There are few movies quite like Mars Attacks! Tim Burton’s wonderfully bizarre 1996 sci-fi comedy has always felt like a live-action comic book brought completely off the rails, packed with outrageous characters, ridiculous violence, intentionally over-the-top performances, and one of the most colorful visual styles of Burton’s career. It’s the kind of movie that knows exactly how silly it is and embraces every bit of it.
Nearly 30 years later, I still find it incredibly entertaining, and this new 4K release gives the film a presentation that finally lets all of that madness shine. Warner Bros. doesn’t provide much information about the source of this new 4K master, but based on the results, it certainly appears to have been sourced from a 4K scan of the original camera negative and given a new Dolby Vision and HDR10 grade.
The upgrade over the previous Blu-ray is immediately noticeable. Mars Attacks! has always been a difficult movie when it comes to fine detail because of its extensive optical and visual effects work, but this new transfer is considerably sharper and more refined. Live-action scenes have excellent clarity, with costumes, production design, facial details, and textures all benefiting from the increased resolution. The film grain looks natural and nicely resolved, although it does fluctuate somewhat depending on how much effects work is happening in a particular shot.
What’s especially impressive is how well many of the older visual effects hold up in 4K. You might expect some of the early digital effects to look painfully dated when given this much resolution, but they actually blend into the live-action material better than I expected. Because many of those effects were ultimately transferred back to film, the grain structure helps tie everything together. Some shots of the Martians themselves still reveal their age, and certain effects remain as goofy as they were in 1996, but honestly, that’s part of the charm.
The biggest improvement for me comes from the HDR presentation. Mars Attacks! has always been an incredibly colorful movie, but Dolby Vision takes that palette and gives it a much bigger presence. The bright reds, greens, oranges, purples, and blues are wonderfully vibrant without becoming artificially oversaturated. Burton and cinematographer Peter Suschitzky created a very specific comic-book aesthetic for this movie, and the new HDR grade respects that look rather than trying to modernize it. The colors have more depth and intensity, while darker scenes benefit from improved shadow detail and contrast.
The production design also deserves a special mention because there is so much going on in practically every frame. The retro-futuristic sets, Martian technology, costumes, and intentionally exaggerated color choices all look fantastic in 4K. This is one of those movies where simply stopping the film and looking around the frame can reveal something you didn’t notice before.
Mars Attacks! is weird, loud, ridiculous, and it absolutely refuses to take itself seriously. It’s also a movie that I think has aged better than its reputation might suggest. This isn’t Burton at his most emotionally complex, but that’s never what it was trying to be. It’s a big, colorful, chaotic piece of sci-fi fun, and that’s exactly why I still enjoy it. Warner Bros.’ new 4K edition gives Mars Attacks! the upgrade it deserves. The improvements in detail, color, contrast, HDR, and overall image stability make this easily the best the movie has looked at home. If you’re already a fan, this is an easy upgrade, and if you’ve somehow never experienced Burton’s Martian invasion, there’s never been a better-looking way to do it.
Have you seen it yet? Are you a fan of this movie? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Cheers,
Matt.
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