Iron Sky
I like most of the awards. “Skyfall” got best song, “Django Unchained” got best screenplay (although I personally wished it had gone to “Moonrise Kingdom” instead), I suppose “Amour” for foreign film was expected and I am glad that Jennifer Lawrence is getting the critical attention she deserves. To top it all, I am very happy for Christoph Waltz – that was quite a surprise considering he got the same award just 3 years ago. But that “best picture” award? Shameless, shameless. It’s not like I trust critics in the first place, but with “Argo” the choice is so bad it’s painful.
But what can I say, “Iron Sky” is another example at where critics fail me. Now one can easily argue that most serious critics wouldn’t see the film in the first place. So-called ‘cult movies’ are not really in their arsenal so all you will read about are going to be amateur reviewers such as yours truly. As an example, this is one of the better efforts though I admittedly only skimmed the article because its light-on-black blog style hurts my eye. (Another reason why I like changing up the style of my own blog!) On Rotten Tomatoes you will see that most people hated the movie, and reading their reviews you will probably not learn about why they thought the film was bad. This is amusingly true no matter whether the writer liked the film or not. If I read things like “The film fails to be funny” or “Space nazis? What’s not to like?”, my automatic reaction would be to doubt these statements. What they wrote did not apply to me at all, and their review doesn’t even tell me why they think it was like that for them. I wish I was a better reviewer than that, but that requires a significant effort I sometimes do not like to make. As a result, I admire those who can.
I remember that Pixelmatsch never saw it back when it ran at the Berlinale, and I think it was 4651 who told me that the film was silly and bad. But silliness is perhaps the most important rule when it comes to Nazi comedies, so it’s not like that was unexpected. Sure, there are some scenes whose humor can only be described as dumb. The scientist who looks like Einstein fails to realize that the cellphone was battery powered is probably the worst joke of all. Poor Einstein, I would probably have felt offended on so many levels if I was him. Heck I myself feel a little offended being something of a scientist myself; I just dislike the stereotypical parody of the ‘mad scientist’, it’s outdated and there is absolutely nothing funny about that. I also don’t think that Julia Dietze is a good actress – in comparison to all the other characters who are at least doing a fair job, her clumsy acting feels strangely out of place.
With that said, I have absolutely nothing else to complain about the film. In fact, I thought it was a pleasant surprise. The sci-fi battles look much better than most of the campy stuff you usually see, some scenes even had the crispness of what you see in Battlestar Galactica for example. I also thought the story was well-written: The exposition started off quickly by contact with the Moon Nazis in the very first scene and then introducing all important characters, and from there the story never loses steam. It’s a feast of sci-fi action coupled with laughing-out-loud satire, ending in what “Dr. Strangelove” would have been – practically a cake fight. The comedy is very black, bordering on the lines of meanness (especially in that joke with North Korea), and one may need a little distance to whatever you may feel about Nazis yourself. They did have the decency to take the Jews completely out of the equation, and mostly make fun of Nazi antics such as the uniforms, the salute and the rigid hierarchy system. Actually the film makes more fun of politics on earth than it does of actual nazis – they just serve as backdrop for more jokes. But some of those jokes on the Sarah-Palin-like U.S. President and the other countries are quite spot-on, and I especially loved how the Mir appeared out of nowhere (it deorbited in 2001 after all, who remembers it nowadays?). Furthermore, I think cutting “The Great Dictator” down to the infamous scene where Hitler plays with the earth balloon is one of many lovely jokes the film had. Furthermore, a scene like that does not only serve amuse you, a lot of these jokes are actually central to the plot which pleasantly does not have glaring plotholes as you’d expected from a production like this. Everything has a certain purpose, and everything the silly characters do have a reasonable consequence. Even the very reason why the US sent people to the moon again, helium-3, reappears as a plot device at the end.
Seriously, I don’t know what is going on with the bad reviews for this film. It did well enough in box office, and they were planning to make a prequel and sequel of it. There must a reason for the relative success of the film, so if your humor aligns with the blackness, you’ll find it an enjoyable, epic ride.