MovieChat Forums > Mars Attacks! (1996) Discussion > Rod Steiger in this -- "Consistently Fun...

Rod Steiger in this -- "Consistently Funny"

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
8 replies | jump to latest

As I recall, for a truly all-star cast movie, Mars Attacks in 1996 got a lot of bad reviews. As often with movies of this nature, the reviews fell into the middling "two star" range -- the stars were too famous and the effects too good NOT to notice the effort, but "disappointing" was the word.

Still, one critic(for Time magazine, as I recall), in rolling off all the names of the stars in this -- led by Jack Nicholson in a "double role"(good as his version of the US President, pretty bad as a rich Vegas cowboy huster with a stuffed nose) and going on through Pierce Brosnan(in his Bond peak stardom), Annette Bening, Glenn Close, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Danny DeVito, Jim Brown...and on and on and on...

..reached Rod Steiger and noted: "Rod Steiger(consistently funny).

And its TRUE. Of all the players in Mars Attacks(did I forget Martin Short as the President's press aide0? A beautiful young Natalie Portman as the President's daughter? )..the one player who GOT LAUGHS...consistently..was Rod Steger.

Face it, whether Method Man(On the Waterfront, The Pawnbroker) or character star(Dr. Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night), Steiger always brought a heapin' helpin' of ham to his acting...talking big, talking loud, hitting his points with a sledge hammer of verbiage.

And in Mars Attacks he did all of that but added a self-aware dose of macho man belligerence and self-confidence as the military general who is the ONLY guy who knows these martians mean business, are out to kill everybody on earth and must be...nuked. "Annhilate! Kill! Kill!")

But he also has a certain wise-cracking one-liner timing. When the Martians shrink, swallow, eat and digest an atomic missile sent to destroy them, there's a quick cut to an incredulous Steiger saying "What the hell was THAT?"

When President Jack Nicholson apologizes for not taking the martian threat seriously, Steiger amiably reassures him "That's OK, Mr. President...we all make mistakes." But when the President declines to use nukes ...yet...Steiger with irritated petulance grabs the board with the Executive Order and his pen and walks away like a kid taking his marbles and going home.

And this: for a certain late, key stretch of the movie, its mainly Nicholson and Steiger...together in a more modern "Dr. Strangelove" War Room, the President and his General arguing over what to do.

But its also two Oscar winners in there: Steiger(Best Actor, In the Heat of the Night) versus Nicholson(Best Actor, Cuckoo's Nest, Best Supporting Actor Terms of Enderament -- with ANOTHER Oscar about to save him the next year from this Mars Attacks debacle.)

And many-y-mano, Oscar winner vs Oscar winner: Steiger WINS. . Poor Jack does the best with his stereophonic voice and commanding veteran superstar persona, but he doesn't get the good jokes that Steiger gets and sometimes, his facial expressions are just WRONG. (One senses that Nicholson realizes his Batman director , Tim Burton, had delivered him into a lousy project this time, and just gave up.)

Its interesting to see Rod Steiger -- old and near the end of his career and life - besting Jack Nicholson. But he does it.

Consistently funny.

PS. Natalie Portman actually gets the best one-liner in the movie. Martians annihilated well-wishers in the desert, but the President's team thinks a "dove of peace" accidentally scared the martians into firepower. But now,after the same martians have killed everybody in Congress, Portman deadpans "I guess it wasn't the dove.'"

[–] HarveyManFredSin (4877) 2 years ago

Good post.

And I agree about Steiger's performance and characterisation. I like how the film didn't make him a two-dimensional hawkish asshole. Like you say, he was one of the first characters to recognise that the Martians were a threat (even if his solution achieved diddly-squat), and despite his occasional bellyaching about liberals and peaceniks, he had his good points (like you say, showing admirable forgiveness towards the President, even if it was mostly because he wanted to get the President on-side in order to execute nukes).

I don't agree about Nicholson though. His Vegas gambler was hit-and-miss, but he was clearly having a blast playing the President, and he gets some great moments, including his "Why can't we all just get along? speech, and the way he winces and groans when Steiger's general is minituarised and stepped on.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Thanks for reading.

And I can certainly backtrack on Nicholson's work even with Steiger(to my mind) getting the better lines and comedy schtick.

As with many all-star movies, once Tim Burton convinced Nicholson to sign on(for TWO roles)...all the other stars signed right up. Nicholson had that power, and I rather enjoyed his "take" on being Presidential. "In the beginning,"he's pretty damn serious and has the gravitas. As everything goes crazy and the martians start killing everybody...the President becomes odder and odder and yeah the "Why can't we get along speech" is pretty heartfelt yet wacky in its delivery.

