Review: Iron Sky

I was really  intrigued by this film when I first heard its premise (thanks to Mark Kermode a film reviewer with an excellent show on BBC Radio Five Live) but it seemed to experience some difficulty get distribution in the UK and I feared it was going to end up going straight to DVD. Then the distributors announced a one day screening at a limited number cinemas across the UK. This has been expanded and it looks like it will get a wider release than just one day. It is also out on Bluray / DVD Monday 28 May.

Two American astronauts land on the dark side of the Moon with two missions: a publicity stunt to help get the President re-elected and to hunt for Helium-3, an isotope of Helium that is rare on Earth but could used to fuel fusion reactors. They discover a large Helium-3 mine and soldiers in Nazi uniform appear out of nowhere, shoot one dead and capture the second one. It turns out that in 1945 a group of Nazis made their way to the moon where they have been mining it for the resources to build an invasion fleet to enable them to return to Earth and conquer it. This is all very impressive stuff.  The only problem seems to be that they don’t have the computing power

The astronaut they captured James Washington (Christopher Kirby) is just a famous supermodel and does not know anything about any planned invasion. They are astonished to see that he is black since most of them are too young to have been to Earth so have never seen a black man before and think he has some sort of skin disease. When their top scientist Dr Richter examines Washington’s mobile phone and finds it has a more powerful processor by many orders of magnitude than their entire base the MondFührer Kurtzfleisch (Udo Kier) sends his second in command Klaus Adler (Götz Otto) back to Earth with Washington to get more phones so they can all finally return to Earth as conquering heroes. This task will be far from simple since they are up against cynical power hungry leaders of modern nations and especially the Sarah Palin lookalike (but definitely not her) US President (Stephanie Paul) and her sociopathic campaign manager Vivian Wagner (Peta Sergeant).

I really enjoyed this film. It is not only pretty funny it also looks really good. There is a lot of CGI used but it is never out-of-place and it’s all very well designed with it clear that a lot of time and thought has clearly gone into it. I cannot think of any point where this film showed that it had a very low-budget. The film looks like it been based on films such as Mars Attacks! or even Earth Vs The Flying Saucers and elements of steam punk where archaic technology has been designed to carry out advanced functions normally done by modern electronics

There’s a lot of broad satire on modern politics especially from the scenes at the World Council with petty bickering between the representatives of different nations but there’s also the culture clash humour which was sometimes nice and subtle with really good use of the Chaplin film The Great Dictator that assumes a familiarity with the film to work. The cast are all great but I really fell hard for the big evil Nazi bastard Klaus Adler played with some gusto by Götz Otto. I should also mention Adler’s girlfriend Renate Richter (Julia Dietze) who plays an idealistic Nazi schoolteacher who really believes the Nazis are a peaceful party. I know humour is very subjective but I really enjoyed this a lot more than other many films with bigger budgets and better known casts.

Rating 8/10

Related articles

• IMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes
• Wikipedia
• IRON SKY – First 4 Minutes of the Moon Nazi Invasion Film (geektyrant.com)
• IRON SKY Director Sticking with Nazis; Will Adapt Graphic Novel I KILLED ADOLF HITLER (collider.com)
• Iron Sky – Review (thegibsonnewbie.wordpress.com)

 

Notable Occurrences Related to Audiovisual Recordings of Fantastical Narratives

Remakes or re-imagining have featured in a couple of films that got my attention this week. The first was the release of a teaser trailer for Total Recall which is due out this Summer. Paul Verhoeven‘s original with Arnold Schwarzenegger was a big hit because it was a big science fiction action blockbuster but it still had at the core the question of identity: are we purely the sum of memories or is there a something more fundamental to an individual’s identity. I know in that the economics of film mean if you have a big star like Arnie to play the lead then your investment is safe but Arnie is a very imposing personalty and so I welcome the decision to cast Colin Farrell in the lead because he is actor who can be more convincingly normal and I hope the remake is a bit closer the Philip K. Dick story that it is based on.

The other remake that made the news was the casting Chloe Moretz to play the lead in of a remake/re-imagining of the Stephen King story Carrie. I’m not very enthusiastic about this one because I don’t see there being any more to the story than what we got in Brain de Palma’s original version. Maybe it will be closer to the book but even if that’s so it would not mean that the film will be any better so I will just wait and see the film when its finished

One film I am excited about is Iron Sky which is coming out in April (see the sidebar for the UK release date). The story has Nazi’s hiding on the dark side of the Moon invading the Earth with flying saucers and from the trailer the whole thing looks a bit like Mars Attacks, a film that I really enjoyed. It has Udo Kier as the Nazi commander and also has a female American President who looks and sounds a lot like Sarah Palin, a future just as terrifying as Nazis invading from the Moon (only joking so chill out conservatives).

Speaking of American Presidents I have seen the trailer for the Summer release of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter  and it looks interesting. I like stories which take a mixture of historical figures and literary characters and blend them into something new and if this film is successful maybe they’ll have try at other novels like Anno Dracula or The Difference Engine.

Other interesting trailers doing the rounds include The Host where everyone has blue eyes because they’ve been invaded by aliens. It is based on a book by Twilight author Stephanie Meyer and is not out until next year so we’re in for long campaign of attrition on this one.

How many clichés can be squeezed into one trailer? A man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit is offered his freedom by the authorities if he goes in to a maximum security prison to rescue the President’s daughter who is trapped inside after the prisoners start a riot. Put the prison in orbit around the Earth and you’ve got Lockout starring Guy Pearce and I have a feeling the trailer will be the most exciting thing about this film.

Other films

• The Revenant – I know nothing about this other than it has been around  for a coupleof years and it is a zombie comedy.
• Metal Shifters – (or Iron Invaders on IMDb) sounds like a rip-off of Maximum Overdrive or Killdozer