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If you’re going to make a film about Nazis, you have some choices to make. You can craft a well-researched and historically-accurate piece of cinema that respects the victims of a brutally oppressive regime. You can also appropriate the overly-familiar villains’ iconography and use it to drive home a satirical point about the dangers of groupthink and rampant militarism. Then again, you could just throw something together, in which the Third Reich escapes to the moon to spend 70 years plotting to invade an unsuspecting Earth. Thanks to Finnish director Timo Vuorensola, we now know what that third option would look like.
Vuorensola originally released Iron Sky in 2012, barely finishing the film in time for its premiere. Now that he’s had a chance to tidy things up a bit, it’s back in a brand-new 20-minute-longer director’s cut. The basics remain the same: African-American astronaut and former model James Washington (Christopher Kirby) leads NASA’s return to the moon, only to stumble on a hidden swastika-shaped fortress. Taken captive by these space Nazis (who seem overly perplexed by both his skin color and smart phone), he must win the trust of beautiful scientist Renate (Julia Detze) and somehow thwart the impending invasion.
We’re definitely not operating in the realm of high drama here. Vuorensola walks a fine line between satirically-tinged adventure and the kind of slapped-together shtick that you might find on a Saturday night on the Syfy channel. Some of the humor doesn’t quite land, but it’s generally on point. There are definitely moments in which it goes a bit too broad—especially in both Kirby’s performance and that of the Sarah Palin-esque President of the United States (Stephanie Paul)—but, more often than not, it works.
A big part of that comes down to above-average production values for this sort of fare. From the retro-futuristic design to the epic battle sequences, Iron Sky looks much better than you’d expect (at least once you get past the occasionally cartoonish costuming). The extra layer of polish between the original theatrical cut and this new version shows up here as well. The detail goes deeper, and the entire fictional world has a bit more weight to it. There’s still plenty of fairly obvious CGI, but it’s less painfully glaring than it was the first time around. It may have taken them a while, but they’ve put together some surprisingly decent space-based action sequences.
There’s no mistaking Iron Sky for great art. From the stoner concept (“They’re Nazis, Dude—from the moon!”) to the generally snarky tone (the big gun in the U.S. space fleet is named the “U.S.S. George W. Bush”), this is a movie made by people who are clearly having a good time. If you can get on their wavelength while watching it, so will you.
Blu-ray Review:
Iron Sky takes full advantage of the director’s cut re-release here. The high-def presentation really enhances the attention to detail. If you get the chance, you have to check out the nearly 90-minute making-of featurette, which traces the creative team’s evolution from making Star Trek fan films to their own sci-fi epic.
