Iron Sky

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2012 science-fiction comedy film

title: "Iron Sky" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["2012-action-comedy-films", "2012-science-fiction-action-films", "2010s-science-fiction-comedy-films", "2012-films", "alternate-nazi-germany-films", "apocalyptic-films", "australian-action-comedy-films", "australian-alternative-history-films", "australian-political-satire-films", "australian-science-fiction-action-films", "australian-science-fiction-comedy-films", "cultural-depictions-of-sarah-palin", "dieselpunk-films", "2010s-english-language-films", "english-language-finnish-films", "english-language-german-films", "fictional-nazis", "films-about-fictional-presidents-of-the-united-states", "films-about-nazis", "films-adapted-into-comics", "films-directed-by-timo-vuorensola", "films-set-in-2018", "films-set-in-jersey-city,-new-jersey", "films-set-in-manhattan", "films-set-in-washington,-d.c.", "films-set-on-the-moon", "films-shot-in-brisbane", "films-shot-in-frankfurt", "films-shot-in-new-york-city", "films-shot-in-tampere", "finnish-alternate-history-films", "finnish-political-satire-films", "finnish-science-fiction-comedy-films", "2012-finnish-films", "german-action-comedy-films", "german-alternate-history-films", "2010s-german-language-films", "german-political-satire-films", "german-science-fiction-action-films", "german-science-fiction-comedy-films", "mad-scientist-films", "2010s-science-fiction-war-films", "films-about-world-war-iii", "films-about-nuclear-war-and-weapons", "2012-german-films", "english-language-science-fiction-comedy-films", "english-language-science-fiction-action-films", "english-language-action-comedy-films", "english-language-war-films", "satire-about-nazis"] description: "2012 science-fiction comedy film" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary 2012 science-fiction comedy film ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox film"]

FieldValue
nameIron Sky
imageIron sky poster.png
captionInternational theatrical release poster
directorTimo Vuorensola
producer{{Plainlist
screenplay{{Plainlist
storyJohanna Sinisalo
starring{{Plainlist
musicLaibach
cinematographyMika Orasmaa
editingSuresh Ayyar
studio{{Plainlist
distributor{{Plainlist
released
runtime93 minutes (theatrical cut)
111 minutes (Director's Cut)
countryFinland
Germany
Australia
languageEnglish
German
budget€7.5 million
gross10.1 million
::

| name = Iron Sky | image = Iron sky poster.png | alt = | caption = International theatrical release poster | director = Timo Vuorensola | producer = {{Plainlist|

Iron Sky comes from the creators of Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning and was produced by Tero Kaukomaa of Blind Spot Pictures and Energia Productions, co-produced by New Holland Pictures and 27 Films, and co-financed by numerous individual supporters; Samuli Torssonen was responsible for the computer-generated imagery. It was theatrically released throughout Europe in April 2012. A director's cut of the film with 20 additional minutes was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 11 March 2014. The film received negative reviews, focusing on the film's execution and dated humor.

A video-game adaptation titled Iron Sky: Invasion was released in October 2012. A sequel, titled Iron Sky: The Coming Race, was crowdfunded through Indiegogo and released in January 2019, to a more hostile critical reception and a box office bomb, culminating in the bankruptcy of two production companies involved in the sequel's production: Blind Spot Pictures, and Iron Sky Universe.

Plot

In 2018, an American crewed mission lands on the Moon. The lander carries two astronauts, one of them an African-American model, James Washington, specifically chosen to aid the U.S. President's re-election (various "Black to the Moon" posters are seen, extolling the new landing).

Upon landing on the far side of the Moon, they encounter the descendants of Nazis who escaped to the Moon. Washington is taken captive after the other astronaut is killed. Nazi scientist Doktor Richter examines Washington and obtains his smartphone, which he later recognizes as having more computing power than their 1940s-style computers, enabling its use as a control unit to complete their space battleship Götterdämmerung.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Far_side_of_the_Moon.png" caption="The Far Side of the Moon pictured in 2022"] ::

When Richter strives to demonstrate his Wunderwaffe to the current Führer, Wolfgang Kortzfleisch, the phone's battery is quickly exhausted. Nazi commander Klaus Adler, seeking to marry Richter's daughter Renate, an Earth specialist, embarks in a flying saucer to collect more such computers on Earth. He takes with him Washington, who has been "Aryanized" by Doktor Richter using an "albinizing" drug.

Upon landing in New York City, they discover that Renate has stowed away with them. They abandon Washington after he connects them with the President's campaign adviser, Vivian Wagner, who, in a parody of a scene from Downfall had raged at her staff for their inability to create effective marketing to improve The President's ratings. Adler and Renate energize the President's re-election campaign using Nazi-style rhetoric. Renate is unaware of Adler's ambition to rule the world.

