I saw the Iron Sky recently in a preview screening. And, I quite liked it.
For those that do not know, Iron Sky is a Sci-fi action comedy from a team of Finnish "independent" film makers lead by Timo Vuorensola as the director. Iron Sky tells a story about 'freaking space Nazis from the dark side of the moon coming back to earth'.
For what it is, the movie works fine. It's not a masterpiece of dramatic cinematic flavor on line with Citizen Kane or Pianist with some deep philosophical dialog. No, its more in the line of campy Nazisploitation and over-the top action, as one would come to expect. And as one would expect, the movie is absolutely ridiculous. It has its many fun moments and true laugh out loud scenes, specially made for those viewers who are into internet/computer/pop culture related stuff, which presence makes sense considering the guys who made this film are "self taught" young film makers who basically 'grew up' making movies of their own, and are the children of the Internets.
Iron Sky has a really good cast who deliver consistently strong performance throughout the film. With Udo Kier being my absolute favorite who sadly goes somewhat underused with his too old to care and strictly for business Nazi führer of the moon guy... (Oh well, I still have him as the Yuri in Red Alert 2.) Weirdly, Götz Otto being the go-to baddie of the movie, delivers somewhat dry and unnoteworthy performance. And I think it felt this way was because there was a subtlety in his acting which sadly vanishes under rest of the silliness in the film.
Now as expected from the guys who previously did the Star Wrek comedy films, they made absolutely brilliant CGI effects for Iron Sky. I rarely could tell which stuff were done with practical effects and which were done with CGI, which is a very good thing. There are many moments which I knew were definitely done with computers, but still were a blast to watch. Nothing there is jarring or unnecessary feeling, like in majority of the other CGI motion pictures of today.
Now there are some few shortcomings in the film of course, few minor stuff here and there, but also one bigger aspect that was quite difficult to overlook. And that is that the Iron Sky skips around, a lot. It felt like there were tons of shots missing from between the key scenes. You'll watch the characters do something and have it immediately cut to a later moment in time, or to a completely different scene all together. The movie leaves a lot for the viewers to fill in. That was not too difficult for me one I adjusted. It's a bit distracting, yes. But if you manage to push it past, you'll find interesting plot unfolding. Now while I had no difficulties following the movie, I can also see someone used to the regular Hollywood "tell it to the audience" type movies being lost with this film. While the important scenes needed for the plot are still very much present, the sudden jumps might leave the viewer lagging behind, you might get some whiplashes watching this film.
However, there is a very understandable excuse for that, which the director himself told us in the theater on the Q&A session after the film. And it's that way because they had to cut stuff from the script as they simply had no money to realistically do most of them. Iron Sky had a budget of only of 7 million Euros, which compared to other proper big movies, is nothing. They said that every scene they did had to be done in the way of "we'll shoot this if we get the money to do it". And considering that, it's amazing they managed as much as they did.
Iron Sky is a fun little movie that definitely differs from your average schlock. I'd recommend to watch it, if only for the sake of curiosity. (And ridiculous Nazis.)
And what about the the ending? Who wins? Oh, you'll have to watch the movie to find out. You might get a surprise. It might make you stop and think... I know it made me.
