Mars Attacks (1996)

The plot of Mars Attacks: Uncountable numbers of Martian space craft are seen making their way towards earth. On earth the plot focuses on a number of people. The president and his wife and daughter Taffy, a news anchor, Jason Stone and his girlfriend, Natalie, a talk show host, Professor Donald Kessler a scientist suggesting peaceful contact, General Decker, who wants to nuke the bastards, a family of trailer trash, parents, sons and grandmother, a property developer and his glamorous but vacuous partner and a former boxer working in a casino and his estranged wife a New York bus driver. We follow these people as the Martians lay waste to various gatherings of American legislators and significant buildings in the world. The president’s wife is squashed by a chandelier and he is impaled by a trick Martian hand. The elder son of the trailer family joins the army, and dies in the desert. Prof Kessler and Natalie are captured by the Martians. But some people survive, important are Taffy the president’s daughter, and the younger trailer son and his grandmother.

Content: There is a bit of non-revelatory sex involving a trailer trash girlfriend and a random male. The Martians look on and so do we. There are various events where the Martians are greeted as friends, and they in turn lay waste to the humans, their ray guns turning the people into either red or green skeletons. The trailer trash survive until their Airstream is picked up by a Martian robot thing, except for the younger son and grandma who have escaped. Later the space craft fly about destroying classic earth features. The White House, the UK Parliament, the Taj Mahal and buildings in Las Vegas. In an early effort to assassinate the president a Martian in the shape of an exaggerated human female form gets into the White House. I am reluctant to describe what happens to Professor Kessler and Natalie.

A View: this movie went through a lot of iterations as the studio tried to get the budget down from several hundred million to a commercial $80 million. It received mixed reviews. I have seen it a few times, but on this viewing I thought it was terrific. This is possibly because I have had a look at the Trading cards for the first time. Many of the scenes in the film are actually on the cards, somehow giving it greater validity, but anyway, it is terrific. Tom Jones might have been included solely to enable him to sing ‘It’s Not Unusual’ at the end. If you have not seen it, definitely give it a couple of hours.

 Fun Fact: British director Alex Cox, much admired by sons when they were teenagers, wanted to make the film in 1985.