I Think About This Scene From ‘Mars Attacks!’ All The Time

The aliens are the good guys is this movie’s best punchline

There’s an especially memorable scene near the end of Tim Burton’s gleefully anti-human 1996 sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks! where the President of the United States (Jack Nicholson at his oiliest) tries to make peace with the invading Martians with a beautiful speech about Earth and Mars working together. “There is nothing that we could not accomplish,” he says.

The speech clearly moves the Martian leader — a single tear forming in one of his giant, lidless bug-eyes. As a gesture of goodwill, the Martian extends his hand in friendship and President Nicholson accepts but surprise! It’s a fake hand! A robot spider-hand! With a deadly scorpion-like metallic tail! No peace! Ha, ha! The deadly hand crawls all over the President and then murders him. The Martians don’t want peace. They hate humanity and, to be honest, I don’t blame them.

I think about this scene all the time.

Mars Attacks is not Burton’s best — that’s a toss-up between Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, and Ed Wood. But it certainly is his most anarchic. The Martians have a two-step plan: Destroy humanity and have a good time doing it. Flying saucers vandalize monuments. Soldiers are turned into smoldering skeletons. A giant laser cannon is pointed at the head of a little old lady. It’s a disaster movie that cheers on the disaster.

The movie has an abrupt, and very silly, happy ending but for almost an hour and a half, it’s nonstop carnage — an army of tiny green men with giant brains eyes laughing while killing Earthlings. The Martians, you know, have a point.