The director of Mars Express was inspired by robots, darkness and Big Tech

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

Jérémie Périn is a French animator known for directing the 2016 television series last manas well as several virally popular (and decidedly NSFW) music videos for electronic dance artists like DyE and Lionel Flairs. Mars-Expresshis first feature film, is an exception not only in his own body of work, but in the French animation industry as a whole: it is a grounded and hard-boiled detective novel set in a a universe whose tone and structure seem indebted to the film noir classics of the past, although transposed into a vision of a distant future.

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

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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Polygon: Mars-Express has a lot of different twists and turns in its story. Are there any particular detective novels or films that have inspired you? What are your favorite mysteries?

Jérémie Périn: (Regarding) my favorites, we worked on their analysis, particularly on the narrative aspects for writing the screenplay. These films were Chinese district, The long goodbye, Kiss me deadly, Point blank. This kind of film, these classic IPs, film noirs. It’s really something that I thought we didn’t have in cinema anymore, not so much. Under the silver lake is perhaps also a film in this area, but it is not exactly a PI (film). It’s more neo-noir.

I really wanted to return to this figure of the private detective. But I realized (while working on Mars-Express), all the time, they are men. And I was like, What if we instead put a woman (in the role), to see if there are any differences? And it’s true that there wasn’t much difference, except with (the absence of) certain classic figures, like the femme fatale. We had no reason to have such a character there, but those inspirations and references were big in my head.

There were other references as well. I really appreciate (…) Three days of the Condor, All the President’s Men, The parallax view, Turn off(and that of Francis Ford Coppola) The conversation. Those movies where someone realizes they’re involved in a conspiracy and everything is too big for them.

The influence of Japanese animation is very important in Mars-Express, particularly in the way the characters move and in the finale’s larger-scale action scenes. As a French director, how does Japanese animation differ from French animation, and how did Japanese animation inspire your work on Mars-Express?

The working methodology in Japan and France when it comes to animation is different on some specific details, but they are important, especially regarding layouts (more detailed renderings of storyboards that help animators plan and visualize the movement of a shot or sequence before its animation). . In Japan, animators make their own layouts, poses and animations. They are responsible for the entire sequence. In France, it is more shared between different teams. There is a team for the layout, a team for the animation, etc. Even the way animation is performed in Japan and France is different.

But as a viewer, I watched a lot of Japanese animation when I was a kid, and even today I still watch what they do. I quickly realized that they didn’t have the same budget as American animation, or even certain French animations. It’s weird because I feel like there’s less drawing in their animation, but at the same time I feel like they have more of an impact on me. The feeling of the framing and all that is more powerful to me than a Disney film, (where) the animation is much smoother (and) it’s moving all the time. (…) Japanese animation can be very impactful and more cinematic, in my opinion, because it is really effective in what it does (like drawing) but also more effective (in) the editing, the setting scene and depth. shootings.

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

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

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I heard that Google is working on (technology for) skin cells and stuff like that. I asked myself, “Why would a technology company like this run on cells?” » And that gave me the idea that new technologies would come full circle (in the future). You know, after creating human-like robots synthetically with plastic and metal, the next step would be to go back to organic products like us. It’s getting closer and closer to us, but at the same time, they’re monsters.

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

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 inside a machine, trying to cling to a life that evolved without him. What were your inspirations for creating this character straddling the line between human and machine?

Yeah, he doesn’t know that himself. This idea came to us thanks to the story that we were building step by step with Laurent Sarfati, my co-writer. At the time we only had one main character, but little by little we understood that the story would be about the emancipation of robots. It’s their revolution, in a way, and the fact that they free themselves from humans.

We knew that we did not want to make a revolution with violence, as in Terminator when the robots just say “Let’s kill all the humans”. We figured this had been done before, so let’s try something else. We thought that machines could travel more in space, for obvious reasons, and so we had the end in mind quite early on. We (thought) should have a character who transitions from the human point of view, from the human point of view, to the robot point of view, and accompany the audience until the end. It was with this in mind that Carlos was born. We needed this character (both human and robot) just to help the audience understand robots. In the end, we don’t follow them completely, but we needed an insider (perspective) for the end.

Adult animation is not something audiences typically see in French animation, especially in original science fiction at this scale and quality. Do you think that Mars-Express will open the doors for French animators to pursue more mature storytelling, and do you see yourself working in science fiction again?

Definitely yes, I would like to work on another science fiction film in the future. The next one I’m working on right now — just as a writer at the moment, I don’t know if that movie will ever exist, but fingers crossed. 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 yes, I really hope Mars-Express will open the doors to other people, to other directors or other screenwriters to make new science fiction films in France, but also any type of genre film.

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