people that they aren't going into lockdown after the first attack that Colin Powell dies in.
Its… an interesting watch but it’s also janky as hell. The editing is weird, most of the comedy doesn’t land, there really isn’t much of a story to tie all the comedy vignettes together, and there’s some dated cultural references.
That's...friggen intentional! It's supposed to be an off, unsettling movie! The trading cards it's based on were off and unsettling. If that's how you felt then the movie did its job!
That’s really the problem. The comedic timing was terrible, there was no structure or thematic arcs holding it together. It didn’t know what it wanted to be, it didn’t commit hard enough to being a political or social satire or slapstick comedy or horror.
The fact they don't highlight that whole scene when they kill Congress and the old lady screams "they blew up Congress! Ahahahaha!" is the only reason that video isn't as good as it should be
All I know about this movie is that my parents rented it when I was a kid and I got freaked out when the aliens turned that guy into a skeleton after they landed.
"Age-restricted"?
Why would Google put the soft censorship on this video? What's the story here? Chud creator?
you calling RLM chud? I'll have you know they are my friends
Their last video got demonetized for having "slaughter" as part of a movie name in the title, so it might possibly just be "attacks" in the title here.
Probably for the violence in the movie. RLM are "apolitical" in that they don't like politics. Occasional :brainworms:.
These are people of the land. The common clay of the midwest. You know... morons.
