Movie
Review 10/7/12
IRON SKY
2012
Starring:
Julia Dietze, Götz Otto, Udo Kier
Directed by: Timo Vuorensola
There are few movie villains audiences love to
hate as much as the Nazis. This is probably because they were villains in real
life too, and represent a dark and tragic chunk of modern history. For a long
time, the Third Reich, with its severely-uniformed storm troopers, inhumane
torture and experimentation and goose-stepping soldiers, were Hollywood’s go-to
bad guys, be it in serious war films (Schindler’s
List, Sophie’s Choice) or pulpy
action-adventure flicks (Raiders of the
Lost Ark, Hellboy). Many films
that didn’t directly contain Nazis had them as inspiration for their own
villains: where do you think George Lucas got the name “Stormtrooper” from?
As
of late, Hollywood has turned their attention to other easier targets (Arab
terrorists, African warlords and North Korean despots) and Nazis have been
relegated to a cliché, not to be found outside documentary films. This
Finnish-German-Australian romp brings the dastardly fiends back, in the form of
the “Space Nazis” sci-fi subgenre, touched on in several old Star Trek episodes and in the novel Rocket Ship Galileo, by Robert A
Heinlein of Starship Troopers fame.
Naturally, it takes a silly, irreverent tone and pretty much runs with it.
It
is the year 2018, and as part of her re-election campaign, the President of the
United States (Stephanie Paul as an ersatz Sarah Palin) has sent an
African-American astronaut, James Washington (Christopher Kirby), to the moon.
On the lunar surface, he is ambushed by, you guessed it, Nazis. After their
defeat in 1945, a band of Third Reich-ers hightailed it off the planet and have
been hiding in an elaborate, Swastika-shaped base on the far side of the moon. They
are led by moonfuhrer Wolfgang Kortzfleisch (Kier), whose second-in-command
Klaus Adler (Otto) is set to marry Renate Richter (Dietze), the beautiful
daughter of an Einstein-esque mad scientist (Tilo Prückner).
The
nefarious moon Nazis have been planning a return to Earth, and attempt to
harness the computing power of Washington’s smartphone to power their space
battleship. However, as they often do, the phone runs out of battery power, so
Klaus and Renate take Washington back to earth to retrieve more. The two Nazis
are recruited by Presidential aide Vivian Wagner (Peta Sergeant) to revamp the
President’s campaign with Nazi-style propaganda. Meanwhile, Kortzfleisch has
figured out that Adler plans to overthrow him, and brings a fleet to earth
himself, beginning the invasion. This leads up to a climactic space battle with
the space warship “USS George W Bush” leading the other countries’ spacecraft (including
Australia’s “Dundee Irwin”) against the space Nazis.
If all that sounds pretty nuts, that’s because it is. Iron Sky's
biggest success is attempting to pull off its premise, which is equally
ridiculous and entertaining. Recalling old-fashioned
"Nazisploitation" and sci-fi movies, the film revels in the sheer
absurdity of the plot and tries to get the audience to have fun along with it.
The acting is decent, an eclectic mix of German, Australian and American actors
who apparently all relish playing up the stereotypes, subtlety be damned.
Götz Otto, standing at all of 198 cm, is the stock muscle-bound
Germanic henchman in human form and is probably best known as the evil henchman
Stamper in the Bond movie Tomorrow Never
Dies. Incidentally, he was also in the much more serious Nazi-themed film Der Untergang (Downfall), source of the infamous “Hitler rant scene” that spawned
a thousand gag subtitle parodies on YouTube. In fact, this film pays homage to
it with a shot-for-shot spoof enacted by Vivian Wagner, expressing her anger at
the ineffectiveness of the presidential campaign. There are several stupid but
gut-busting jokes along those lines and this is by all accounts a fairly funny
movie, however given how ripe for comedy the premise is, it certainly could
have used more humour.
It's plain to see that this
farce is a labour of love; even though the subject matter isn't serious, some
serious effort was put into bringing it to the big screen. About 10% of the
film's budget was donated by fans (who are thanked by name in the end credits),
and the opening credits reveal a myriad of other monetary sources and
individual sponsors. Admittedly, the movie looks great; the design of the Nazi
moon base and the various spacecrafts is quite eye-catching and the space
battles are pretty fun to watch and could perhaps rival Hollywood films in
quality. The CGI work is consistently terrific, even if the practically-done
elements (boy is that a cheap-looking spacesuit) may be a little lacking.
The filmmakers presented a
teaser trailer at the Cannes Film Festival way back in 2006 in the hopes of
getting funding for their ambitious idea and, slowly but surely, the acquired
the funds to pull it off. However, having a long gestation period, the film's
Sarah Palin analogue provides slightly dated and weak satire, and on the whole
the film definitely comes off as more haphazard than your typical Hollywood
production. It desperately wants to be a wacky, modern-day Dr Strangelove, but has far too little impact to be even in the
same neighbourhood as Kubrick’s satirical masterpiece. Its jabs at Nazi Germany
and modern America are many, but relatively insight-free.
However, audiences don’t want
a discussion on indoctrination, propaganda and the militarisation of space,
they want to have fun – and you’ll be hard-pressed to say this isn’t. It’s definitely
worth checking out because it's certainly a cool ride – it’s the small carnival
that comes to town that you may like better than the expensive mega-theme park.
After the end credits, the camera pulls back, bringing a neighbouring planet
into frame and hinting at who the villains might be for a potential sequel.
Count us in as interested.
SUMMARY: Look out; because the heil is falling from
the sky – while it lacks punch, this quirky, accessible sci-fi action-comedy is
somewhat worthwhile amusement.
RATING: 3/5 STARS
Jedd Jong