Tim Burton obviously satirizes the government, military, and
many other attributes of America in his film Mars Attacks. Although he has many scenes that illustrate the
parodies he tries to get across, there are two that I would like to write
about. Those two are the scenes that show the president doing a whole bunch of
nothing and the scene that shows how the general just wanted to kill everything
from the beginning. The president in this film does absolutely nothing for the
citizens of the country. People constantly look to him for direction and
guidance, but he never really knows what to do. Instead, he asks everyone else
what they think should be done. This is very different from the president in Independence Day. The president in that
film is very strict and stern and is always taken seriously. Sometimes he is
taken too seriously, which is why Burton makes a parody out of the president.
Burton also shows that the president dies, but it really made no impact on the
country at all. The people did not really even need him in the first place. The
scene that shows the general shows how Americans mostly care about destruction.
When the general found out the Martians were on planet earth, he immediately
thought of using weapons in order to stop them. He did not care about the
aliens or what they could have possibly wanted. This film is definitely one of
science fiction, though it is not like the ones prior to it like Blade Runner and Alien. Mars Attacks is
very comical and cartoonish compared to the other sci-fi films. A prime example
that displays its cartoon traits is the way the Martians look. They are very vibrant
and imaginative compared to the aliens of other movies like Independence Day for instance. The
aliens in Mars Attacks also had no
real reason to do what they were doing. They were quite the tricksters of this
film because all they did was make chaos and destroy the world. They also made
jokes out of everything. This film has many subsidiary points that are not so
evident when they are not expected.
