Blu-Ray Review: Iron Sky

It’s been over two years since we interviewed the director of Iron Sky, Timo Vuorensola, and today his film is finally out on Blu-Ray and DVD. We covered some of the early stages of the film, as there was a viral marketing push to help fund it. Read my review of the final product after the break.

The story of Iron Sky is a bit out there, so I’ll let the official website explain it.

In the last moments of World War II, a secret Nazi space program evaded destruction by fleeing to the Dark Side of the Moon. During 70 years of utter secrecy, the Nazis construct a gigantic space fortress with a massive armada of flying saucers.

When American astronaut James Washington (Christopher Kirby) puts down his Lunar Lander a bit too close to the secret Nazi base, the Moon Führer (Udo Kier) decides the glorious moment of retaking the Earth has arrived sooner than expected. Washington claims the mission is just a publicity stunt for the President of the United States (Stephanie Paul), but what else could the man be but a scout for the imminent attack by Earth forces? The Fourth Reich must act!

Two Nazi officers, ruthless Klaus Adler (Götz Otto) and idealistic Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), travel to Earth to prepare the invasion. In the end when the Moon Nazi UFO armada darkens the skies, ready to strike at the unprepared Earth, every man, woman and nation alike, must re-evaluate their priorities.

The film has quite the international blood. It was made by Finnish filmmakers and filmed in Germany and Australia, and the production cost less than $10 million. None of that hurts the visual presentation, as the effects teams did an amazing job. All of the scenes in space and on the moon looked great for such a low budget foreign production, and I didn’t even realize that the streets of Frankfurt were a stand-in for New York City.

Unfortunately, Iron Sky’s downfall is its comedy. The movie never quite establishes itself in any comedic genre, so it’s a bit all over the place, and many of the jokes simply don’t land. It’s at times a spoof, a satire, and sometimes I don’t know what. The characters are deliberately two-dimensional to make the comedy easier, but that means we don’t really care about them at all. This was all disappointing to me, because there is a lot of potential here. I think you could do a straight version of this story that had more of a Starship Troopers vibe, especially since Iron Sky goes to great lengths to mock Sarah Palin and the culture of American political campaigns.

Overall, the film has it’s flaws, but it’s a decent B movie with B+ visual effects that put SyFy to shame. The Blu-ray and DVD have some good behind-the-scenes features, but the best stuff is on IronSky.net, where the production was chronicled as it happened.

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars