Space Nazi‘s
In the dying days of the Second World War, the Nazi‘s realizing that defeat is at hand come up with a daring and innovative plan to defeat the Allies and while Germany lies prostrate in 1945, in 2018 it will be the Nazi race that will be triumphant!
Leading a band of scientists and soldiers to the Dark Side of the Moon, the Nazi’s establish a base and set out to develop their plans for future dominance over all mankind.
Adolf Hitler in Yugoslavia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Space Nazi’s – well as a premise it is actually quite interesting and different and while this could be treated almost seriously – I’m glad that the producers and directors decided to go with a more comedic tone to this film. While you could assume that the Stormtroopers in StarWars are a final end point of the Nazi’s (notice the similarity in the names!), this movie is a lot closer to home and is assumed to take place in the next decade or so versus hundreds and thousands of years in the future and all of the gadgets and gizmo’s are either easily recognizable descendants of devices we play with already or in the case of the Nazi’s quite easily recognizable ancestors, with the sole exception being the space ships.
Discovery
In the year 2018 a female president is leading the land of the free (and one that bears a remarkable similarity to Sarah Palin!) – however with a flagging political reputation she needs a gimmick to regain her popularity with the people. This is where black male model – James Washington – comes into the picture.
Washington travels to the dark side of the moon and here, he and fellow astronaut come across the hidden Nazi base, unfortunately the Nazi’s find them and after killing one of the astronauts, they take Washington captive.
Discovering that Washington is a black man, they decide to “aryanize” him after torturing him and make him into a white man. Washington not realizing what has been done to him agrees to lead them back to the US where he can introduce them to the President of the United States.
Returning to the States, Washington is quickly pushed to the side by Klaus Adler who approaches the President directly with Vivian Wagner – the President’s aide. Klaus, Vivian and Richter help to transform the Presidency into a more strident and “pure” one with the mantra and underlying theologies of the Nazi’s. While these words might sound true and right, in reality taken to their logical extension it will almost always lead to the extremes seen in any fascist state … however to the voting public they always sound great!
Key Characters
There are many different characters throughout this film and some of the most iconic and funny ones are performed by the “bit” characters, however the named characters below each help to make this film as enjoyable as it is. Additional details on each of these characters can be obtained from IMDB at the Iron Sky link.
- Julia Dietze…Renate Richter
- Peta Sergeant…Vivian Wagner
- Kym Jackson…McLennanUdo
- Stephanie Paul…President of the United States
- Christopher Kirby…James Washington
- Götz Otto…Klaus Adler
- Tilo Prückner…Doktor Richter
- Michael Cullen…Secretary of Defence
The War Begins
Once Klaus takes command of the Nazi forces, he then commands his armada of ships to attack and destroy America. While the smaller ships are able to destroy significant real estate they are somewhat stalemated by the fighter jets in America’s arsenal including the A10 Tank Killer (aka the Warthog) – often disregarded in alien attack films, these slow but extremely powerful weapons platforms are really cool! However a greater risk is the blimps which each tow a massive asteroid that they can use to utterly demolish a city simply by kinetic impact alone!
The President believing that a war is a sure fire way to get re-elected is even happier when she realizes that they will be battling the Nazi’s …
“the only people we’ve ever beaten in a fair fight!”
With Vivian Wagner as the newly installed commander of the nuclear spaceship the USS George W. Bush, the American’s launch a counterattack on the invading Nazi’s. While initially successful, they are quickly beaten back by the overwhelming number of invaders and need to call for help, which surprisingly comes from all the other nations of Earth who have also surreptitiously developed armed spacecraft of their own!
A massive battle takes place in space and quite quickly the forces of the allies are again triumphant over the Nazi’s. With the Nazi’s all defeated however the allies discover that the Nazi’s had stockpiled an immense reserve of He3 (Helium 3) which could help power their countries for generations. A new battle takes place, this time between the allies themselves and while the number of ships in combat around the moon is limited, the battle quickly escalates and the nations of the Earth initiate a nuclear free-for-all. In the aftermath, the lights on Earth slowly start to go out.
Conclusion and Thoughts
Overall as a SciFi movie this was really quite good. With its advance hype and promotion, the actual shock of the movie itself was somewhat diffused but the idea and concept was a good one. It was nice to see some new faces (along with some old stalwarts) and the acting I thought was quite well done (although perhaps a bit overdone, but given the content and writing that was to be expected).
The ending I thought was actually quite good – especially the whole escalation of the war into a global conflagration – made the whole thing somewhat poignant I thought!
There are currently plans underway for both a prequel and a sequel and considering that this was a “crowd-funded” film I think that is an amazing accomplishment. Its definitely worth a look see and if you’re a fan of scifi, it should be on your list for 2012. It’s not Prometheus but it was fun and that’s really all you can ask for from a movie isn’t it!