General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20265 min read

Mars Attacks!

Mars Attacks! is a 1996 American science-fiction comedy directed by Tim Burton, in which a fleet of Martian flying saucers surrounds Earth's major cities and, after claiming to come in peace, destroys human institutions while the authorities repeatedly fail to respond effectively. It was released by Warner Bros. on December 12, 1996, rated PG-13, and is loosely based on the Topps Company's 1962 Mars Attacks trading card series.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	December 12, 1996, Warner Bros., PG-13, 1h 43m¹
Source material	Topps "Mars Attacks" trading cards, original 55-card version released in August 1962²
Director and writer	Tim Burton (director and producer); Jonathan Gems (story and screenplay)³
Budget and box office	$80 million production budget; $37.8 million gross in the United States²^•¹
Lead cast	Jack Nicholson (President James Dale and Art Land), Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones⁴
Critical scores	57% on the Tomatometer (96 reviews); Metascore 52 from 19 reviews¹^•⁵
Music and crew	Danny Elfman (original music), Peter Suschitzky (cinematography), Chris Lebenzon (editing), Wynn Thomas (production design)⁴

Spoilers

Plot and tone

The film follows a Martian invasion that begins as a diplomatic event. President James Dale (Jack Nicholson) is assured by science professor Donald Kessler (Pierce Brosnan) that the visitors are friendly, but a peaceful exchange ends with the total annihilation of the U.S. Congress, after which the military calls for full-scale nuclear retaliation.¹ The Martians mockingly insist they "come in peace" as they eradicate human civilization.⁶^•⁷

The resolution comes from an unlikely source: Lukas Haas's character, a doughnut shop employee, accidentally discovers that the music of Slim Whitman blows up the Martians' brains, and he uses it to save the world while trying mainly to protect his grandmother.⁸

Burton described his motivation as making "the kind of movies I grew up watching," and the film is an homage to the low-budget science-fiction B-movies of the 1950s.⁹ Jack Nicholson plays two roles, the president and a Las Vegas real-estate hustler, in a device the Science Fiction Encyclopedia compares to Peter Sellers's multiple roles in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, one of the film's stated inspirations.⁷^•⁶

The trading cards behind the film

The conceptual basis of the film was laid in August 1962, when the Topps Co. released the original 55-card version of "Mars Attacks." For a nickel, the price of a candy bar at the time, a child could buy a wax-wrapped pack containing bubble gum and five cards.² The fronts were co-created by Topps creative director Woody Gelman and Len Brown, who also co-plotted and wrote the serialized invasion story printed on the card backs.¹⁰^•²

The cards depicted a Martian invasion with graphic, violent imagery, and the series provoked parental outrage; a Connecticut district attorney ordered Topps to stop printing the cards, which sent children scrambling to collect them and made the set a hot item at card shows in later decades.¹⁰^•⁷ Topps later issued an expanded 100-card set in 1994, combining the original 55 cards with 45 "New Visions" cards.¹¹

Development

The screenplay went through a long development process. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia records an originating 1985 storyline version by Alex Cox on which the novelist Martin Amis also worked; screenwriter Jonathan Gems pitched both Mars Attacks and Dinosaurs Attack! concepts, and Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the card series.⁶ An adaptation attempt had begun in the 1980s but never reached production.¹²

Burton's own path to the project ran through a different card set. After completing Ed Wood (1994), he came across Topps's 1970s "Dinosaur Attacks!" cards while talking with Warner Bros. executives, vaguely recalled a similar set from his childhood, and found that the Mars Attacks cards were real.⁷

Visual effects

The Martians were originally planned as stop-motion characters, with animation supervisor Barry Purves developing articulated 12-inch models for tests composited against bluescreen into miniature sets. A practical problem arose from the Martians' glass helmets: any facial animation required removing the helmet, changing the face, and replacing it, complicating the mattes (Compositing masks used to combine film images). Industrial Light & Magic produced a series of animation tests, created by animation supervisor David Andrews, that convinced Burton to realize the Martians in computer graphics instead; the newly formed Warner Digital Studios crafted other key CG shots, including the flying saucers, death rays, and large-scale destruction.¹³^•⁹

Reception and comparison with Independence Day

Mars Attacks! opened to largely middling reviews and underperformed commercially in the United States, grossing $37.8 million against an $80 million budget.⁸^•¹^•² It entered theaters five months after Independence Day, which became one of the highest-grossing films of all time, and many critics compared the two unfavorably despite their sharing little beyond alien-invasion plots, large ensembles, and the same release year.⁸ The two films were in production at the same time, so the resemblance is probably largely coincidental.⁶

The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes holds that the film "faithfully recreates the wooden characters and schlocky story of cheesy '50s sci-fi and Ed Wood movies, perhaps a little too faithfully for audiences."¹ Retrospective assessments have been warmer: a 2021 Dazed essay argued that its portrait of people rationalizing a global threat, with governments repeating ineffective strategies, had gained relevance, and a 2026 review in The Blu Spot called it "a loving homage to cheesy sci-fi B-movies of the '50s" that "remains a rather entertaining romp."⁸^•¹ Warner Bros. released a 30th-anniversary 4K Blu-ray steelbook edition with a Dolby Atmos mix in 2026.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Science fiction and fantasy films (individual works) › Science fiction and fantasy films of the 1990s › Released 1996 to 1999

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 20, 2026; Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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