Later, Kortzfleisch interprets Adler's lack of communication as treachery. He commands a much larger fleet of flying saucers and giant Zeppelin-like spacecraft called Siegfrieds which tow asteroids as missiles. Renate finds a now homeless Washington on the street, and together they watch The Great Dictator. From this, Renate realizes the Nazis' true intentions and that Adler intends global genocide.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/The_Great_Dictator_still_cropped_(high_quality_version).jpg" caption="Footage from Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" is used and referenced throughout the film."] ::

Kortzfleisch lands on Earth and confronts Adler, but is killed by Adler and Vivian, who were beginning an intimate relationship. Adler declares himself the new Führer before returning to orbit in Kortzfleisch's flying saucer, deserting Vivian but taking her iPad.

Afterwards, the Moon Nazis launch a blitzkrieg on New York City. The U.S. Air Force engage the flying saucers with some success.

The United Nations assembles to discuss the Moon Nazi threat. The President appoints Vivian as commander of the secretly militarised spacecraft USS George W. Bush, which carries nuclear and directed-energy weapons, in blatant violation of the Outer Space Treaty. Vivian intends to get revenge on Adler, but is quickly outgunned, only to discover that every other nation (except Finland) has also broken the treaty and secretly armed their spacecraft. They dispatch them against the Nazi fleet and wipe out the Siegfrieds.

Adler arrives in Kortzfleisch's flying saucer with the iPad to activate the Götterdämmerung. Renate and Washington travel in Adler's flying saucer, where Washington goes to disable the engines while Renate seeks out Adler. Meanwhile, the international space fleet damage the Nazis' Moon base and approach the Götterdämmerung which dwarfs them all. Commanding the Götterdämmerung, Adler destroys parts of the Moon to expose Earth to his line-of-fire. During the battle, Washington disconnects Vivian's iPad from the control panel of the Götterdämmerung, while Renate kills Adler before he can fire at Earth. Renate and Washington separately escape as the Götterdämmerung crashes into the Moon.

The U.S. president congratulates Vivian from the UN session; whereupon Vivian discloses the presence of large tanks of helium-3 on the Moon, of which the President immediately claims on grounds that it ensures a millennium-long supply of energy. This enrages the other UN members, one of whom throws his shoes at her, inciting a large brawl. Meanwhile, the international space fleet turns on each other and every ship is destroyed in the process.

At the damaged Moon base, Renate reunites with Washington, who has reverted his pigmentation back to normal. They kiss before a confused group of Nazi survivors. The final moments of the film show the Earth apparently during an international nuclear war. At the very end of the credits, the planet Mars is revealed with an artificial satellite in orbit.

Cast

Production

Production began in early 2006, and the production team took their teaser trailer of the film to the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, seeking co-financiers. The team signed a co-production agreement with Oliver Damian's 27 Films Productions. Iron Sky is one of a new wave of productions, including Artemis Eternal, The Cosmonaut, A Swarm of Angels, and RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, produced in collaboration with an on-line community of film enthusiasts, creating participatory cinema. At Wreck-a-Movie, a collaborative film-making web site, the producers invited everyone interested to contribute ideas and resources to the project.

On 11 February 2009, it was announced that the film would star German actress Julia Dietze, while the Slovenian industrial music group Laibach would be recording the soundtrack. Appropriately enough for a film about Nazism, the orchestral soundtrack incorporates leitmotifs from the operatic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and other operas by Richard Wagner, a composer whose music was favoured by the Nazi leaders. The national anthem of the Nazis from the Moon ("Kameraden, wir kehren Heim!") has the tune of "Die Wacht am Rhein". During the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Iron Sky signed a co-production agreement with the Australian production company New Holland Pictures, which brought Cathy Overett and Mark Overett as co-producers of the film.

Iron Sky was video-recorded in Red camera format. Cinematography began in November 2010 in Frankfurt for location shooting, and after that in January 2011 in Australia for studio shooting. Settings in Frankfurt were Weseler Werft (Weseler Shipyard) and (). On 6 February 2011, the cinematography of Iron Sky concluded; it then entered a ten-week post-production process.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Vuorensola_and_Dietze.jpg" caption="Director Timo Vuorensola and lead actress Julia Dietze pictured in 2013"] ::

Release

Iron Sky premiered on 11 February 2012 at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, in the Panorama Special section. It was released in Finland on 4 April and in Germany on 5 April, running in major cinemas.

In the UK, there was some controversy regarding the decision of the distributor, Revolver Entertainment, to release the film for only one day, causing the film makers to issue a public condemnation of their UK distributor, and accusing Revolver of misleading them. Following high demand from the film's online fanbase, Revolver revised its decision and ''Iron Sky'''s UK cinema release was extended.

