MARS EXPRESS - Mark Reviews Movies

Mars Express, GKids

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 2, 2024

About 200 years in the future, humanity still lives on Earth, although that's probably in part because humankind has also colonized Mars. At its best, science-fiction creates a believable world of the future, advanced technology, new realms, familiar ones that have evolved with time, or all of these things and more. The sights of the animated Mars Express are at times wonderful to behold, such as our early looks at what a possible civilization on the Red Planet would look like, but co-writer/director Jérémie Périn's film goes a bit beyond just the spectacle.

When our protagonists first arrive on Mars, for example, they have to go through customs. It's one of those little details that makes all the difference here, because we're not just watching a future of interplanetary travel, of the exploration of planets beyond our solar system, and filled with artificially intelligent robots that work assorted jobs and serve as a means of keeping one's consciousness alive after physical death. We're also observing a futuristic world that functions on a practical level.

There are still expressways, and even though they cut through the mountains of Mars and are populated with self-driving vehicles, there's still a matter of safety to consider. Périn and co-screenwriter Laurent Sarfati incorporate that in a clever, intense sequence of action and suspense, when our two heroes, who are starting to uncover a conspiracy involving the separate murder of two humans and a missing robot, find themselves attacked on that impressive highway.

The filmmakers don't simply figure out how such a road system would function. They integrate the assorted elements of that function—safety foam that protects the occupants of a car, while also locking them in place, and worker robots dispatched to rescue the trapped passengers—into the fiber of the scene, too.

In other words, the pleasure of this film is as much in the discovery of such carefully considered details as it is in the various sights of this world, as well as the intriguing mystery that plays out within it. If the story can't quite find a way to marry that plot with its deeper ideas about the ethics of AI and the questions of human identity, it's almost irrelevant. The world of the film feels like a real place, and it's compelling to spend some time exploring it.

As for the story, it begins with the murder of a college student by a mysterious assailant. Another young woman hides in a bathtub, undetected by the killer.

That woman goes missing, leading her father to enlist the help of private investigator Aline (voice of Morla Gorrondona) and her android partner Carlos (voice of Josh Keaton), who was once a human before being killed in a robot uprising five years prior. There's nothing human about him left, because even his head, which eerily floats above the metallic body, is just a hologram.

Before that, we see the two detectives in action on Earth, trying to capture the elusive hacker Roberta (voice of Sarah Hollis), who has become infamous for freeing robots of their programming and giving them the capacity to think for themselves. The ensuing chase provides a lot of information about the history and politics of this future, as robots are now distrusted and despised by many humans on Earth, making Mars a last refuge of sorts for them and those who aren't as skeptical of and violent toward the bots.

The rest of the plot is a mystery tale, as Aline and Carlos follow leads, question people of interest, and gather clues about the missing college student, only to find themselves in the middle of a vast scheme. It definitely involves their former military mate Chris Royjacker (voice of Kiff VandenHeuvel), who owns the largest AI and robot-manufacturing company on Mars, although it's so enigmatic that even he doesn't seem to know who's really behind it. There's also a missing robot, which the missing student somehow freed with some coding skills, and as the two private eyes dig deeper, they become targets of the shadowy group working behind the scenes to do something with all the robots on Mars.

It's all fine, as are the main characters, who, like any hardboiled detectives worth their salt in this kind of story, have demons with which to wrestle (Aline is trying to stay sober, and Carlos has an ex-wife who refuses to let their daughter see him—not because he is a robot, but because he was a violent man before that). What's more engaging, though, is how Périn and Sarfati use the plotting as a means of taking us on a tour of their vision of a future Mars—from places as relatively quaint as a police station and a replicated suburb, where panels re-create the skies of a livable atmosphere, to ones as unique as a red-light district of robotic sex workers and the original underground colonies, which have become concrete bunkers of a slum.

There's also the smart use of technology within the narrative, such as phone calls being made via brain implants, effectively making telepathic communication (including group chats) possible, and security footage that's displayed in real time in the physical space where it happened. The film is a neat technological feat itself, seamlessly blending seemingly hand-drawn characters and computer-animated backgrounds, which use the same simple art style but that allow for more intricate detail and fluid motion.

The screenplay clearly has its mind on bigger ideas about the robots and the possibility that AI is as sentient as any human. Apart from some flashes (such as a robot gaining self-awareness just before it's about to be recycled for parts and the lingering questions of the finale), Mars Express is too busy with matters of plotting and the creation of this world to really examine them in any insightful way. It does create a fully realized world, though, and that's a notable accomplishment.

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