Movies: Mars Attacks! | L5: First City in Space

Little green men cover Earth in little green skeletons

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• Mars Attacks!
• Rated PG-13
• Starring everybody

n the 1962 Topps trading-card series Mars Attacks, little green men with naked skulls and bulging green brains poured out of the domed cities of Mars to destroy all life on Earth. They didn't have much of a choice; their own planet was about to blow up, and they had to live somewhere.

The images on those cards were so graphic and lurid by 1960's standards that the protests kept the cards from wide release. Nonetheless, they still somehow stuck in the pleasantly perverse mind of director Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Ed Wood, etc.), who decided they'd make a great pulp science-fiction film. But in Burton's version, Mars isn't about to explode. The Martians are just mean little buggers who seem to really enjoy reducing Earthlings to cheerfully Christmasy red and green skeletons.

That's pretty much the whole plot of Mars Attacks!. A bevy of grimy Kansas trailer-park dwellers, the assorted flakes and nuts of Las Vegas, the New York television studios and the White House staff in D.C. all contribute handfuls of generally shallow, unlikeable characters for ray-gun fodder. With few exceptions, the star-studded cast is only on-screen to provide big-name victims for the Martians' sick sense of humor.

The sick sight gags, gross slapstick and obnoxious stereotypes are most of the fun of Mars Attacks! The characters -- including Jack Nicholson and Glenn Close as the President and First Lady, respectively -- are so self-centered, arrogant and annoying that they might as well be wearing "Fry me for a cheap laugh" signs. And the yapping, bug-eyed Martians are so gleeful about the mass slaughter that it's hard not to giggle along with them as they quick-bake a dove of peace or shepherd the falling Washington Monument directly onto a fleeing group of Boy Scouts.

But the film takes forever to get to the action, lingering interminably on introductions of the huge cast and their reactions to the discovery of spaceships, their theorizing about life on other planets, etc. Burton doesn't usually have this much of a problem cutting to the chase -- but then, he's usually not operating with a plot this thin.

Screenwriter Jonathan Gems doesn't seem to have any idea what to do before the aliens land, or when they're not on-screen. The computer-generated bad guys (and their grisly computer-generated experiments and weaponry) are a blast to watch, but the posturing and prancing between the human stars takes twice as long and bogs the movie down irretrievably. Even the copious visual references -- Terminator 2, War of the Worlds and especially Dr. Strangelove -- can't save this from being the most one-note production of Burton's career. Maybe if he'd chosen slightly more diverse source material?

I still think the Nevada scene should have featured Will Smith dragging a parachute around in the desert. -- Tasha

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Jaws 3-D this ain't

Our pick:
1 2 3 4 5

• L5: First City in Space
• An IMAX 3-D production
• Starring Colin Fox, Rachel Walker
• Approximately 40 minutes

hree-dimensional film technology has come a long way since the campy horror films of the 1950s. But L5: First City in Space is another quantum leap for the medium. This speculative semi-drama resembles early 3D exploitation films only in the degree to which the directors still compose for the most sensationalistic and eye-popping shots.

L5, filmed for the IMAX giant-screen format and playing in a scattering of IMAX's 130-odd theaters worldwide, mixes human interest, hard science, and breathtaking imagery in an attempt to appeal to every possible audience. Using the spacecraft designs of NASA artist Pat Rawlings and the theories of scientist Gerard O'Neill, the short film presents a speculative look at life in a self-sustaining space station hanging in a LaGrange Point orbit a hundred years from now.

Writer/director/editor/co-producer Toni Myers concentrates on the mundane aspects of life in L5, operating from the point of view of seven-year-old Chieko. One of her average, wandering days becomes an audience tour of the station, from the hydroponics lab to the virtual reality entertainment center. Chieko's adult self narrates, explaining the technology and theories behind the station, leading into a short subplot about how the station has reached maximum population -- 10,000 people -- and now desperately needs an outside supply of water.

While Chieko's scientist grandfather and explorer father are ready with a daring plan to chase down and redirect a nearby comet, live-action director Allan Kroeker never achieves any real sense of urgency. The entire film carries the placid, abstract wonder of 2001: A Space Odyssey -- it's stunning to look at, but difficult to connect with the characters on any level.

But characters are really shallow conveniences; L5 cares a great deal more about its meticulous attention to science and imagery. The film includes IMAX footage -- shot from the Space Shuttle -- of the MIR station. It extrapolates data from the Voyager, Galileo and Viking space-probes into animated sequences created with the help of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It lets viewers hang in orbit above Earth, watch comet Shoemaker-Levy crash-landing on Jupiter, take a dizzying trip across the surface of Mars, visit one of Saturn's moons to see a robot probe unfolding, and land on the surface of a comet -- all in deep, clear, colorful 3D.

With all this, the weak storyline and detached characters are hardly necessary. They're just a bonus, albeit one far less compelling than the close-up shots of the Space Shuttle launching. As a human drama, L5 is a bit of a yawn. But as the first wholly speculative IMAX film, it's a pretty giant leap for the medium.

I don't generally care for hard science fiction, but this was unusually compelling and impressive. Hope you happen to be in one of the 34 states (or 20 countries) where they have IMAX theaters. -- Tasha

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