Invasores de Marte

Dos años después, volví a revisar el material de ciencia ficción que vi en la película original de 1953, y tengo que decir que no encontré mucha justificación para hacer este remake. Tobe Hooper copia fielmente la premisa argumental del original con gran gracia visual, pero aparte de las numerosas referencias a la película original, no añade nada nuevo a la historia, sino que conserva fielmente incluso su parte de menor calidad (es decir, el final). Tal vez solo la apariencia de los marcianos es un poco diferente, aunque similarmente divertida sin intención como en el original. La aparente angustia de Hooper en el momento de su creación causó no poco dolor al dúo de productores Golan/Globus, quienes, después de ver esta película y también la de Hooper La matanza de Texas 2 del mismo año, empezaron a rasgarse las vestiduras preguntándose en qué clase de proyectos descabellados habían puesto realmente sus recursos financieros. Por supuesto, no recuperaron la inversión en absoluto. Tobe Hooper no ha aportado muchos fondos a Cannon, pero ha dado lugar a al menos tres proyectos megalómanos bastante interesantes y extraños, al menos uno de los cuales para mí es de calidad. (13.02.2020)

Like his preceding Lifeforce, Hooper’s second project under his three-picture deal with Cannon Films is a fanboy effort by which the director fulfilled his dream of shooting a remake of his favourite film from childhood with the use of modern effects. Except for the effects, however, his reworking of the 1950s sci-fi flick Invaders from Mars unfortunately brings nothing new to the table. In terms of narrative, this literal copy retains not only the paranoid premise, but also the naïveté and half-baked nature of the original. By imaginatively interpreting and reworking the original, Hooper could have made a great contribution to the then-current trend of children’s films based on horror and science fiction. However, Hooper’s ambitions did not extend in that direction, which is confirmed by the involvement of a completely uncharismatic and hopeless actor in the lead role (it is no surprise that his career came to a halt after this). Following the example of 1950s trash flicks, Hooper didn’t care who played the hero, because neither the protagonist nor any motifs relating to childhood are of any concern here. The protagonist is merely a puppet in the hands of an ideologically tinged screenplay that seems out of place in the context of the 1980s. Like his other projects for Cannon Films, Hooper’s Invaders from Mars is fascinating as a completely unprecedented and unrepeated phenomenon in Hollywood cinema, when a talented filmmaker gains access to a generous production environment in order to please himself by making projects that do not in any way take any trends or commercial calculations into consideration. (11.10.2015)