Seals - Mars Attacks! Rebel Error

         Well...Mars Attacks!  When I was a lot younger watching this movie I knew it was supposed to be funny, but I definitely didn't catch the whole parody theme.  From little jokes about alcoholism and greed, to calling out the funky ways of our government, Tim Burton satirized America's politics, army, and our social society as a whole in the film. 

These Mars Attacks cards look a lot scarier then what the movie portrayed.  The funny thing about the movie is that it was based off the trading cards.  If someone knew that before watching the film, I’m sure they would have mixed thoughts about how serious this sci-fi would be.  Mothers would probably not allow there kids to own the cards because they have a lot of disturbing drawings on them, but the film rendered otherwise.  Burton plays with death so that even when you see a human being dissolved by a Martian laser gun, the unsettling and violent aspect to it is depleted when the body is turned into a bright, neon skeleton, and you are left almost giggling.   

Burton plays with our society’s problems as well.  My favorite scene as an example is when Art Land and his wife are sitting in the casino talking about the hotel he wants to build.  She starts yelling at him, saying that he is ruining the environment and taking away more land from the earth and such.  Her hippy thoughts are quite true.  Art is a greedy alcoholic who simply wants to make more money for himself.  His wife isn’t so different though.  As she won’t shut up about his faulty hotel plan, all he has to do is give her some poker chips to make her feel better.  It was like spoiling a child to make them behave. 

The best scene to portray Burton’s joke on politics is when we first meet the President as Jack Nicholson.  He hears about the alien spaceships surrounding the Earth and what does he do?  Ask everyone else’s opinions.  He first went to the press so he could get a fix on what the public’s view would be, then to the general who can represent America’s violent army quite well, then the second general who doesn’t make decisions either, and finally to the brilliant scientist who is far from brilliant.  Burton expressed the President as a puppet in this scene and throughout the movie.  Our congress was criticized too.  They were just as naïve as the scientist into thinking the Martians were peaceful after they slaughtered hundreds of people in the desert.  That slaughter was ridiculous and showed how powerful the army could be.  I loved the scene when the President was sitting with a dead expression on his face without a solution to stop the Martins and the aggressive general was screaming at him to “Kill! Kill! Kill!”  Burton revealed the great minds of some of the most powerful people in our country.