Mars Express

• Co-Written and Directed by Jérémie Périn
• May 23, 2023 (Cannes) / November 22, 2023 (France)

Voice Cast

• Aline Ruby-Morla Gorrondona
• Carlos Rivera-Josh Keaton
• Roberta Williams-Sarah Hollis
• Chris Royjacker-Kiff VandenHeuvel
• Beryl/Mrs. Viger-Fiona Jones
• Carole Rivera/Additional Voices-Mara Junot
• Gilbert/Brian Jobi/Additional Voices-Sean Burgos
• Jun’s Father/Fake Mr. Chow/Additional Voices-Greg Chun
• Vlasek/Additional Voices-Neil Kaplan
• Dominique Viger/Additional Voices-Alex McKenna
• Brain Farmer/Additional Voices-Kamran Nikhad
• Jeanine/Additional Voices-Stephanie Sheh
• LEM/Phillipe/Additional Voices-Billy Bob Thompson
• Jun Chow/Jun Chow 2/Additional Voices-Jenapher Zheng
• Simon Gordeaux/Additional Voices-Ben Diskin
• Professor/Additional Voices-Andrew Frankel
• Additional Voices-Bindy Coda, Caitlyn Elizabeth, Michael Sinterniklaas, Marc Thompson, Daniel Walton

On Mars in the 23^rd century a private investigator and her android associate investigate a murder.

In the French production Mars Express there are clear inspirations from Blade Runner and the likes of Ghost in the Shell with a nod or two to Demolition Man. It’s a very beautiful film if nothing else. Very detailed with nothing there for cool. Everything appears to serve a purpose or is hinted that it could. Visually impressive with a plausibly futuristic vibe. Some of it looks like an extension of modern technology.

There are moments it looks like the story will get deep or philosophical but then only takes a surface approach. Mars Express hints at free will and oppression, if not subjugation, of groups that are viewed as less than desirable in society. The robots in this world have all sorts of controls and there are those seeking to be freed from them. Not as much as Star Wars does without realizing it but it does get there. Writer/director Jérémie Périn even touches on fluid sexuality with one of the robots but it never gets beyond just getting close to those concepts. It’s more about the mystery.

This is a genuine mystery. Very little is shown to the audience that the characters do not now. It immerses you in this world. The audience must pay attention otherwise they will become lost. Why? Because like real life there is rarely a recap but rather something mentioned before will be applied later.

Aline Ruby, the female detective character, has some personal baggage but not a ridiculous amount. She’s not super smart or super together or super damaged. She’s realistically human. Aline is former military as is her partner Carlos. You can guess that her issues stem from that but in a short coming of the film they never exactly tell you where her problems come from. Not that it’s necessary for the main story but if you’re going to have dysfunction it should play into the narrative in some way. It’s very tangential to the point when it does become a minor issue you almost forget that it’s there. 

Originally Aline is hired to track down and apprehend a hacker that is trying to jailbreak assorted robots. Her curiosity is piqued when she brings her quarry back to Mars and all the paperwork has been deleted forcing her to let the woman go.

Her associate Carlos is interesting. It took a little bit to get some information about the character of Carlos. Apparently like others he is a back up which I guess is where a human mind can go after it dies. What is the last time you saw a science-fiction film let alone an animated one delve into trans humanism so casually?

Carlos was killed during a machine uprising and his head was never found. I guess the floating head bit on his body is meant as a joke of some type. He has an ex-wife that fears him because he’s no longer actually Carlos and the original Carlos was physically abusive. That just never amounts to much of anything. How these backups work in society only gets explained to the point that the backup cannot be active while the original is alive. That makes sense but does everybody have one or is it something done only by some?

I like that Carlos and Aline have a strong platonic relationship. Better yet they appear to never have had any romance. Rather they developed a strong friendship through shared experience. Too often the characters have had sex and that’s why they are close.

This is a very mature animated film. It has its moments of humor but it’s not because they’re trying to be comedic. It’s just a part of the situation. The story delves into an ever expanding plot that logically gets very big when all is revealed with most of the resolution making sense.

This subverts a few expectations and by doing so makes it a little fuzzy on who the main character was. Was it Carlos or Aline? Why did Carlos decide to go into space even though his plot armor exempted him doing so from being compulsory? Part of the story involves mandatory system updates but Carlos is an older model that cannot handle them so his system is never affected. I’m also trying to figure out how exactly a machine intelligence-even one that was once human-has a brief hallucination. This is an excellent movie, but Mars Express is not perfect.

There is a ton of information and development packed into the limited run time. The film gets into planned obsolescence much more effectively than it does some of the other things it raises. There is also organic technology which in my perception is a general rarity in science fiction even though some futurists view that as a next step. But the movie never feels overstuffed or that it is moving at a breakneck speed. That helped me with the downer ending since those are difficult to make work.

Mars Express gets right far more than it gets wrong. It’s an engaging science-fiction mystery thriller that that is beautiful to watch.