Mars Express (2023) is an animated science fiction and cyberpunk film directed by Jeremie Perin. The story follows a human detective Aline and her android partner Carlos as they unravel a conspiratorial plot to disrupt the social order.

It contains several different science-fiction concepts, including:

• Mind Upload - Humans can create “backups” of themselves to a robot body.
• Free Will - Androids cannot curse or attack a human, even if they try. Some, like the hacker Roberta, hack robots to jailbreak them to free them from their directives.
• Brain Farming - Humans can sell the computational power of their brains to make money by using a machine that gives them work to do and accelerates their ability to think. The work that is given is erased from the participant’s memory.
• Mind Drugs - There are drugs that people take to enhance their cognitive abilities, including one that allows people to remember erased memories

There are a lot of really interesting world-building elements in the story and I really appreciate how much of the story is shown in a way that the viewer can figure out what is happening instead of just explaining everything to the viewer. It’s a wonderful, detailed setting but I felt the story left a little to be desired. The characters were likable, but none of the characters really experience a perspective shift or change and the film lacks strong emotional moments. At most, the closest we get to a change is right at the end, when the android Carlos decides to leave Mars while grieving the loss of his partner.

Talking about the characters, even though I wished for more dynamism in the character’s developments I also liked how the film didn’t focus on any particular character too much, avoiding the story from having a particularly strong emphasis on a “main character”. This also makes the film feel a bit more cerebral, as it leaves me wondering more about the story, its characters, and its setting.

We also don’t get to see the fallout and changes that occur to society as a result of all of the robot workers leaving humankind. We do see a new kind of technology called “organics” being introduced to society, but similarly the film doesn’t examine the impacts of it and instead uses it as a plot point for why the hack happened in the first place. These reasons are why I think it falls just short of being a paradigm shift film.