Iron Sky – Nazis on the Moon!

To be honest with you, I’m a terrible movie goer. I seem to get to one new movie for about every 35 or 40 plays I go to, which means I’ve only seen four movies this year. With such a limited movie-going schedule, it is often the strange and/or bizarre that gets me back to the cineplex. Which is how I ended up at a screening of Iron Sky.

To be a little more specific, interest was sparked from that simple, four word, synopsis that I used in the post title. Nazis, on the moon. Do you really need to hear more than that? If so, the trailer is the sealer of the deal.

Armed with just that minimum of information I made my way down to the movie house expecting something completely ridiculous that had the potential to either be a rollicking good time, or a complete train-wreck. Fortunately, it was the former.

Oh, to be sure, the movie is every bit as silly as the premise suggests it will be. The basic setup is that after the war, the Nazis retreated to the dark side of the moon. Fast forward to 2018 and a new moon mission has uncovered their base. Even better, the new moon mission is all part of a giant PR campaign by a very Palinesque president.

One thing leads to another and before too long we have an invasion on our hands (Space zeppelins with meteor bombs!) and one hell of a space-based dog fight. As I said, it is all very silly. But it’s silly in the good way. The jokes are funny, and the characters are well done. But what really sells the movie are the special effects.

Given that this is a limited release Finnish-German-Australian import, with a budget of 7.5 million dollars, my expectations for that end of the show were modest. And that is where I was completely blown away. To put it in modern movie-making parlance, the thing looks like a hundred million bucks. The crazy steampunk tech of the moon base, the costumes, the ships, the space-battle … it all looks amazing.

That does get to one other interesting bit about Iron Sky. While 6.3 million of that budget was through traditional film finance channels, there was also a large crowd-funded portion of the budget. That project gave fans a very interesting behind the scenes look as the movie progressed through the various stages. You can see the result of much of that process on the official Iron Sky website.

The bad news? Iron Sky doesn’t have a wide release. The actual theatrical presentations have been here and there all over the place. If it does make it into one of your local movie emporiums, it is well worth a look. Otherwise you should put this on your DVD watch list. Finally, to end on a happy note, producer Tero Kaukomaa has announced that there are plans in the works for a prequel, and a sequel.