God Bless Amer...er...I mean Mars.

 Burton lovingly pays tribute to his idol, Ed Wood, in Mars Attacks! He reuses many ideas and models that Wood used for his movie, Plan 9 From Outer Space. One thing that he did not reuse, however, was the ironic and satirical nature of Mars Attacks! towards humanity as a whole. One of the last scenes in the movie (see fig. 1) portrays a mariachi band proudly performing the national anthem in front of the, well, congress building. I really find this scene especially interesting because when one thinks of the American National Anthem one usually thinks of big marching military bands, not a standard Mexican mariachi band.

Something else I found interesting is the fact that Burton chooses Jack Nicholson to play the part of both the greedy, casino entrepreneur and the president of the United States. One would ask why he does this but the answer is in Burtonesque fashion. Burton chooses for Nicholson to play both characters to show the similarities between the two. Apparently, Burton cannot let go of his Batman mentality as he even uses a "Two Face" like character in Mars Attacks!.

Another scene that shows how Burton mocks the military is the scene where the general goes up against the martian king (fig. 2). He is shown to be wearing typical military garb, with aviators (military style sunglasses), and two pistols. Burton goes beyond this stereotypical image and literally miniaturizes the general to the size of a cockroach and is promptly squished. Perhaps what Burton is saying here is that the military likes to put on a tough front but if something like this ever happened the military would be crushed like insignificant ants.

I also enjoy how the film portrays the deadly martian menace. Well, they do like Playboy Magazine and sound an awful lot like that guy from the Aflac commercials. Thinking back on it these don't really seem like your typical bloodthirsty aliens at all. They look like skeletons and human beings have skeletons...oh wait. They are basically just like us aren't they? Well if you think about it, they are. They represent the human mantra to kill, Kill, KILL! They even have scenes where they show the martians and human doing the exact same thing, dissecting corpses.

But, I do have a question, why did the bodies either turn green or red? Was it because Burton couldn't stand to make another movie without something that reminded him of christmas? Granted, there was no mistletoe but why else would there be the exact same color patterns of Christmas in a Burton movie?

Oh, in the beginning of the movie there is a particular farmer that is not normally a person you think of when you think about midwest farmers. Well, he was asian, and i'm not being racist at all but the stereotypical farmer is not an asian guy. Just another thing that Burton pokes fun at in the movie.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2