{"id":1941,"date":"2012-03-16T13:17:17","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T19:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2012-03-16T13:17:17","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T19:17:17","slug":"nordic-genre-film-invasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=1941","title":{"rendered":"Nordic Genre-Film Invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Iron Sky is a movie about moon Nazis. The hook is brilliant \u2014 they had us at \u201cmoon Nazis\u201d \u2014 but given that outrageous premise, the resulting film could easily have wound up as B-movie nonsense. Surprisingly, Iron Sky succeeds as a wickedly fun adventure comedy.
\nSXSW 2012<\/p>\n

Though made on a relatively small budget well outside the Hollywood system \u2014 the director, production team and visual effects crew are all Finnish, and the filmmakers gathered financing from Finland, Germany, Australia and from a web-based donor campaign \u2014 Iron Sky exhibits all the swagger and spectacle required to become a mainstream hit when it arrives in U.S theaters later this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Finland, nobody has done a film with so many special effects,\u201d says Iron Sky director Timo Vuorensola, who estimates there were 890 effects shots in the film, roughly as many as in the last Transformers movie. \u201cBut our budget was about the same as the catering budget on the Transformers movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest in a string of inventive indie science fiction and fantasy films to come from the northernmost edge of Europe. Iron Sky saw its U.S. premiere here at the South by Southwest Film festival the same weekend as Thale, a thriller from Norway about a mythical species of murderous wood nymphs. These new films follow on the heels of Andr\u00e9 \u00d8vredal\u2019s Norwegian mockumentary The Troll Hunter, Jalmari Helander\u2019s Rare Exports (a 2010 thriller about a demonic Santa Claus discovered in the Finnish mountains) and 2009\u2032s Stig Larsson-penned Metropia, an animated sci-fi tale from Sweden about an oil-starved Europe\u2019s descent into dystopia.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on up there \u2014 is it something in the gl\u00f6gg?<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, the region is one of the most robust places for cool films,\u201d says Tim League, an expert on genre films and the founder of Austin\u2019s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain, which hosts the annual Fantastic Fest and regularly screens indie films.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince we\u2019ve been supporting genre film from the region, we\u2019ve built a great relationship with Norwegian Film Institute,\u201d he says. \u201cTraditionally, they\u2019ve dealt with more high-minded films, but they\u2019ve definitely seen the potential in genre film in the last few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

League says these horror, sci-fi and dark fantasy films are mostly coming from a new generation of Scandinavian directors, all relatively young men in the same age bracket. The movie that kick-started the trend: a 2006 horror flick from Norway called Cold Prey. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is an extension of that,\u201d League says.<\/p>\n

These films are all made on small budgets. Cold Prey cost roughly $2 million, and Thale cost less than half that. Iron Sky is a much more ambitious picture, with loads of grandiose effects, but even this sci-fi romp cost a remarkably small 7.5 million Euro (around $11 million) to make. (About 10 percent of that was raised through an internet-based donor program and merchandise sales.)<\/p>\n

Jim Kolmar, a film programmer for South by Southwest, thinks there\u2019s definitely something bubbling up in Nordic cinema. In fact, it\u2019s been brewing since H\u00e4xan (English title: Witchcraft Through The Ages), a 1922 Swedish\/Danish documentary that plays like a horror film.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t an entirely new thing,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s always been a strong tradition for dark fantasy in the region, going all the way back to Carl Dryer\u2019s Vampyr, Ingmar Bergman\u2019s The Seventh Seal. We\u2019re just starting to really notice this genre of films that are all working through these certain fantasy themes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The region\u2019s rich folklore yields cinematic raw materials \u2014 like Thale\u2018s girl-with-a-cow\u2019s-tail huldra and Troll Hunter\u2019s menacing monsters \u2014 and the resulting movies connect with overseas movie viewers. \u201cU.S. audiences don\u2019t have that ancient culture, so it\u2019s appealing to them,\u201d Kolmar said.<\/p>\n

Like Troll Hunter and Thale, the moon Nazi movie takes an element of European consciousness and spins it into something fantastically original. In Iron Sky\u2019s goofball alternative history, the Nazis have fled to the dark side of the moon, escaping in secret at the end of World War II. There, they\u2019ve set up a swastika-shaped moon base and busied themselves building a fleet of war machines: flying saucers, giant zeppelin aircraft carriers and a comically massive warship. In 2018, they decide to re-invade the Earth, where the U.S. president (played by Stephanie Paul) looks an awful lot like Sarah Palin.
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