space nazis, coming to a screen near you

Way back when this blog was just getting started, I decided to include an odd and neat little image I once found making the rounds on the web in a post on Jim Marrs’ latest conspiracy potboiler. That graphic was a piece of concept art for an alt history film Iron Sky, currently being produced by Finish studios Energia and Blind Spot, which are doing the newest thing in filmmaking and soliciting money and ideas from their potential audience rather than getting a loan from a bank using their script as collateral. As with all ambitious productions, the progress seems slow, but a new trailer recently hit the web, and this one is supposed to include actual film footage…

If you have any interest in conspiracy theories, you can probably spot how well this movie seems to hit on the new incarnation of the Nazi UFO theory; the idea that what we know as UFOs are actually tests of military and experimental vehicles based on the designs of Nazi engineers. Parts of this theory aren’t very far fetched if we consider the accomplishments of Project Paperclip and who was behind many of the rocket designs that took humans to the Moon. However, it’s the theorists’ emphasis on the nearly magical technologies Nazi scientists were supposedly creating in the hidden laboratories in the Swiss Alps as retold by writer Nick Cook that seem to be the foundation of Iron Sky’s ideas of a base on the dark side of the Moon created by Nazis fleeing the fall of their empire at the hands of the Allied forces in 1945 and after some 73 years on the Moon, they’re coming back to Earth in the kind of spaceships that the Nazi bell theorists think were being perfected at the time of the Third Reich’s fall, and aiming for a rematch of World War 2 on a planet that’s starting to forget them.

Though in reality, it’s unlikely that nearly three quarters of a century on the Moon would do any wonders for the soldiers’ health, and new generations would have a lot of trouble handling 1G, even with a lot of training, and the invading army would be rather ineffective back on Earth. But then again, this is just a movie so we can just suspend our disbelief. Besides the project is being pitched as a comedy so this could even be used for a gag at some point. Still, there’s a steep hill to climb for this alt history flick. Seeing the historical lunar landing with armed, saluting Nazis in front of an unfolding red and black swastika is rather surreal, and the whole notion of a culture that once embodied just about every evil and hateful trait of humanity and held sway over the world’s affairs coming back for a rematch of a battle they lost almost three quarters of a century prior seems difficult to package as a comedy. There are still those who remember the monstrous cruelty unleashed on the world by Adolf Hitler, his friends, and their minions, hence, it seems difficult to see an invasion of flying saucers piloted by new generations of Nazis as somehow comedic without being reduced to slapstick.

Then again, this is only my personal opinion and judging by the end of the teasers, Energia intends to put the fictional space Nazis on the receiving end of subtle jokes, or showing their mindless devotion to the pseudo- scientific and genocidal ideology which fueled a world war. So enjoy the second trailer with its indie industrial soundtrack by Laibach, take a look at the movie site, and see if you might want to get involved with Iron Sky as a small donor to help the studio bring this odd and potentially provocative project to fruition…