Mars Express’s fascinating vision of a robotic future is inspired by film noir and Big Tech

Mars Express is the best animated film of the year that you probably haven’t seen or heard yet. Set in the 22nd century, the film follows a pair of private investigators on Mars who are hired to track down an elusive hacker on Earth who is jailbreaking robots. Their investigation soon takes on another dimension when the disappearance of a student puts them on the trail of a conspiracy that threatens to upend the human-robot civilization as they know it.

Jérémie Périn is a French animator known for directing the 2016 TV series Last manas well as several virally popular (and emphatically NSFW) music videos for electronic dance artists like DyE and Lionel Flairs. Mars Expresshis first feature film, is an outlier not only in his own oeuvre, but in the French animation industry as a whole: it is a grounded, hard-boiled detective story set in a universe with a tone and structure that seems indebted to film noir classics from the past, albeit transformed into a vision of the distant future.

Polygon had the opportunity to talk to Périn about the making of Mars Expressreleased on VOD this week, its inspiration draws from both Japanese animation and classic cinema, and its approach to the bizarre designs behind the film’s robotic and techno-organic characters.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Polygon: Mars Express has many different twists in its story. Were there any particular detective stories or films that inspired you? What are some of your favorite mysteries?

Jérémie Perin: (When it comes to) my favorites, we worked on analyzing them, especially in terms of the narrative aspects for writing the script. Those were those movies Chinatown, The long goodbye, Kiss me to death, Point blank. Those kinds of films, that classic PI, film noir. It’s really something I thought we didn’t have anymore in theaters, not so much. Under the Silver Lake may also be a film in that area, but it’s not exactly a PI (film). It’s more neo-noir.

I really wanted to get back to that private detective figure. But I realized (while I was working on it Mars Express), they are always men. And I was like, What if we put a woman (in the role) instead, to see if there are any differences? And the fact is that there was not much difference, except with (the absence of) some classical figures, such as the femme fatale. We had no reason to have a character like that there, but those inspirations and references were big in my mind.

There were other references too. I really enjoy it (…) Three days of the Condor, All the president’s men, The parallax vision, Blow out(and Francis Ford Coppola’s) The conversation. Those films where someone realizes that he is in a conspiracy and that everything is too big for him.

The influence of Japanese animation feels very prominent Mars Express, especially in the way characters move and the large-scale action scenes in the finale. As a French director, how do you think Japanese animation differs from French animation, and in what ways has Japanese animation inspired your work? Mars Express?

The methodology of working in Japan and France regarding animation differs in some specific details, but they are especially important in terms of layouts (more detailed views of storyboards that allow animators to plan and visualize the movement of a shot or sequence before animating it). In Japan, animators create their own layouts, poses and animation. They are responsible for the entire series. In France it is more divided between different teams. There’s a layout team, an animation team, and so on. Even the way the animation is played in Japan and France is different.

Image: Everyone on Deck/GKIDS

But as an audience member, I watched a lot of Japanese animation as a kid, and even today I continue to watch what they do. I quickly realized that they didn’t have the same budget as American animation, or even French animation. It’s weird because I feel like there are less drawings in their animations, but at the same time I feel like they have more impact on me. The feeling of the framing and all that stuff to me is more powerful than a Disney movie, (where) the animation is much smoother (and) moving all the time. (…) Japanese animation, in my opinion, can be very impactful and more cinematic, because they are really efficient in what they do (like drawing), but also more efficient (in) the editing and the staging and the depth of the shots.

In the early days of Japanese animation, the action could move from the foreground to the background, and vice versa, to give you a ‘wow’ effect. In more Western animation it was more like theatre, more 2D: you had to see the main character (on screen) from feet to head and things like that. (…) For me, all those ideas came from them to compensate for the budget and the fact that they knew they couldn’t draw as much as a Disney studio (film). But little by little it became a style and a way to tell their own stories. It became a language in its own way, and in fact it is still the language of cinema. They also drew inspiration from live action. As a moviegoer, I love live action as much as I love animation. So for me, Japanese animation and (live-action film) were very influential.

Over the course of the film, we see much of what human-robot society looks like on Mars, but we also get glimpses of new types of organic machines and weapons being created by Royjacker, the film’s antagonist. What were your inspirations when creating the look of these creatures?

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I heard that Google was working on (technology for) skin cells and things like that. I thought: ‘Why would such a technical society work on cells?’ And that gave me the idea that new technologies (in the future) would complete the circle. You know, after we made robots look like humans synthetically with plastic and metal, the next step would be to return to organics like us. It’s getting closer to us, but at the same time they’re monsters.

Image: Everyone on Deck/GKIDS

It is also a way to make fun of the race (to create a new product). For example, you have an iPhone and every year there is a new iPhone. (…) We wanted to make a joke about that, like: do we really need a new iPhone every year? (laughs) It was a way to joke and talk about planned obsolescence, because that’s what happens to the robots in the movie.

Carlos, the android partner of the film’s protagonist, Aline, is one of the film’s most tragic and fascinating characters. He is the consciousness of a dead man resurrected in a machine, trying to hold on to a life that goes on without him. What were your inspirations behind creating this character who straddles the line between human and machine?

Yes, he doesn’t know it himself. We came up with this idea because of the story we were building step by step with Laurent Sarfati, my co-writer. At that time we only had one main character, but little by little we realized that the story would be about the emancipation of the robots. It is, in a sense, their revolution and the fact that they (liberate) themselves from people.

Image: Everyone on Deck/GKIDS

We knew we didn’t want to start a revolution by force, as in Terminator when the robots just say, “Let’s kill all the people.” We were like, it’s already been done, so let’s try something different. We thought, for obvious reasons, that machines could travel more through space, and so we had the ending in mind quite early on. We (thought) we should have a character that transitions from the human perspective, the human perspective, to the robot perspective, and would guide the audience to the end. So when I thought about that, Carlos was born. We needed this character (both human and robot) to help the audience understand the robots. In the end we don’t follow them all the way, but for the end we needed an insider (perspective).

Adult animation is not something audiences normally see from French animation, especially from original hard science fiction at this scale and quality. You believe that Mars Express will open doors for French animators to tell more adult stories, and do you see yourself working in science fiction again?

Absolutely yes, I would like to work on another science fiction film in the future. The next one I’m working on now – as a screenwriter at this point, I don’t know if this movie will ultimately exist, but let’s cross our fingers. It’s not exactly science fiction, but it is a genre film. It’s a supernatural thriller. So it’s still weird for French animation anyway. But yeah, I really hope so Mars Express will open doors for other people, other directors or other screenwriters to make new science fiction films in France, but also any kind of genre film.

Mars Express is available to rent or purchase on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu.