Warner Bros. has recently released a 4K Blu-ray of the 1996 Tim Burton sci-fi/comedy Mars Attacks! The film features an amazingly stacked cast that includes Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Natalie Portman, Pam Grier, Jim Brown, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Michael J. Fox and Danny DeVito. Join us as we take a look at the new physical media upgrade!
Amazingly, 1996 saw both the release of Independence Day and Mars Attacks! While Mars Attacks was not intended to satirize Independence Day, it unintentionally does so in some ways. Roland Emmerich’s big-budget blockbuster alien invasion movie was made for the summer movie season. It was made as a big event and it had a very optimistic and sweeter angle that the people of Earth can work together and fight back after getting devastated by the alien threat.
Mars Attacks is the more cynical and dark-humored version. In the face of the martian threat, the humans are curious and naive. Some are aggressive. Some are selfish. Some are optimistic. However, the humans are also just victimized by the martians hysterically being assholes. While revisiting this film, even though I had seen it countless times as a kid, I saw how the martians love to trick the humans. They manipulate, experiment and even mock the poor Earthlings. In fact, after a couple of successful attacks, the martians don’t aggressively ramp up their invasion until humans would finally defend themselves.
Tim Burton’s movie is delightfully chaotic. It plays like cartoon and kind of reminds me of Simpsons episodes from that era. While the aesthetic doesn’t display Burton’s famous “goth” visuals, it does affectionately throw back to 50s and 60s B-movies. A ton of the production design are akin to the Americana/suburbs aesthetic of Edward Scissorhands — where it seemingly takes place in present day, but the line is blurred to where it doesn’t specifically adhere to an era. Burton’s also done this in his Batman films, where he blends 40s film noir and the golden age DC comics look with his gothic designs.
Mars Attacks is the late 90s answer to a Gremlins movie where it starts as a traditional narrative, but it becomes a big joke and nothing ultimately matters. One of the hilarious aspects of the movie is that, while it sports an A-list, all-star cast, they all die in horrific ways. The movie even plays with the War of the Worlds concept where something inherently simple, but foreign to the martians’ nature becomes their ultimate undoing. Not to give it too much credit as it’s revealed that Burton just threw out ideas for what he wanted to do, but there are still thin parallels that can be drawn.
The movie gives off the impression that Tim Burton was just having fun in cooking up ways to destroy Earth and Hollywood’s biggest stars. And it was confirmed by the two extra features on the disc, where crew who worked on the movie looked back fondly on making it and only had nice things to say about Burton on the film.
The movie is presented in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. It looks and sounds great. But on this revisit, the picture didn’t particularly “wow” me. Honestly, for me, it didn’t look all that much better than a Blu-ray. There are times that I noticed a crisper and sharper look, but with the many other UHD remasterings I’ve seen where they specifically went back to the original negative for the source, this one didn’t feel like it measured up as well. However, I thought the sound was fantastic and it felt like the action and the music had a little extra umph this time around.
As far as special features go, there isn’t much. Here, we get a couple of retrospectives from the crew. It’s great to see them look back on their time working on this movie and it sounds like they had a ball, but other than two featurettes, there’s nothing more in-depth or extra that fans of this film would really love to sink their teeth into.
The 4K release is a bit disappointing after the recent wave of attention paid to movies by companies like Arrow Video, Shout Factory and The Criterion Collection. Warner Bros. is known for taking their time to remaster their films and this feels kind of like a rush job. I am glad I get to see it again and in a bit better presentation, but I don’t know if this is a “must-own” unless you’re a hardcore fan or collector.
You can get this relatively cheap too. Especially compared to some special releases from the boutique labels, so if you’re inclined, you can check it out on Amazon HERE.