Monday, February 11, 2013

Iron Sky!

     Thanks to Unk's review, I found out Iron Sky was available for home viewing and watched it on the Roku  tonight.  --Not quite the film I was expecting but in many ways better.  Oh, it's a bit of a B movie and most -- maybe all -- of the characters are preposterous caricatures, but it's a (dark) comedy, after all.  (It ends on a very dark note,  but by then you're looking at the entire human race in half-shocked, half-amused laughter anyway.) As science fiction movies go, it's pretty good -- plenty of well-assorted widgetry, almost no stopping to explain any of it; the players take it for granted, just as they should.

     There are a number of call-outs to other films, one of which was laugh-out-loud funny.

     If you don't mind the U.S. government being as much the butt of the joke as the bad guys are, it's an enjoyable movie.  Unk called it "so bad it's good," and it is right over the top, with impossibly compressed time scales and violations of orbital physics galore; but for all of that, more pretentious SF films could learn a thing or two from Iron Sky and I hope they do.

     Somebody'd better be optioning Heinlein and C. J. Cherryh.  These days, film industry has the technology to do those stories right.  I sure wish they would.

10 comments:

Don said...

Do you mean like Starship Troopers? The director kept the names of some of the characters and the title. That's it.

When RAH was alive, he helped make Destination Moon. Even he couldn't get Hollywood to stay faithful to the book. And Sir Arthur Clarke had to write a new novel based on the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey for people who couldn't understand the movie.

Keads said...

I agree. I watched it a couple of months ago. Amazing that the funding was mostly open sourced.

Roberta X said...

Don: exactly not like "Starship Troopers."

Back in the 1970s, one of the big networks made a TV movie based on Zenna Henderson's short stories about "The People," kind of space refugees with some unusual powers, living low-key lives in out-of-the-way corners of the U.S. and while they took bits of at least two stories for the film plot, they were true to her style and theme. If harder SF yarns were adapted with the same degree of fidelity, I wouldn't have much to complain about.

"2001" was based on a quite different Clarke story, "The Sentinel." The novelization of "2001" was written during the filming of the movie, with considerable input from Kubrick. "Destination Moon" "Destination Moon" has a similar background: IIRC it started as the film version of "Rocketship Galileo," and moprphed under pressure to make a realistic film adults would watch. For copyright purposes, Heinlein wrote a novelization (more of a novella) of the screenplay. Both are pretty good examples of what Hollywood can do and while not without their flaws, they're successful as SF stroytelling.

Keads: My thoughts exactly; it is an excellent example of what can be done.

LCB said...

We had an excellent SF movie in Serenity. And it didn't do well at the box office. As much as we SF readers "think" our favorites would make awesome movies...I really don't think the audience is out there. I mean...they'd have to actually THINK if The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress was made faithfully to the book.

Hmm...I can see it now...with the movie the Moonies would have to have a fighter squadren go attack the evil earth ship, whose only weakness is a reactor exhaust port...

Bubblehead Les. said...

Be careful what you wish for! So, Netflix had this Multi-Episode Documentary on the History of the Movies. Lots of neat stuff, but VERY Slanted to the Left. So, in one of the last segments, there was an Interview with a partner of Paul Verhoeven, the guy who directed RoboCop and Starship Troopers. This guy said that he was AMAZED that the Audience didn't get the fact that in BOTH cases, the Films were MEANT to be Attacks against the Right-Wing Corporate Monopolies AND the Military. Quote: "We were looking for our next project, and we found this FASCIST piece of Military Science Fiction written by a HACK called Starship Troopers, and we thought "This is Perfect!"

So Buyer Beware!

As for "Rocket Ship Galileo Two....er... Iron Sky", I made it about 1/3 rd of the way, and decided to pause it, so the Wife and I could enjoy it together. But I liked what I saw so far.

AND FOR GOD'S SAKE, NEVER LET J.J. ABRAMS NEAR A HEINLEIN BOOK!

Blowing up Vulcan, 5 years of being "Lost" to only find out it's some guys Dying Thoughts...Smuck!

Bubblehead Les. said...

Be careful what you wish for! So, Netflix had this Multi-Episode Documentary on the History of the Movies. Lots of neat stuff, but VERY Slanted to the Left. So, in one of the last segments, there was an Interview with a partner of Paul Verhoeven, the guy who directed RoboCop and Starship Troopers. This guy said that he was AMAZED that the Audience didn't get the fact that in BOTH cases, the Films were MEANT to be Attacks against the Right-Wing Corporate Monopolies AND the Military. Quote: "We were looking for our next project, and we found this FASCIST piece of Military Science Fiction written by a HACK called Starship Troopers, and we thought "This is Perfect!"

So Buyer Beware!

As for "Rocket Ship Galileo Two....er... Iron Sky", I made it about 1/3 rd of the way, and decided to pause it, so the Wife and I could enjoy it together. But I liked what I saw so far.

AND FOR GOD'S SAKE, NEVER LET J.J. ABRAMS NEAR A HEINLEIN BOOK!

Blowing up Vulcan, 5 years of being "Lost" to only find out it's some guys Dying Thoughts...Smuck!

Rob K said...

Iron Sky was a lot of fun. I'd been waiting for that to be released for a couple of years. The same people who made it also made a Star Trek spoof called Star Wreck, where they travel back in time to present day Earth and get marooned. I started to watch it, but the language was rather foul and the kids were present...

mikelaforge said...

Good fun, the Iron Sky.

Steve said...

I didn't know the 2001 book and movie were done together. I read it in ninth grade (82-83). I just read the Wikipedia article on it. When I read 2010, I remember thinking something wasn't right and realized the different destinations. I remember reading somewhere that Clarke decided to follow the movie. I don't know if I ever read the Sentinel, though I stuff read lot of his short stories and novels when I was younger.

Steve said...

Er, did read a lot of...

I bought Iron Sky. It wasn't what I expected, but it was okay. What film are you referring to about the reference being LOL funny? I probably did but can't remember.