Iron Sky (2012) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Of every film reviewed on Sci-Fi Saturdays, I bet you did Nazi this one coming!

Parodying the sci-fi invasion film, Iron Sky takes the genre to new levels of insanity. Nazis From The Moon sounds like the title of a 50s B-level film, but that’s just what gets delivered. There’s a touch of kitsch, plenty of satirical political humor, and lots of action in this bizarre entry from 2012.

First Impressions

A mass of UFOs flies above New York, attacking the city. The intertitles create a progression of information that “they” have been watching the planet, studying humans, and waiting for 70 years to attack. Of course, it’s Nazi’s living on the Dark Side of the Moon! The Earth must fight back against the evil overlord and his Iron Sky!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In 2018, a manned mission to the moon lands in support of the President of the United States’ re-election campaign. The first astronaut discovers a secret Nazi base on the dark side before being killed. The second astronaut, black male model James Washington (Christopher Kirby), is captured and taken for experimentation by Dr. Richter (Tilo Prückner). Schoolteacher Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), daughter of the mad scientist, teaches her students how to speak English and instructs them on their glorious purpose of bringing love, wisdom, and kindness when they return to Earth. Commander Klaus Adler (Götz Otto) presents Renate with a handbook on copulation in order for them to make the perfect Aryan babies.

Dr. Richter injects Washington with some type of serum. He also discovers Washington’s mobile phone which he hooks up to the Nazi computer that controls their gigantic flying saucer/battleship named Götterdämmerung. The battery on the phone dies, so Adler suggests to the Fuhrer, Kortzfleisch (Udo Kier), that he be allowed to go to Earth to retrieve more of these mini-computers. Adler takes Washington with him, who has been turned caucasian with blonde hair by an albinism serum. Renate sneaks aboard the ship as well so she can get a chance to see Earth.

The 1950s-style flying saucer lands outside New York City. Adler orders Washington to help them meet the President, so they walk into the city. Not realizing that his pigmentation has been altered, Washington is almost shot by some local inner city gang members as they steal a VW microbus. Outside a skyscraper, Vivian Wagner (Peta Sergeant), the President’s public relations manager, is having a smoke break when Adler grabs her. Washington is left behind as they drive off. Vivian is searching for a new campaign to help the President (Stephanie Paul) get re-elected and believes that Adler and Renate present a strong visual of strength and unity, so she builds the President’s campaign around National Socialist rhetoric.

Meanwhile, Kortzfleisch mobilizes his army to go after Adler, whom he believes is a traitor. He discovers Adler in flagrante delicto with Vivian but is soon murdered by the younger Commander, who declares himself the new Führer. Adler launches an attack on Earth with giant space zeppelins that tow asteroids, which are then hurled into the planet. Smaller flying saucers attack New York, wreaking destruction on the city. Adler returns to the Moon base with Vivian’s computer tablet and instructs Dr. Richter to connect it to the Götterdämmerung.

The President and Secretary of Defense (Michael Cullen) speak to the members of the United Nations revealing the presence of space Nazis. She informs them that the United States is prepared to fight back with the armed spaceship, the USS George W Bush, with Vivian as its commander. The other nations are upset that America has armed their spaceship, but they reveal they too have armed their ships, including the MIR space station. The various nation’s space ships attack the Nazi fleet with extreme prejudice. Vivian fires a series of nuclear warheads on the Nazi moon fortress, even after being told that there are women and children on board.

Adler gets the Götterdämmerung up and running, blasting through part of the moon’s surface in order to be able to target Earth. On board, Washington fights and kills Dr. Richter, getting electrocuted in the process. Renate finds and kills Adler, driving her stiletto heel through his forehead. They both jettison from the giant craft as it crashes, destroying itself. Vivian asks the President what she wants to do with the storage tanks of Helium-3 left by the Nazis. The President immediately claims the energy source for America, and the remaining Earth ships all begin attacking one another. Renate and Washington (who has found a cure for his albinism) are reunited and kiss. Meanwhile, nuclear warheads begin flying around the planet, decimating high-value targets. In a mid-credit scene, a man-made satellite orbits Mars.

“You see, the National Socialist Party is the people’s party, nothing more. We wish to return to Earth with our message of peace and unity, love through virtue and kindness, for example.” – Renate Richter

History in the Making

Iron Sky is a satirical, alternate-history, science-fiction film released in 2012 as a joint Finnish, German, and Australian production. It is set six years into the future, and presumes that after their defeat at the end of the second World War, the Nazis were able to retreat to the moon, where they thrived, undiscovered on the dark side for the last 73 years. While farcical, it’s doubtful that the film’s director, Timo Vuorensola, could have seen how correct he was. Not that there were any Nazis living on the moon and coming to invade America. That’s ludicrous! No, they were in the country the entire time!