I'm a Jack Nicholson fan. Generally he can do no wrong, but I felt the script on this one let him down. DEFINITELY with the Vegas character(though his choice to use a stuffed nose didn't work,either) sometimes with the President.

I"ve read that the original pitch was to Warren Beatty as the President and to Jack only for the Vegas character. When Beatty dropped out, Nicholson took his better role of President-- and kept the Vegas guy(who really isn't in the movie much.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And I agree about Steiger's performance and characterisation. I like how the film didn't make him a two-dimensional hawkish asshole.

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Yes. The role was well-written and Steiger understood how to play it. Let's face it , the movie rather took the General's side -- its like everybody ELSE has gone crazy in their refusal to see the martians for the murderous tyrants they really are. The General is US: "What are you people, crazy?"

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Like you say, he was one of the first characters to recognise that the Martians were a threat (even if his solution achieved diddly-squat), and despite his occasional bellyaching about liberals and peaceniks,

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Well he was US in general -- seeing the martians for what they really were -- but the right-wing satire was there too. Had to be, I guess. I remember now that Rod Steiger was offered - and turned down, he said -- Patton. He might have been good.

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he had his good points (like you say, showing admirable forgiveness towards the President, even if it was mostly because he wanted to get the President on-side in order to execute nukes

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That WAS funny. The General's tone ("That's OK , Mr. President..") was conciliatory but a bit false. Nuanced, you might say.

I might add that I liked Mars Attacks more than others did, principally because of things like Steiger's character and seeing Jack Nicholson "trying to have fun." Natalie Portman was good start to finish( the "Presidential orphan" asking the poor boy character who saved everybody "You got a girlfriend?") The movie's overall merciless tone -- the martians murder almost EVERY star in the movie -- was very funny to me. Fearless.

But its flaws were there too. Split decision for me.

[–] HarveyManFredSin (4877) 2 years ago

I'm a HUGE fan of the film.

I was already a massive Tim Burton stan (having seen Edward Scissorhands at the cinema, and absolutely loving Batman and Batman Returns), and the trailer, with the enticement of a bunch of A-list actors like Nicholson, Glenn Close, Michael J. Fox, Pierce Brosnan (the then James Bond), Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Tom Jones (although, of course, he and Bening survive) and others, getting zapped by aliens, and even as a staunch leftist, I loved that the film didn't always lampoon the obvious right-wing targets, but took the piss out of *everyone*, including the libs, represented by Brosnan's pompous, self-regarding scientist and Nicholson's well-meaning but equally self-regarding peacenik President (who I'm guessing is a Democrat, especially if, as you say, famous liberal Warren Beatty was down to originally play the role). There's actual very little genuine malice to most of the human characters (the libs mean well, and the right-wingers may be overbearing, but some of them have a point). They're all idiots, for the most part, but Burton doesn't seem to hate them, and few of them are *entirely* wretched. They're all just flawed, like most regular people. Still, there is a gloriously childish malicious streak to the whole affair, and Burton is having fun killing these mostly aimable, but ultimately moronic, characters in the most savage and bizarre way. It's a cruelty that brings to mind the books of Roald Dahl, although Burton, as I say, is less contemptuous of the characters (which is the impression I also got with his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which seemed to soft-peddle the 'bad kids' a little). Burton does this a lot. He'll put various characters, particularly side characters, through the wringer, and give them bizarre fates, and yet he rarely has any *entirely* despicable characters. He mostly seems to be deploring their stupidity, hubris and arrogance, rather than saying they're completely evil.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I'm a HUGE fan of the film.

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Very good! I'd step right up and join you, but I'm chicken -- this is one of those movies that got dumped on unceremoniously from release without(I've always felt) a REAL look at what's going on in it. Tim Burton was starting to get that sudden disfavor that critics ALWAYS do to their darlings. Such critical "switching" is predictable and I think, petty, and Mars Attacks was smarter than people thought. Hell, that CAST was endorsing its offbeat qualities.

This was weird: "Independence Day" had been a megahit in the summer of 1996 and Mars Attacks thus looked like its "weak copycat cousin," but again -- there was so much more of a subversive, snarky undertow to Mars Attacks(which mixed cartoonish martians with very adult violence and destruction) that just seemed BETTER to me than the straightforward big action of ID4.

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I was already a massive Tim Burton fan (having seen Edward Scissorhands at the cinema, and absolutely loving Batman and Batman Returns),

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Batman is the best comic book movie IMHO, and Batman Returns is not far behind it. Burton, Nicholson(in the first one) and Keaton are the main reasons. And Danny Elfman.

