tom moody

Left to right: Dr. Krupov, played by Rhys Williams, Dr. Wu, played by Peter Brocco, and Dr. Schneider, played by Benson Fong.

In the quasi-spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966) a cadre of globalist villains called "Galaxy" attempts to use climate catastrophes to unite the world. The DVD commentary takes a libertarian slant on this. Alex on Film writes:

But what is it these nerds in lab coats want? Money? Power? Women? None of the above. No, they want to make a better world for everyone. They want to “organize the potential of all mankind” for good, putting an end to war, hunger, and poverty.
Our man Flint, however, is having none of it. The commentary has something I found very interesting to say about this, seeing how Flint’s rejection of this altruistic mission expresses: “the underlying theme of the movie . . . the rugged individualist versus the scientific collective . . . and that was what Coburn was most proud of . . . the idea that he could play, that he could represent the American spirit, the idea that you could constantly learn and strive and be your own person, and that’s how you kept progressing rather than a group of scientists who decided that this is what’s good for you.”
Well, I’m sure it would be wise not to trust this bunch of scientists. After all, those who won’t submit to their Utopian schemes are either sent off for reconditioning or, if unreclaimable, to the electrofragmentizer. But there’s also an air of the populist rejection of elites and anti-intellectualism embodied in Flint as well, for all his own ostentatious culture and learning.

The modern-day Drs. Krupov, Wu, and Schneider might be Klaus Schwab and The World Economic Forum, with their trans-humanist dreams of a techno-mediated global society. Stripped of high-flown rhetoric, their schemes boil down to corporate exploitation of the GPS-tracked, facially-recognized masses, authoritarianism with a science fiction face. Populist rejection of this isn't anti-intellectual, it's smart. Yet to The New York Times and other center-right organs, the people who oppose the so-called Great Reset are the crazies, not the planners.

One could take it a step further and note that climate (and biological) crises are the planned (or exploited) catalysts for world unification under Davos Man's enlightened scientific (or corporate) rule, making Our Man Flint quite prescient (or presciently crackpot, again, if you believe the Times).

It's important to distinguish mere flat-earth-ism from legitimate political concerns. As Thomas Pynchon and others have pointed out, the original Luddites didn't just "hate technology," they hated the way it was being used by the elite to disenfranchise them. Today, there are reasons besides disliking progress for opposing 5G, the war on cash, and social credit schemes cooked up by the men in lab coats.

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Tim Burton made two good movies, Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Ed Wood, before becoming a Hollywood hack and MOMA-celebrated artiste.
(The Nightmare Before Christmas somehow also makes its way into the Burton canon, despite being one of Henry Selick's best films.)
A web magazine, Collider, argues that Burton's 1996 film Mars Attacks "deserves more respect," since it's a "gleefully chaotic masterpiece." It's certainly chaotic.
"Mars Attacks," the 1960s trading cards, were mean-spirited and one could almost call them subversive, for the year they came out (1962). Burton's movie captured the bad vibes, but the humor in Mars Attacks, the movie, is self-consciously "hilarious" and "over the top" (and therefore not that funny).
In the trading cards the Martians weren't "just a bunch of dickheads," as Collider describes them in Burton's movie.
They were the conventional H.G. Wells baddies, cruel and callous in their treatment of humans. Eventually mankind (or at least the US Air Force) bands together and gives them some payback by blowing up Mars.

In Burton's film the usual small group of disadvantaged outsiders wins the day -- nothing subversive about that, it's the plot of every other Hollywood film. Subversive would be a group of US oligarchs in league with the Martians to provide a casus belli for "lockdowns" and other authoritarian interventions.
Even in 1962 the trading cards didn't lack precedent. Such shocking scenes of violence and mayhem abounded in the EC Comics of the 1950s, before the Comics Code clamped down.

There is actual pathos in these scenes, as well as dark humor, unlike Mars Attacks, the movie, where gruesome deaths play purely for yucks. As Collider says, "Burton’s movie feels like it was thrown together by cynical maniacs," and that wasn't intended as a criticism.

images from "the internet"