The rise of the American alt-right movement, which contains individuals identifying as white nationalists and white supremacists, during the late aughts and early twenty-teens may have been a factor in Vuorensola’s and the other writers’ minds as they came up with this idea. Nazi-related paraphernalia, including swastika flags, was being flaunted in public during this time and culminated in a violent display during a protest at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA. Pro-fascist groups marched in the town, having various skirmishes with protesting groups, and eventually turned deadly when Heather Heyer was killed by James Alex Fields Jr. as he purposefully drove his car into a crowd. Then President Trurnp failed to outright condemn the groups responsible, going so far as to signal white supremacists’ approval with language in his social media postings. Elements of his 2016 campaign even echoed elements of Iron Sky’s President, who in herself was a parody of 2008 Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Real-life rhetoric and pandering to audiences mimic several scenes from the film.

The film’s unnamed President is depicted as a savvy politician but also a person who lacks basic empathy and puts herself first. She is shown exercising all the time (never actually doing work for the country, only on herself), while her Secretary of Defense tells her not to worry about things. Her use of a manned return to the moon with a black model, as a platform for her candidacy, gets blamed on her campaign manager, Vivian, for its failure (though if it had worked, she says she would have taken all the credit). And when Vivian brings her Adler and Renate, the President happily uses Nazi-like rhetoric in her campaign speeches to get re-elected. It appears that this President is more concerned with appearances rather than being a good leader, believing that having strength and might means that they should be wielded, rather than refrained. The political satire of Iron Sky is more spot on and prescient than other films that purport to be straight political comedies.

Genre-fication

It’s debatable if Iron Sky is truly an alternate-history film or just a science-fiction film set in the near future. Usually, alt-history tales are set in the present year, but not necessarily the future, and depict a “what if” situation where something in our reality has played out differently. The most applicable example is Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, which was adapted into a 4 season, 40 episode television series between 2015 and 2019. It supposes the Nazis won World War II, and presents a modern day depicting how differently the world would be. A recent example from Sci-Fi Saturdays would be District 9, which shows an alternate future in Johannesburg, South Africa, in which an alien ship has broken down, stranding its populace in the slums of Joburg. Iron Sky has more of a comedic approach to this alt-history and may be more like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter than either of these other titles. But it could also just be a straight sci-fi film as well. The Nazis have adopted 1940s technology (for the last 70-plus years) creating a steampunk aesthetic to moon living. They have also mastered the mining of Helium-3, something that was proposed previously in Moon, which is the presumed power source for their swastika-shaped moon base. And they have created an entire fleet of ships to use when returning to conquer the Earth.

The most prominent sci-fi reference for Iron Sky is certainly Independence Day, which is evident in the attack on New York City by flying saucers. Instead of gigantic saucers that invade the planet, with their fleets of smaller fighter craft, the Fourth Reich approaches the Earth with space zeppelins dragging asteroids behind them. These bombard the planet and allow the fighters to attack the streets of the city. Explosions and people running mirror scenes from the 1996 disaster epic, drawing a similar vibe. Iron Sky has other references to sci-fi properties, including Vivian comparing a Nazi to Darth Vader (from Star Wars) and the number 1138 on Renate’s spacesuit (referencing George Lucas’ THX 1138). But it also has a surprising amount of references to other films, completely outside the sci-fi realm.

The Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator is mentioned in the opening moments during Renate’s lessons to her students. That film is a political satire made in 1940 parodying Hitler and the Nazi regime. Its most famous scene is of dictator Hynkel dancing with a balloon of the Earth, which ultimately pops at the end of the scene. Renate mentions this is a great short film, which should be the first clue to audiences that something is amiss, as the original film runs just over two hours. The Fourth Reich has edited the “best” scene of Hynkel with the balloon, removing the end with it popping, and using it out of context for propaganda purposes. It seemed that this would be a deep-cut reference in the film, but Renate and James actually find a screening of the film on Earth later in the film, which allows the “truth” of the Nazi deception to be known. Another political satire that is referenced is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. In that film, Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers) is an ex-Nazi brought to the United States after WW2 to work on the American rocket and space program. He is confined to a wheelchair and has a nervous tick that causes his hand to shoot up in a Nazi salute at the most inopportune times. When James is presented in his post-surgery scene (as an Aryan brownshirt), he does the same thing–fighting his own hand from saluting the officers. James also rides a missile to escape the crashing Götterdämmerung spaceship, a similar visual to Slim Pickens riding the bomb at the conclusion of Strangelove. And of course, both films end with the nuclear annihilation of the planet. The final film that Iron Sky parodies is Downfall, a film that few have seen but many are familiar with. This film deals with the final days of Hitler and the Third Reich, with its most famous scene, one of many memes, being Hitler angered by his generals and yelling at them. That scene is parodied shot for shot with Vivian screaming at her staff for their poor work on the President’s re-election campaign.