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CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The trailer, with the enticement of a bunch of A-list actors like Nicholson, Glenn Close, Michael J. Fox, Pierce Brosnan (the then James Bond), Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Tom Jones (although, of course, he and Bening survive) and others, getting zapped by aliens,

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Its a short list of all-star "comedia garguantuas" as I call them -- Its a Mad Mad World; 1941, and Mars Attacks. None of them got critical love, but they certainly work in a certain way.

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and even as a staunch leftist, I loved that the film didn't always lampoon the obvious right-wing targets, but took the piss out of *everyone*, including the libs, represented by Brosnan's pompous, self-regarding scientist and Nicholson's well-meaning but equally self-regarding peacenik President (who I'm guessing is a Democrat, especially if, as you say, famous liberal Warren Beatty was down to originally play the role).

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I think it was Michael Douglas who said of Hollywood's reputation for liberalism, "Well, there are a lot of conservative industries, why not have one that's liberal?" and over the years, Hollywood has lived up to that billing. And yet, liberals and/or non-political people(Tim Burton?) can and will occasionally make movies that make fun of their own side...as long as all sides get skewered. The Joe Don Baker, Jack Black, and Rod Steiger characters are right wing here, but Brosnan and Nicholson are indeed presented as "bleeding heart to the max" -- stupidly so -- and simply not getting it about the martian menace and..that's funny too. (Many of the rest of the characters -- Michael J. Fox, Sarah Parker, Danny DeVito...simply don't have any political beliefs - and even Martin Short's White House press guy sees things for spin and entertainment value.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

There's actual very little genuine malice to most of the human characters (the libs mean well, and the right-wingers may be overbearing, but some of them have a point). They're all idiots, for the most part, but Burton doesn't seem to hate them, and few of them are *entirely* wretched. They're all just flawed, like most regular people.

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The movie takes a rather intelligent stance on rather non-intelligent(not Unintelligent) people.

I think the big scene is really the one where the martians totally wipe out Congress(portrayed rather amusingly as all middle-aged white men, which isn't the way it is.) NOW their murderous intentions are revealed, and NOW Nicholson and Brosnan(bopped over the head and sent to a horrible experiment) get it.

And Natalie Portman gets the great line: "I guess it wasn't the bird."

And later, Nicholson(mixing gravitas and comedy) tells the Amiercan people: "We've got two out of three branches of government power still standing -- and that ain't bad."

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Still, there is a gloriously childish malicious streak to the whole affair,

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CHILDISH(which the critics didn't get, and that's because they didn't like how goofy the stop motion martians look) AND malicious. (Its FUNNY how many stars get killed here, one right after the other -- Nicholson TWICE)

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and Burton is having fun killing these mostly aimable, but ultimately moronic, characters in the most savage and bizarre way.

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Yes: here the slasher movie concept of "kills" is given a comedy bent, but still: these ARE kills. Often with the death rays that turn people into green skeletons, but President Nicholson dies in a unique, most ironic and grisly manner.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

It's a cruelty that brings to mind the books of Roald Dahl, although Burton, as I say, is less contemptuous of the characters (which is the impression I also got with his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which seemed to soft-peddle the 'bad kids' a little).

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Yeah, I never understood that. The 1971 original suggested that some -- maybe all -- of the bad kids weren't going to come out of it alive -- but Burton shows us all of them alive at the end, if worse for wear.

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Burton does this a lot. He'll put various characters, particularly side characters, through the wringer, and give them bizarre fates, and yet he rarely has any *entirely* despicable characters. He mostly seems to be deploring their stupidity, hubris and arrogance, rather than saying they're completely evil.

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That's it. Mars Attacks just sort of has an attitude to it: aren't we all pretty ridiculous? But we don't deserve THIS.

Still, at the end, the survivors are telling: (1) The poor boy who was ignored by his militaristic parents and went to save his grandmother; (2) that same, very elderly grandmother(whose yodel music brought all the martians down); (3) the bored and rebellious Presidential daughter(yeah she's sorry her parents died but-- possible boyfriend ahead, and they can make the babies of the new world; (4) Jim Brown, Pam Grier, and their entire family; (5) Way out in Lake Tahoe, Tom Jones(HE can't die) and (6) Annette Bening -- the good-hearted New Ager who was ignored by Vegas Jack.

For the most part, Burton seems to be saying that the less materialistic and more "pure" you are...the better your chance for survival.

Maybe.