And when that isn't available, we really ponder whether it was worth the $3 spent on the DVD at the movie store.
Right now, the crew (read: myself) is looking at the "Nazis from the Moon" classic (read: from 2012) Iron Sky. Is it any good? Is it terrible? Weill Erik ever get away from Udo Kier showing up in films? Find out more after the cut.
When we last left off our review, an albinoized black astronaut named Washington and a Nazi from the moon whose "eyes have been opened" named Renate are the only two people who can stop an invasion of Earth by other, less sociable Nazis from the moon. The Nazi space fleet is about to begin the "meteorblitzkreig." Oh, and Udo Kier died. ...I'm gonna miss him.
So, will our heroes (such as they are) keep Earth from being invaded?
Well, no.
In fact, the invasion pretty much happens right after Adler leaves, despite the fact he says it'll take place at "5:45." Is that supposed to be on moon time? Eastern standard? German time? Why not just say "hey everybody, fly the ships in now."
So it appears that New York is the only city being attacked, which really sort of defeats the purpose of attacking from orbit since you could attack everywhere at once.
We move to the white house, where not-Sarah Palin is absolutely overjoyed at the idea of becoming a "first-term wartime president." She congratulates Vivian for setting the whole thing up, and the fact it's Nazis is even better since "they're the only guys we ever actually managed to beat in a fair fight."
...I can't even tell if I want to argue the logic behind that statement.
I like the fact that the Secretary of State actually seems to be upset that this is the reaction his boss is having, and when she asks who should be in command of the armed forces, he essentially gives up having reason being involved and tells her to assign it to her campaign manager. Because that's how military rankings work, right?
We get some neat aerial special effects of jets and spacecraft being shot down into downtown Manhattan (again, the armed forces are having difficulty against ships who have no advanced computer systems), while Washington and Renate climb into one of the only cabs in the city that still has a driver to ponder their next move. Washington wants to just get away from the whole mess, but Renate convinces him that she needs his help to stop her people.
The taxi starts driving with them in it...and seriously, in the same scene I see two abandoned taxis just sitting there, lights flashing, keys apparently left in ignition. Why didn't they just steal one of those?
This movie's logic is starting to fail, and it started with "Nazis on the moon."
They manage to get to Adler's original spaceship and take off just as we understand what the meaning of "Meteorblitzkreig" is. The nazis are dropping giant moon rocks onto cities.
This begs another question. If you have giant moon rocks that you're prepared to drop onto large metropolitan centers, why do you lead with attack fighters?
There's a pointless and stupid scene at the UN where the North Korea delegate tries to claim credit for the attack from outer space and everybody else laughs at him, when the President and Secretary of- wait, Defense? I thought he was State earlier. I don't care, maybe he's both. They show up and announce that fortunately, America is ready to save the entire planet with the help of their space warship that was somehow built in total secrecy, the USS George W Bush.
Oh, and the commander of this state-of-the-art spaceship built for war?
 |
| Vivian, what have you done to yourself? |
Okay, ignoring the fact that a civilian who was once a campaign manager is in charge...what is with that outfit? She looks like a rejected villain concept design from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
The ship takes off into combat, and actually handles it's moment of surprise pretty well against the enemy fleet...and then the blimps realize what's going on and open fire the United States. It's too bad no other country in the world besides the United States would be so deceitful, so smugly superior as to directly violate the international treaty that exists in this world to keep people from putting weapons onto starships and oh, just show the next picture.
That's right, every other country that has space travel has militarized their space ships. Heck, the Russian one is actually the Mir, just adapted for war. Part of my brain wants to shrivel up and die at the logic, while the other part is looking for the bucket of popcorn. The President, however, is pissed at the other world delegates and demands to know who hasn't militarized their spacecraft.
Finland is the only guy to raise his hand. ...that's kinda funny, actually. As is the fact that the Australian ship is called the Dundee-01. Croikey.
Meanwhile, on (sigh) the "dark side of the moon" Adler arrives to prepare that ultimate warship that was presented at the start of the movie. Of course, this time, instead of a simple phone, he brought an iPad. With holographic capabilities. We also see a lot of troops climbing on board the ship, too.
The allied forces start blowing up the invading forces like nobody's business, Washington and Renate approach the moon base, and then the allied forces all turn to blow up the moon base. I smell a "countdown" coming!
Washington and Renate arrive at the hangar of the G- ...I have no idea how to type that with umlauts. Their plan is pretty simple. Renate heads to the bridge to seize control, and Washington goes to the lab, gets his blackness back, and then takes out the engines. Simple! Or, they could both go to the lab and destroy the engines, since that would stop the ship anyway.
Everybody in this movie gets dumber as the movie goes on.
The allied forces arrive at the base and start dropping nukes on the base like nobody's business. Someone who knows physics, tell me what happens when one of those bombs goes off on the moon, please. Again, Vivian seems to be letting a broken heart affect her mind since, when someone points out "there are women and children in there" her response is "America doesn't negotiate with terrorists!"
Two points:
Allowing the enemy to surrender isn't really "negotiation."
Also, that's one of your coworkers who's negotiating with you, not a terrorist. Unless the United States Armed Forces now recruits from terrorist cells. ...which, considering they thought a re-election campaign written by Nazis was a good idea, doesn't seem to far off track.
Cilvilians get crushed by large, bouncing pieces of foam wall (yay cheap special effects! I should review Congo next), and it seems like everybody can go home.
OR CAN THEY?
"That's no moon, that's a-" no, this movie doesn't deserve that reference.
So yeah, the allied forces are a bit outnumbered. But it's okay, they still have more weapons. However, the Nazis have a fun that can apparently take out an entire chunk of the moon, allowing them to have line of sight on the Earth.