Societal Commentary

Iron Sky reminds audiences that Nazis are much closer than we think. Their beliefs, as an ideology, are still present in many people’s minds. The Fourth Reich has been in hiding for most of a Century, biding its time to return and conquer the Earth. Klaus Adler and Kortzfleisch both know this and the true purpose of their regime. However, they still practice a level of propaganda on the non-military inhabitants of the moon base. This is the belief that “they come in peace,” as Renate asks the children to repeat. Even she is unaware of the true reality of the Reich, having no other avenue of information from the lies she is asked to regurgitate. In 2012, this film seemed more comical than serious. But in the thirteen years since it was released, so much of that satire seems like a near miss of reality. The President gives a rhetoric-laced speech where she says, ”We are the promise delivered to all mankind. For that, we raise our hands to one Nation. We step to the beat of one drum. We march to the beat of one heart.” At this time, in 2025, it’s difficult not to hear that quote in the voice of Elon Musk, who delivered his own version of the speech, and a stiff armed Nazi salute, at the inauguration of Drumpf in his second term.

For everything else going on with the film, Iron Sky is a very progressive film. Certainly, the lampooning of the conservative political platform is one indication, but beyond that, the film acts as an empowerment of women. While James Washington appears to be the main character, it is quickly noted that the journey audiences are following is Renate’s. She goes from indoctrinated teacher in the Fourth Reich, ready to help Adler birth perfect Aryan babies, to an enlightened woman who speaks out against wrongs and ultimately kills the main protagonist with a boot to the head. She falls in love with a black man, pissing off neo-Nazis everywhere, and learns to think for herself. Renate is not the only empowered woman. This film about a Nazi invasion features a female President, however horrific her policies may be, who is able to get re-elected. She has been able to accomplish more than any woman in the real world has done in terms of getting into the Oval Office. Finally, Vivian is a solid A-type personality. She runs her own mega-corporation, complete with her name on the building. And though she may have questionable morals (she falls head over heels in lust with Adler, and also launches a nuclear strike on a moon base after being warned that non-combatants–including children– were inside), she steps up, takes charge and also kicks butt.

The Science in The Fiction

The preposterousness of the science in Iron Sky goes hand in hand with the tone it has for its politics. It presumes the mastery of space by 1940s German two decades before man landed on the moon, and does so in a steampunk style of radio tubes, thick wiring, and mechanical cogs and gears. As the rest of the world struggles in a post-World War 2 space race, the Nazis are already living contentedly on the moon, mining deposits of Helium-3 to sustain their energy. When James Washington shows up with a smartphone decades later, Doctor Richter is somehow able to connect the device using Universal Systematic Binding (USB for short) to the 1940s technology. Really? Who has struggled to connect their smartphone to 2012-era technology? That, and the fact that he plugs it in correctly the first time, is completely unbelievable.

The film also supposes that the nations of the world have developed their own space fleet, in secret from one another. That is part of the joke, in that America has armed its ship because, of course, they would disobey a treaty. From there, the space fight between the Earth and Nazi ships is no less believable. It is obviously based on the dogfights and space battles from Moonraker, with laser beams ripping through the void of space.

The Final Frontier

There’s a marketing saying about striking while the iron is hot, and Iron Sky attempts to do just that. The tie-ins from the film include a trio of digital comic book prequels, Iron Sky: Bad Moon Rising, Iron Sky: A Frank Exchange of Views, and Iron Sky: Valhalla, a video game called Iron Sky: Invasion made for PS3 and XBox 360, and a strategy-based board game. Seven years later, a sequel called Iron Sky: The Coming Race was released via a crowdfunding campaign, to less than stellar reviews. It missed the opportunity to be called The Reich Strikes Back! At this time, that was the last film in the Iron Sky franchise to be released, although IMDb does list The Ark: An Iron Sky Story with Andy Garcia as being in production.

Iron Sky creates an interesting parody of modern political ideology while including one of Hollywood’s favorite pastimes since 1981s Raiders of the Lost Ark, kicking Nazi butt! It may have ended up a footnote in science-fiction history and been relegated to cult status, with films like Sharknado and The Room, if not for its more progressive nature. That, and also for reality becoming closer to fiction as it played a large part in making the film seem less like a movie and more like a documentary.

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