November 20, 2012

• Sarah Palin vs. Moon Nazis

  OK, the formal title of the movie is "Iron Sky", but it's really "Sarah Palin vs. Moon Nazis". It was made in Finland, which was sort of the Soviet Hollywood when there was a Soviet -- many of their films ended up on MST3K, where they were generally among the more watchable, in a somewhat drug-trip kind of way. And Iron Sky continues that trippiness, and does so with a heaping dose of awesome. I mean, come ON! Giant zeppelins, in space, holding fleets of Nazi saucers, and which also tug giant meteors to use as weapons against Earth? Deciding that if you don't have time to get around the moon to fire your death cannon, you'll just fire THROUGH the moon? Of course, the Earthers get cool toys, too, like nuclear armed battle spaceships.

  This movie also features death by shoe, a moose head in the Oval Office, a cheap shot at North Korea (hey, if you can't laugh at one of the most pathetically poor, desperate, and wretched nations on Earth, whose people are pretty much helpless victims of an insane monarchy, what CAN you laugh at?), dieselpunk computers and spacecraft, and one of the only Downfall spoof scenes that doesn't actually involve using the footage from Downfall.

  Not entirely sure why the Finns think the US will be holding a Presidential election in 2018, though. I mean, it's not hard to look this up on Wikipedia. Maybe it's a subtle spoof of how Americans get foreign politics wrong?

  To be clear, this isn't a "funny because it's so bad" movie; it's an intentional comedy. The trailers try to make that clear, but, let's face it -- we live in an era when satire is virtually impossible because reality continues to become unreal. This may explain the poor reviews -- I think a lot of people were expecting an attempt at seriousness, not out-and-out farce. 

  • 9:51 am
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