Sightlines · reception

How Mars Express was received

2023 · Jérémie Périn · Mars Express on Sightlines

The arc

Premiered on the beach at Cannes 2023 to raves — it holds a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score — then promptly bombed, grossing about $1.5M against a €9M budget. Since then it's been word-of-mouth rehabilitated as THE underseen animated sci-fi of its year, the film people keep begging their friends to watch.

What’s debated

The eternal comment-section fight: is it just 'French Ghost in the Shell,' or does that shorthand sell short a film doing its own thing with AI and noir?

Its footprint

It's become the standing rebuttal whenever someone claims nobody makes smart, adult, original animated sci-fi anymore — the title cinephiles reflexively drop in that argument.

Where it stands

A fast-climbing cult object — a Letterboxd 'criminally underseen' staple that lost the Best Animated Film César but won the evangelists.

Did you know? Périn has said he doesn't really like Blade Runner but loves Ghost in the Shell — while his co-writer Laurent Sarfati is exactly the reverse. The film was written inside that argument.

Named by the director

• Chinatown (1974) — Périn named it as a model for the private-eye story structure he wanted.
• The Long Goodbye (1973) — Cited alongside Chinatown as the old P.I. movies the writers steeped themselves in.
• Ghost in the Shell (1995) — Périn openly declared his love for it, while insisting he drew on its noir side more than its sci-fi.
• Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993) — Cited by Périn among the anime that shaped his approach to the film.