‘Mars Attacks!’ was a satirical violent comedy by Tim Burton that became one of the biggest studio box office hits of the 1990s. Available on HBO Max, the play was based on a series of ultraviolent trading cards that outraged parents and first released in 1962, the film dealt with alien invasions at a time when ‘Independence Day’ had made a dent in popular culture, including blowing up the White House and recarving Mount Rushmore.
However, his black humor was also very poorly received among a general public little in tune with Burton’s bad drool, only five months before, Roland Emmerich’s invasion connected with a solemn patriotism that it was not the same as the one that proposed this retro vision of the 50’s movies with a colorful 60’s aestheticwith bugs with big brains and ray guns that led to enough negative reviews to record an embarrassing 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed around $38 million on a budget of $70.
The film was a success abroad and eventually made back its budget, but the rejection of the American public left Tim Burton on the verge of leaving Hollywood for a few years. In a lengthy oral history published in Inverse in December 2021 for the film’s 25th anniversary, cinematographer peter suschitzky shed light on the conflict Burton dealt with:
“Tim has always walked a difficult path, very skillfully, wanting to be an eccentric auteur and at the same time knowing that in order to be successful in Hollywood, you have to remain a star. And those two goals are incompatible.”
Burton occupied a difficult space in Hollywood, as his style tended to the bizarre and he was often allowed to play with an extreme aesthetic, but he always knew how to play ping pong, directing some of the most notable blockbusters of his time. period, such as ‘Batman’ (1989) or ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (1990), becoming one of the key artists of the gothic movement of the 90swith an unusual combination of hits for the masses with a flavor of cult cinema.
In fact, his dolls from Henry Selick’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ (1993) appeared at Disneyland. Burton admits making a movie intended to be an act of defiance:
“It was in a punk mood. It just encapsulated everything I was feeling at the time. I felt very out of place at the time, for some weird reason, like I’d been working at Disney for too long.”
Burton began his career as an animator for Disney in ‘Taron and the Magic Cauldron’ (1985) and ‘Ed Wood’ (1994), praised by critics but weak at the box office, were made under the umbrella of Touchstone, a subsidiary of Disney, and Burton would also return to Disney several times for versions live action, so there is the feeling that he has always lived in the shadow of the company. Burton keeps looking for reasons for his dissatisfaction at Inverse:
“Maybe it was something else, I don’t know. When I’m working anyway, nobody really knows what I’m doing, so they can’t really complain or ask too much because they don’t even know what to say about what I’m shooting.”
An inconvenience that deprived the world of Nicolas Cage as Superman
Screenwriter Jonathan Gems drops that the studio backed out at the last minute and eliminated advertising budget:
“It got the go-ahead from New York, the bankers who finance the studios. And where the publicity? It wasn’t marketed properly at all. I think they decided they didn’t want people to see the movie. Also, Warner Bros., the distributor of the film, he felt the need to punish Burton after the dust settled, eventually canceling his ‘Superman Lives’.
“This movie took a lot of work to write and make. I worked really hard, but Tim worked twice as hard as I did. By the end, he was totally exhausted. He was a mess. I think he went to India with his girlfriend for about a month. I think I remember him telling me at the time that he didn’t want to do another movie again.”
Tim Burton broke out in the 1990s. In addition to the two Batman installments, he also produced several projects such as ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’, ‘James and the Giant Peach‘, the animated series ‘Family Dog’ or the cult rarity ‘Cabin Boy’, and even appeared in Cameron Crowe’s ‘Singles’. The accumulated workload could have affected him as much as the disappointment due to the bittersweet reception. Times were beginning to change and the acid style of early ’90s MTV was beginning to represent less of the next generation.
After ‘Mars Attacks!’ Burton would get what is probably his most complete film, the monumental ‘Sleepy Hollow’ (1999), but since then he has not been quite himself again. His new films lack the fine combination between commissioned work and subversive piece, he has never been so nihilistic again. In addition to the fact that few movies have a climax with Tom Jones, there are not many movies like that anymore at studios like Warner, a mix of mockery and celebration, colorful, with enough politicians disintegrating to satisfy any shrewd person.