Awards

  • In 2013, Iron Sky won the Finnish audiovisual export Hulda award, granted by the Finnish Film & Audiovisual Export organization (Favex).

Reception

Critical reception of Iron Sky in the United States was negative. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 41% approval rating, based on 44 reviews, with an average rating of 4.5/10.

William Goss of Film.com gave the film a D+, saying that it "feels more and more like a lost Austin Powers sequel that already feels exceedingly dated in its humor." Jeff Shannon of The Seattle Times gave the film two out of four stars, describing it as "great idea, lousy execution". Leslie Felperin of Variety described Iron Sky as being "...neither good enough to rep a proper breakout hit nor bad enough that it might attain cult status; it's just kind of lame".

Accolades

The film won Best Visual Effects at the 2nd AACTA Awards.

Spin-offs

Comic

On 5 October 2011, Blind Spot released a digital comic prequel to the film, titled Iron Sky: Bad Moon Rising, written by the writer of Alan Wake, Mikko Rautalahti, and fully illustrated by comic artist Gerry Kissell, creator of IDW Publishing's Code Word: Geronimo. IDW Publishing printed these comics in a softcover graphic novel collection in March 2013.

Video game

On 19 August 2012, TopWare Interactive announced Iron Sky: Invasion, an official video game adaptation and expansion of the film, to be developed by Reality Pump Studios. The game was described as an advanced space flight simulator game, with elements of the strategy and RPG genres.

Board game

In 2012, Revision Games published Iron Sky: The Board Game, a board game based on the film designed by Juha Salmijärvi. It is a strategy board game, where two opposing teams The Reich and The UWC struggle for domination over three continents of Earth. Each player is in charge of one continent and cooperation within each team is mandatory for success.

Sequel

Main article: Iron Sky: The Coming Race

On 20 May 2012, Kaukomaa announced that there are plans for a prequel and a sequel but refused to disclose details. In May 2013, Vuorensola announced that Iron Sky will have a sequel titled Iron Sky: The Coming Race. He also mentioned that unlike the first film, this installment will be completely funded by fans via Indiegogo, with an estimated budget of US$15 million. A promo video was to be shot for the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and the final draft of the script was scheduled to be published by the end of 2014. Filming was expected to begin in 2015. In July 2013, Vuorensola revealed Croatia as one of the proposed shooting locations. In February 2014, Dalan Musson signed in to write the screenplay. The Finnish Film Foundation and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg have come on board to finance the US$13 million project. Ultimately, this schedule was not maintained. In 2017, a January 2018 release date was announced. That date was missed, as was an August 2018 release. The movie was ultimately released in March 2019.

Bankruptcy

In the wake of the sequel's financing and production problems creating a years-long delay in completion and release, compounded by its copyright dispute, Blind Spot Pictures, the main production company for the Iron Sky franchise, declared bankruptcy on 17 September 2019. Iron Sky Universe, another production company involved in creating a would-be third film in the Iron Sky franchise, also filed for bankruptcy on 12 October 2020 by Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company. This was confirmed by Timo Vuorensola, the Iron Sky franchise film director and Iron Sky Universe co-owner, saying: "The production company of Iron Sky, called Iron Sky Universe, one which I jointly set up with Tero, is going under."

