Review of Iron Sky

'Iron Sky' is a 2012 Finnish-German-Australian science-fiction film directed by Timo Vuorensola and written by Johanna Sinisalo and Micahel Kalesniko. It tells the story of Nazi Germans who, after being defeated in 1945, fled to the Moon where they build a space fleet to return in 2018 and conquer Earth. The reason why I'm giving this film a late review is because since its release was so limited in the cinema, DVD and Blu Ray for many was the first time they'd seen or heard of it.


When I first saw the trailer for 'Iron Sky', I was extremely excited for it, it looked like something that we see for too rarely, an original movie. So many films are remakes, sequels and different versions of things we've seen a million times. So when we see a script that's original, about Nazis on the moon, and a comedy, what's not to be excited about? I can confirm that the movie is great, the stories alright, the acting's decent, everything looks great, the humor's amusing. It all adds up to make a good film. What's really funny about it is the fact that even though the Nazi have managed to set up a base on the Moon, they're still using technology from the 1940's, and still share the same beliefs, so when they capture a Black astronaut at the beginning of the movie, their reaction is priceless. There's a lot of different kinds of comedy in there, they poke fun at both the Nazis themselves and Western society as a whole. The scenes with the United Nations are quite funny, especially the way they refer to each person as the country they represent, as if they are a singularity. They clearly define societies attitudes towards countries like Korea and India. 


I wasn't expecting much on the visual side of things because the film isn't mainstream, I know that the producers battled for years to get more money to make the project work, I think work began on this movie all the way back in 2006, eventually ending up with something like a 7 million euro budget. To my utter surprise, everything looks quite good, actually, it looks really good. With science fiction, it is really easily for companies to splash out on visual effects, with the end result still looking awful, but this film has pulled it off. Another note on the way the film looks, I have to give credit to whoever designed the Nazi space vehicles and space suits, because they've managed to successfully create a look at this suited for both the 1940s and now (well, or 2018).


Obviously there are a fare amount of moments where you just think "this is so cheesey", a lot of what you see fundamentally would not work, the physics of it all isn't right, but as the film goes on, you forgive it, because it's a film about Nazis in space, most people are going to enjoy it just because of that. I was actually really surprised to see that the Germans were involved in making this movie, because they are a proud people and obviously this is based on a dark era from their past. It's good to make fun of certain aspects of the past, but it has to be done in a way that isn't offensive to people who have emotional attachments to that era. It's a bit like 'Dead Snow', it makes fun of the Nazis, but in a way that doesn't offend people. This film successfully manages to avoid talking about the past as much as much as possible to avoid that fear of offending people.


So overall, it's cheesey, it's funny, it looks good, the music, story, acting are all good, but most importantly, it's original, and it's about Nazis on the Moon, it's a winner in my book! 9/10.