Wadsworth- Mars attack

In Mars Attacks the Martians want to meet with congress to apologize to the United States of America. This scene shows how Burton satirizes government. The Martians arrive and shortly after start to kill everyone. They said they were going to apologize, but in reality they made this deal on false terms. The president is portrayed as an idiot, clearly making fun of that Americans and their stupidity. The movie makes Americans look like idiots and makes our president, the person in charge of our country, look the most stupid of all. It is shown that the president doesn't truly think for himself. He just asks his press advisor what he thinks and then asks his general what he thinks. Asking the press advisor first shows that the president is more worried about image then anything else. Burton does this to show that our president isn't really the one making the decision. If you cone to the president with a great idea he might just go along with it if you supply him with enough information. 

One scene in Mars Attacks makes fun of patriotism is when the Martians knock over the Washington monument and they don't just let it fall, they play with it trying to make it fall on to the boy scouts and the boys run one way so they turn it that way until they let it fall onto the boys. This is ironic because one of America's most prized monuments might fall on top of a group of small children that are one America's most patriotic organizations.

The fact that the president is played by the actor Jack Nicholson, who also plays Art Land who is the biggest crook of the movie, shows that the president has this shadow side of being a crook. Both of them are ambitious  Art actually tells his wife that he is not a crook that he is just ambitious. This shows how the two characters have some things in common. Burton may not have originally planned to have these two characters played by the same person but as soon as Jack said he wanted to play both Burton loved the idea and changed the part a little bit to make it fit better in the story line to make it more ironic. In this film Burton shows many things to satirize the government and other things. While Burton may over exaggerates some of the things he satirizes, some of things do happen in our society today.