References

References

  1. (14 May 2012). "''IRON SKY'' (15)". [[British Board of Film Classification]].
  2. "Iron Sky".
  3. "Iron Sky". [[Box Office Mojo]].
  4. [http://io9.com/387775/nazi-moonbase-launches-stealth-attack io9.com] {{Webarchive. link. (8 August 2015 , by Charlie Jane Anders (7 May 2008), "Nazi Moonbase Launches Stealth Attack". Retrieved 1 May 2009.)
  5. "Iron Sky info site". Ironsky.net.
  6. Ritman, Alex. (2023-05-19). "Cannes: 'Iron Sky' Director Timo Vuorensola Prepping Darkly Comic Action Thriller 'Killtown' (Exclusive)".
  7. "Iron Sky (2012) Blu-ray comparison". DVDCompare.
  8. "''Iron Sky: The Coming Race''". [[Indiegogo]].
  9. (2 April 2012). "Die finnische Filmparodie "Iron Sky" erzählt von durchgeknallten Nazis auf dem Mond". [[Der Spiegel]].
  10. link. (13 January 2009 , 5 September 2008, "Finland's Iron Sky Falls on Cannes". Retrieved 1 May 2009.)
  11. (21 May 2008). "Blind Spot looks to Nazis in space". [[The Hollywood Reporter]].
  12. [http://www.geektyrant.com/2008/05/nazis-on-the-moon-who-would-have-thought/ geekytyrant.com] {{webarchive. link. (30 July 2012 , "''Iron Sky'' was picked up at Cannes". Retrieved 1 May 2009.)
  13. Lance Weiler. (18 June 2008). "5 questions for Timo Vuorensola". The Workbook Project.
  14. [http://newteevee.com/2008/05/12/iron-sky-opens-up-the-filmmaking-process/ newteevee.com] {{Webarchive. link. (12 January 2009 , by Chris Albrecht (12 May 2008), "Iron Sky Opens Up the Filmmaking Process". Retrieved 1 May 2009.)
  15. [http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/06/2056208 slashdot.org], "News for Nerds: Iron Sky Trailer". Retrieved 1 July 2009.
  16. Meza, Ed. (11 February 2009). "Julia Dietze to star in 'Iron Sky'". [[Variety (magazine).
  17. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fblogs%2Fmarkkermode%2F2010%2F05%2Fcannes_2010_day_3.html Mark Kermode Interviews Timo Vuorensola at Cannes], 16 May 2010, "Mark Kermode Interviews Timo Vuorensola at Cannes". Retrieved 17 May 2010.
  18. (17 May 2010). "New Holland joins Iron Sky team". [[Screen Daily]].
  19. (2010-01-05). "Blackstar Halo – Energia's first Red camera vfx shots". Blog.starwreck.com.
  20. "Invest in Iron Sky : Iron Sky :: Official Movie Site". Iron Sky.
  21. link. (4 September 2012 , Aus Hessen wird Hollywood - Weltraum-Nazis erobern Frankfurt 9 February 2012.)
  22. [http://blog.starwreck.com/2011/02/06/iron-sky-shoot-the-final-day/ Iron Sky Shoot, The Final Day.] {{webarchive. link. (18 February 2011 Retrieved 18 February 2011.)
  23. Staff writer. (9 February 2012). "Iron Sky premieres in the Panorama Special section of the Berlinale". [[Finnish Film Foundation]].
  24. [http://www.cinemaxx.de/Programm/Film/Iron-Sky/19976 Iron Sky in Cinemaxx] {{Webarchive. link. (6 April 2012 Retrieved 5 April 2012.)
  25. (16 May 2012). "team does not approve the UK release strategy : Iron Sky :: Official Movie Site". Iron Sky.
  26. (23 May 2012). "'Iron Sky' granted extended UK cinema run : Digital Spy". Digital Spy.
  27. "Iron Sky (2012)". [[Rotten Tomatoes]].
  28. Goss, William. (2012-03-21). "SXSW Review: ''Iron Sky''". Film.com.
  29. Shannon, Jeff. (2012-08-23). "''Iron Sky'': Out-of-this-world Nazi plot lands in chaos". [[The Seattle Times]].
  30. Leslie Felperin (12 February 2012) [https://variety.com/2012/film/reviews/iron-sky-1117947071/ Review: "Iron Sky"], ''Variety'', accessed 4 April 2013.
  31. Jensen, Jorn Rossing. (2013-01-29). "Small Finnish VFX studio wins Australian Oscar for ''Iron Sky''". Cineuropa.
  32. (2011-10-07). "Comic Is Out – Pay What You Like Or Read It For Free : Iron Sky :: Official Movie Site". Iron Sky.
  33. (2012-12-05). "''IRON SKY coming from IDW''".
  34. (20 August 2012). "Video Game Based on 'Iron Sky' in the Works". [[The Hollywood Reporter]].
  35. "''Iron Sky: The Board Game''". Revision Games.
  36. [http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/blind-spot-plans-prequel-and-sequel-to-iron-sky/5042267.article Blind Spot plans prequel and sequel to Iron Sky] 20 May 2012. Geoffrey Macnab. ScreenDaily
  37. "''Iron Sky The Coming Race''". [[Indiegogo]].
  38. (2013-07-02). "Director's Update - From the Center of the Earth!". Energia Productions.
  39. Keslassy, Elsa. (2014-02-05). "Berlin: Dalan Musson to Write Sequel to 'Iron Sky' (EXCLUSIVE)".
  40. (3 May 2024). "Blind Spot Pictures Bankrupt (in Finnish)".
  41. (30 December 2019). "News reports Blind Spot Pictures Bankrupt (in Finnish)".
  42. Minna Rinta-Tassi. (2020-10-13). "Iron Sky -elokuvien tuotantoyhtiö on haettu konkurssiin – "Velkasumma on niin iso, ettei sitä takataskusta revitä" (in Finnish)". Yle Uutiset.
  43. Vuorensola, Timo. (2020-10-19). "Jeepers Creepers: Reborn {{!}} Day 38: Life in the Bubble".

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