MARS EXPRESS -- Solid Cyberpunk Animation Sticks to Familiar Genre Conventions

Review by Daniel Lima

As much as I love science fiction, I can’t help but wonder to myself when the last truly visionary work in the genre was. That isn’t to say we are bereft of any good examples these days, but it feels like there has not been a work like Blade Runner or The Matrix — totemic works that introduced new ideas to the popular consciousness and changed the way we imagined the future — in quite some time. Mars Express is not another game-changer, indebted as it is to well-worn themes and tropes, but it is still a gorgeous package with an interesting world and an engrossing mystery.

Set 100 years in the future, humanity has colonized Mars and is supported by a large population of robots — shackled AIs bound into servitude. A pair of private detectives, one human and one robot, go on a routine missing persons job and find themselves embroiled in a much larger conspiracy. Murder, a shady corporation, and a nascent liberation movement threaten to upend the society that has been built on the red planet.

This is cyberpunk in a grounded, relatively hard sci-fi world, and it follows many of the conventions set by past works in the genre. Colonists live in huge domes with screens that mimic blue skies; activists jailbreak AI to unlock unrestricted sentience; digital backups for the recently deceased, given a second life in robotic bodies. Similarly, ideas about what it means to be human and the path humanity chooses to take as it pushes further into the universe are part and parcel of this particular subgenre. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s not much novelty to this particular vision of the future.

Where the film does succeed is in bringing that vision to life. This is a low-budget animated film, mostly 2D (3D is used for the backgrounds, some characters, and environmental objects), so there is a stiffness to much of the movement, and many of the shorts feel static. The art design, however, goes a long way in giving Mars a distinct feel, clean and corporatized, with hints of older technologies still holding on as the bleeding edge is rolled out. Concepts like organic computers overtaking digital counterparts might not be fresh, but seeing these eerie bioengineered organisms floating in jars is still fascinating.

The way information about this world is doled is one of the greatest strengths of Mars Express. This colony has a long and storied history, with a clear set of pervading beliefs and attitudes. Those details are only ever learned in passing, through dialogue and character beats that don’t take the tenor of exposition. The robot detective has a tenuous relationship with humans that reflects his place in society; mentions of a past military incident involving robots explain the rise of bioware; shunned practices exploit the possibility of copying one’s mind into another body. Worldbuilding like this, seamless and natural, is what separates truly involving speculative fiction from careless dreck.

Admittedly, these details are a bit more memorable than the actual story. The investigation does have propulsive energy, and the budgetary limitations of an animated film obviously forced the creative team to consider every single frame very carefully to its benefit. The characters are all well-defined, from the leads all the way down to those that only get a line or two. The ultimate conclusion is surprisingly thoughtful and decidedly not designed to sate a general audience, which makes it all the more affecting. Yet, when thinking about what makes the movie work, the scope and amount of detail spring to mind far quicker than the narrative details themselves.​

As impressive as Mars Express is, the one thing holding it back is how indebted it is to what came before. At a time when artificial intelligence is now a hot-button issue set to disrupt the current order of things — perhaps for the worst — it is a bit of a missed opportunity for a film like this to reflect past iterations of what the future may bring. That might not detract from what the film offers, but it limits its horizons. ​

Mars Express is now in theaters.

Rating: 4/5