Washington, in the meantime, is struggling to beat up Renate's father, an old dude with a wrench. Not very heroic, but Renate is able to cause a huge distraction across the ship by activating the "for motivation, break glass" feature every spacecraft has, causing the national anthem to play. This makes everybody stop what they're doing, jerk their arm out, and stare vacantly ahead, ignoring everything around them.
Everyone in this movie is an idiot.
Renate confronts Adler, who breaks what I would have thought was a very important piece of equipment in the middle of the room to create a smokescreen, and gets the better of Renate. Fortunately, even Adler is a moron, so Renate is able to trick him into doing the "heil" arm gesture, flinging his fingers into a light socket. This doesn't kill him, though, and in the ensuing knife fight, Renate winds up killing him with-
DAMN YOU MOVIE. I knew there was going to be another Barb Wire connection! She killed him with her boot! SERIOUSLY. GEEZ. I mean, really? She couldn't have, I don't know, choked him to death with a Nazi armband, or clubbed him to death with that stupid stick the Fuhrer always carries around? She had to KILL HIM WITH A SHOE?
...
Right. Anyway, Washington yanks the iPad, shutting down the engines (though not really necessary anymore since Renate has seized control of the bridge). Renate escapes via a space rocket pack (okay, that's kinda cool) and Washington ejects in an escape pod. The giant ship crashes, and everybody's ready to wrap stuff up.
Uuuuup until Vivian announces there are tanks and tanks of Helium-3, which the United States immediately claims as its own. This causes a fight in the UN chamber, which makes the President essentially order Vivian to fire on any other ship that gets near the tanks.
So, yeah. The allied fleet blows itself up, which I guess solves the problem of having a giant international space fleet for defense against space villains. I mean, how often would that happen, anyway?
Renate returns to the bombed out base where she finds the survivors, and starts to tell them that they can no longer stick their arm out, and that things are going to have to be different. Washington shows up (back in black, baby!) and the two kiss, causing one old woman in the back of the room to call out "are you aware that you are kissing a black man?" Oh, Nazis. Comedy gold.
So as the film wraps up, we move from a smoking Nazi base on the moon to a view of the Earth, where the nations of the world, having faced a threat on a global layer together, as one force, has learned to reject the greed and selfishness of their previous leaders and come together to- oh, who am I kidding? The movie ends showing nukes detonating all over the planet as the entire world goes to war.
...seriously, if this is the origin of the Fallout series, I don't know if I'd be impressed or disappointed.
Credits roll, we leave Earth behind, and ... move to Mars, where one lone sattelite blips over its surface, allowing, perhaps, for a sequel! Vikings from Mars, perhaps!
No, seriously, they have a sequel and a prequel planned for this.
Deal with it.
The Good:
The special effects are better than I could have hoped. There's some insane attention to detail in the spacecraft used by the allied forces as well as the Nazis. The future technology fits seamlessly into the film and actually seems plausable for something we might have in a few years. The fact that the Nazis, without certain earth metals, were forced to develop completely differently from how Earth developed even the past 70 years is something I think a lot of writers would ignore.
Also, some of the actors aren't bad. The woman who plays Renate is pretty convincing as a naive woman who has no idea what evils the system she believes in has committed. Adler is also great, since he seems to know from the beginning that the script mandates that everyone around him has to be rather dumb, and he gets to take advantage of that. And, of course, Udo Kier is always doing his best to ham up every scene gloriously.
The Bad:
Subtlety isn't just a failing for the Nazis, it's a failure across the whole film. Having the President be an obvious Sarah Palin rip-off is one thing, but playing up the whole Republican "we get it cause we're awesome, screw the world" that became the extreme stereotype years ago feels tired here. The idea of sending a black person to the moon just for PR isn't as bad, and if the movie had stopped there, or just had one person on her staff point out that "wartime Presidents always get re-elected" instead of having everybody connected in the White House point that out might have worked better.
Some of the stuff made the "Science!" part of my brain twitch. The fact that they paved roads on the moon (don't get me started on the whole "dark side" thing again) makes no sense. I mean, where does the road even lead? The corner store? The post office? I suppose it could go to the mine, but why not just invest in all-terrain vehicles for that? You have spacecraft that can land on the surface, just use those to transport anything big.
There's also some terrible lines in this movie, most of which are said by Vivian.
Also, some of the actors weren't really bad but I won't remember them after this. Vivian's actress chewed up every scene she was in, I'm already blanking on the woman who played the President, and sadly Washington's actor seemed to wanted to study for the role by watching Will Smith in Independence Day but instead got stuck with a foreign dubbed version of Wild, Wild West.
Overall:
Honestly, I love this movie for how insane it is. It has NAZI SPACE BLIMPS. No major studio would ever try to turn that into a summer blockbuster, but it's so over the top you can't help but go "my god, they really did it." People have commented to me that certain action movies are just "turn off your brain/mindless fun" but this is one of the few that I think really is. With absolutely no relatable characters, the movie becomes pure farce, and you don't feel any connection whatsoever to the action or plot, allowing you to appreciate it for what it is.
Aaaaand I guess it is important to note that the evil the Nazis perpetrated during World War 2 was severely downplayed here. But I don't really think it was needed. Everybody knows what the Nazis did then, so to go into the imagery would have made the movie a bit too preachy for its satire tastes.
I recommend watching it, as it's nowhere near as bad as, say, Judge Dredd or Barb Wire (despite resorting to the same "killed by a shoe" gag.) It's not great, by any means, but I'd rather watch a flying Nazi space fortress blow up the moon than another Transformers movie by Michael Bay. At least the movie with space Nazis doesn't need to rely on explosions for the sake of explosions.
Yeah, I said it. Space Nazis are more subtle than Michael Bay. And they have a base shaped like their armband!
...I'm never getting invited to any events in Hollywood. Ever.
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