Mars Express · reception & legacy
2023 · Jérémie Périn
How Mars Express has been received, argued over, and remembered.
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.
Named by the director
Influences Jérémie Périn has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- 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.