The 1996 movie that almost sent Tim Burton into Hollywood exile
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When Tim Burton emerged in Hollywood, he instantly marked himself out as someone a little different. This was an artist who was sure in their style from the very beginning, perhaps due to his experience as an animator for Disney in the 1980s.
His appreciation for strong visuals became central to his own work, and while some of those first forays into directing would see him play with animation, by the time he was ready to direct his first feature, he’d moved into the realm of live-action. From Beetlejuice to Batman, Burton carved out a unique space for himself in the industry as a filmmaker with a taste for slightly more gothic, unconventional stylings, teetering on the edge of horror without fully giving in to the genre.
In 1996, however, he opted to direct a film that would be rather different from everything he’d made before. Instead of going for a moody gothic aesthetic, Mars Attacks! would instead pay homage to the campy B-movies of the ‘50s, and it utilised striking set and costume design that many audiences deemed ridiculous. But that was the point, of course. It was meant to be over-the-top and darkly comic; for Christ’s sake, it even features a half-dog, half-Sarah Jessica Parker hybrid, but it fell flat with many critics.
The reception to Mars Attacks!, paired with the tricky process of bringing such a visually challenging world to life, really took its toll on Burton, and by the time the movie was made, he was left with serious doubts over his place in Hollywood as a filmmaker.
Talking to Inverse, screenwriter Jonathan Gems understatedly revealed that “this film was a fuck of a job,” adding, “I worked my ass off, but Tim worked twice as hard as I did. By the end, he was burnt out. He was a wreck. I think he went to India with his girlfriend for about a month. I think I remember him telling me at that time that he didn’t want to ever make another movie again.”
You’d think that something as fun as Mars Attacks! might have been somewhat of an enjoyable experience to shoot, but Burton was at breaking point. He really didn’t know where he was at anymore, and he felt lost following the movie’s polarising reception. “It just sort of encapsulated everything I felt at the time,” he confessed.
Adding, “I felt very misplaced at that time, for some strange reason, whether I’d been working at Disney too long or something else. I don’t know.”
Despite the gruellingly hard work that Burton had put into it, “it was a bomb in America,” he claims. While box office earnings of over $100 million hardly seem like a failure, the movie’s budget wasn’t far off that figure, so really, it didn’t make much of a profit at all.
It wouldn’t be another three years until Burton made another picture, going back to his gothic roots with Sleepy Hollow, which comfortably earned twice as much as Mars Attacks!, and finally, he was back on track.
