Iron Sky

Verdict: ★1/2

Warning: Spoilers ahead in case you actually do want to see this one!

This movie was deliciously awful. A marvelous idea that, on one hand was funny and brimming with top-notch CGI for a couple of guys with one PC and 37 days of shooting but on the other hand, was woefully underutilized with a goofy story line and non-researched technical details.

In 1945, after the war, The Nazi elite suddenly disappeared and, lo and behold, settled on the dark side of the moon of all places. In the 73 years since, they’ve been pooling their resources and plotting their revenge against the Earth… and by plotting their revenge, I mean they’ve been building a monstrous tank like UFO mother ship out of iron gears the size of skyscrapers and huge bike chains to turn them. The only thing they needed was something… something infinitely more powerful to complete the construction and power the UFO back to Earth so that they could conquer it in Der Fuhrer’s name.

So 73 years later it’s 2018 and two hapless astronauts, who speak like they were plucked right out of the inner city and launched into space, just landed on the moon. Turns out the President of the United States, a soulless, trash talking Southern woman who spends most of her time on an elliptical machine, only used them to get re-elected because one of them was black. Yes, you read that right. Anyway, they land near the dark side of the moon only to discover Nazis already there mining Helium 3, an amazing element that is the most powerful energy source in the universe. The Nazis wear gas masks on the moon, and ride around on motorcycles and in black VW Bugs because internal combustion works in zero-oxygen environments. Apparently.

One of the astronauts has a smart phone (of course, because Verizon’s cell service reaches the moon) and the Nazis find out it’s the missing piece to their amazing, iron, bike chain UFO tank thing. Hooking it up, a Nazi scientist right out of Einstein’s wardrobe somehow hacks the smart phone and connects it up via USB to their UFO. Suddenly the giant bike chains start churning and the enormous iron gears start grinding… and the smart phone runs out of battery power. Beeeoooop. Everything shuts down again. So they make a decision to return to Earth to get more smart phones. The only way to do that is to invade with giant iron zeppelins, each hauling an asteroid behind them so that they can slingshot them into the Earth.

I’m not making this up! I actually spent most of this movie laughing at the utter ridiculousness of the story.

However, I said it was deliciously awful and I meant it. This movie doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and director Timo Vuorensola’s humor just slaps you in the face at nearly every turn. Written by Johanna Sinisalo and Michael Kalesniko, the guys behind Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, the effects given to Iron Sky are astounding with today’s software behind it. The film’s leading lady, a school teacher named Renata (Julie Dietze) steals the entire show as she slowly finds out through Earth’s history how terrible the Nazis really were, negating all the propaganda she’s ever taught her students on the moon.

I’ll put it to you this way… think of America in the movie Idiocracy, make the President a woman who just stepped out of a trailer park, add the UN from Austin Powers, and then let Nazis from the moon invade the entire thing. It’s just about everything you can imagine.