Now Available: Iron Sky

Iron Sky
Directed by Timo Vuorensola
Starring Julia Dietze, Christopher Kirby, Gotz Otto, and Udo Kier
Rated R (language, crude humor, sci-fi violence)

 

Nazis! In Space!

I don’t know what Timo Vuorensola was smoking, but his movie Iron Sky is just nuts. Part of that is good, part of it isn’t.

This movie is about Nazis, who have evacuated to the moon in 1945 and have mined Helium-3, a substance they use to help develop their massive weapons they plan to use to attack Earth. A black astronaut (and former male model) stumbles upon their base on a moon mission, and…OK, the rest you have to see to believe. There’s race-changing, skintight dominatrix suits, gunfights, a Sarah Palin-esque President using Nazi techniques to start a war…yeah, it’s totally ridiculous. But it’s supposed to be.

This is a comedy, tonally similar to The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra or Mars Attacks in that Ed Wood-ish bad sci-fi way. Of course, it’s deliberately bad, but it’s warmly so. It seems Vuorensola isn’t a very good writer, though, as the film shifts focus and has multiple different plotines that are sometimes funny, sometimes bizarre, and almost always befuddling. It adds to the “bad movie” charm, but then again, I can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, especially when the Nazi leader comes to Earth and becomes an aid to the President of the USA.

Then we have the big massive space battle, which is well-filmed and has some excellent CGI for a relatively low-budget film. It reminds me of scenes from the 1953 War of the Worlds rather than Star Was, though. It seems the movie is also trying to evoke pop-culture references, references Star Trek, Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Who, and Apocalypse Now among others, even going so far to parody that scene in “Downfall” that became an internet meme. It’s pretty funny, just for its sheer audacity at not making any kind of sense. It’s a fun movie to watch if you keep your brain switch in the off position.

I’d say the worst thing about the movie is how the tone shifts to a ridiculously serious, overdramatic one in the last couple scenes, feeling more like a scene that would be more fitting in a serious war film. It switches to a social commentary perspective, and it just doesn’t work at all. I don’t think making a statement about the nature of war in a movie where a black man is turned white by “albinizer” and Sarah Palin is president is worthy of that lofty goal. In fact, it’s the total and complete opposite.

It seems the movie abandoned some chances for some really good jokes, too. While it’s a comedy, it almost seems like a cautious comedy, like it doesn’t want to veer too much into flat-out parody, although it’s past the “tongue-in-cheek’ category. It’s a bizarre move that that doesn’t make some really funny possible jokes, instead going for a more reserved approach during the spaceship sequences. But oh, well. It was a fun ride while it lasted, and numerous scenes still stick out in my mind. It’s a fun ride that could have been better, but is still worth watching.

B-