"A correspondent reviews 'Iron Sky'" Topic

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Due to the distributor Iron Sky (film about Nazis on the Moon) only on release today and only in limited cinemas. I have just seen it in Liverpool at the Showcase cinema. Its also on in Manchester.

General theme, comedy sci-fi with Nazi and US political themes.

I liked it with reservations about some bits but it only cost £6.50 GBPm to make, so lets cut it some slack.

General plot, USA (run by Sarah Palin) sends astronauts to the Moon. The Nazis capture them and are much taken by mobile phones, want so more and send a representative back to Earth to get some more. Sarah Palin is having difficulty getting re-elected, so the Nazi rep helps out by supplying some good old Nazi propaganda she can use. They are not going to be happy about this film in the States – but do we care?

Nice bits
Political jokes, in references to other sci-fi films/TV series, good graphics and some of the acting (but not all). I have finally found out how to kill someone with a pair of high heels. Lots of explosions and who would not like dog-fights between UFO's, A10, F15 and F35's. I also know now what 1940's womens underwear looks like (totally gratuitous but liked it, remember Jane in WW2, like that.)

Bad bits
Plot and script a bit weak, some acting not up to par, black man turned into white just left me cold. Some of the good music from trailers was left out (song at end of film is good to wait for though).

Don't understand
Why all the Germans needed was a gas mask to operate on the Moon. How Germans managed to get motor-cycles to operate on the Moon.

Terribly short-notice I know to let you know about this but thought I would try. The run may be extended but I could not find info on it. Coming out on DVD shortly and I would recommend watching on the biggest TV you can find, otherwise you will not really appreciate the meteors landing on the streets of New York.
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lol im from the states and this sounds great!

> I have finally found out how to kill someone with a pair of high heels.

Needs to get out more, the rest of us have known how to do so with one high heel shoe ever since "Single White Female"

And complaining about the gas masks and motorycyles on the moon in a film this loony?

I thought Newt was the moon mission guy…..

Palin is the Space Cadet though

Nasa is working on a 'skin-suit' and a flex helmet/mask system could work so…

hydrogen fuel celled motorbike? Or just the Vrill of it all!!

Wait a minute I mentioned Sara in one little post and was dawghoused for three days, so damn it, so should every one on this thread.
William

Spoiler alert!

It's out on dvd now in the UK. Brought a copy this morning & I'm going to try & watch it tonight.

Just got my DVD yesterday and watched it last night. I thought it was campy fun, though the price of the camp was the menacing tone of the teasers was lost. The moon nazis weren't that scary.

The plot was pretty breakneck and a bit jerky; besides not being scary nazis, I wasn't really sure what either moon nazi faction really wanted to achieve. Some plot points got lost in the speed too, like the mis-interpretation of "The Great Dictator" – how many kids are going to get that reference?

The effects were great though, equal to a bigger budget film (how'd John Carter spend so much money vs. this?). It could have used some more battle scenes, we hardly got to appreciate the flying saucers.

For mini's, the Germans seemed to match up nicely with the Wargames Factory sci-fi troopers in 28mm, and maybe Rebel's Armored Troopers or Titan Marines in 15mm.

Not sure I'd want to recreate the space battles straight up (and no idea where I'd get space zeppelins), but it does make me want to pull out Hard Vaccuum and find minis for that.

The special effects were good, spaceship designs were good, fun air/space combat scenes -- but not enough of them. Yes, poor 'ol New York, ends up getting nuked with an asteroid, eh? What's it ever done to the world? Godzilla, asteroids, meteors, giant stompy Cloverfield monsters -- its the American Tokyo!. But when they went totally overboard on their political stuff it started to get harder for me to watch, especially as it was totally unnecessary to the bare plot they had. How can you screw up fighting Moon Nazis?? I guess for me you screw it up when the US president is Sara Palin clone that's stupid, nasty, evil and uses Nazi propaganda for her re-election, and then nukes the world at the end while they play a strained US national anthem. Oh, and the Americans in general in the movie are stupid and conniving, as bad as the Space Nazis… Yeah…lovely.

Most people expected something much better, considering their first movie, Star Wrecked.

Turns out there are some amazingly stupid people in Finland after all.

I know it's been pointed out the film tried to parody others -- but the "parody" just wasn't done well enough. For example, they tried to do an homage (if you call it that) to Dr. Strangelove when everyone starts fighting in the situation room (after crazy Palin-clone seized the moon and order the US spaceship to open fire on close allies…) -- but the Strangelove moment was so classic, when Kissov and Turgidson start fighting, and Pete Sellers says "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!"

YouTube link

Because it was subtle, and razor sharp in focus, the parody in Dr. Strangelove works -- especially as everybody's oxen get gored. Iron Sky in comparison was so clumsy and heavy-handed that parody degenerated into commentary when they involved the "political" characters in the film.

I contributed to Iron Sky when it was in production, and the teaser trailers were great -- much better than the film IMHO. For example, they completely cut the "history" of the Nazi escape to the Moon which (in the trailers) established the character of the old guard leadership and followers, and the background. The teasers were done such that they pulled you into the narrative, they were very effective. But the movie itself had none of that same quality.

Oh…and come to think of it, why would they US send a poky Apollo lander to the Moon (with a token black man, as they film's Palin Clone supporters point out several times) when they had their cool megaship that could fly to the Moon in minutes???

…but the spaceships were cool! Did I mention that??

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