How does this plot sound to you: In 1945, sensing imminent defeat, Nazis secretly sent spacecraft and a few of their finest to the dark side of the moon. In 2018, they come back to exact revenge on Earth. If that sounds brilliantly stupid, then this film is for you. If it sounds stupidly stupid… Not so much.
Iron Sky is a modern-day B-Movie with a $100 million dollar concept that was made for around $10 million. The internet community went wild when the ridiculously effective teaser trailer was released four years ago, and helped get the ball rolling financially for the novice filmmakers, whose only previous credit was a Star Trek parody film. So have these guys beat Hollywood at their own game and produced a brilliant little movie, outside the system?
Well as far as B-Movies go, this is a pretty solid effort. On the surface at least, this film shines, as every cent appears on the screen. The visual effects are impressive even for a major studio film, particularly any of the shots that take place in space. The sound design, oft overlooked in indie/small budget movies, crackles with life. The production design is endlessly clever, and the cinematography has a gorgeous silvery soft look to it that’s pleasing to the eye. From an aesthetic standpoint, it’s really the best parts of Sky Captain and the World Of Tomorrow, and it certainly looks like a hundred million bucks.
The German cast includes Udo Kier (who is devilishly fun to watch as the Nazi leader), Julia Dietze (a gorgeous but naive “Earth specialist”), and Gotz Otto (the power-hungry up and comer of the Nazi party). The German actors wisely play everything completely straight, letting the ridiculous concept carry the humor. Unfortunately the American characters act like they came from a cartoon show. This includes a Sarah Palin charicature (played by Stephanie Paul) and a supremely annoying male-model-turned-astronaut (Christopher Kirby) who can give you seriously bad flashbacks of Richard Pryor in Superman III. Unsurprisingly the tone of the movie veers wildly from comedy to action to heavy-handed political commentary, never hanging around one idea long enough to land.
The tonal irregularities are a symptom of Iron Sky’s biggest weakness: its unpolished script. It never focuses on one central, carefully crafted plot. Worse, it never even attempts to make you care in the slightest about any of the characters. Even silly films like Airplane give you at least a small reason to care about your hero. In fact, it’s hard to say who the main character of the story even is. The cash-strapped filmmakers had the expensive technical elements down pat, but when it came down to the cheapest aspect of the production – polishing the script – they needed to go through a few more drafts. The story needed to truly soar.
Thankfully, at only 93 minutes long, all this unfocused energy doesn’t get too tiresome, and it’s a unique film that mostly lives up to its ridiculous premise.
The Iron Sky Blu-Ray packs a superb audio/visual package. The video displays some color banding from time to time, but for the most part it’s incredibly sharp and grain-free. In particular, the direct-from-CGI space scenes look incredibly detailed. The special features are highlighted by a decent 17-minute long making of documentary and an interesting director/producer audio commentary track. There’s dozens of “behind the scenes footage” vignettes of different scenes consisting of unedited footage from the vantage point of someone standing on the set, and they effectively capture just how boring it is to watch a movie being made. All the trailers are present, including the incredible teaser that started it all. A shame that the movie doesn’t quite fulfill that promise, but props to them for giving it a solid go.
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