Nazi's on the Darkside of the Moon! An Interview With the Makers of <em>Iron Sky</em>

By Ryk McIntyre for Network Awesome Magazine

Iron Sky is a simple idea that's so cool you can sum it up in a few words: "Nazis From the Moon". Network Awesome was so interested in the idea that we collected trailers and making-of clips into a sort of documentary on the making of the film as the film is being made (watch below). We also had a chance to interview Timo Vuorensola and Samuli Torssonen of Energia Productions and Blind Spot Pictures in an attempt to get to the bottom of these burning questions:

Network Awesome Magazine: So, to bring any neophytes in this country up to speed, when did you first start making movies and how many have you done to date?

Timo Vuorensola: I started making movies -- actually, a movie -- when I was in the gymnasium. We -- me and my two pals -- were given a camera and told to shoot something in two weeks, as part of our art course. It took us 1.5 years to finish my first film, Norwegian Whore. After that, I've shot several commercial videos, music videos and my first feature, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. Iron Sky is my second feature film.

Samuli Torssonen: I began my animation career in 1992 with the first Star Wreck short animation, which had only voice actors. After that I moved to 3D graphics and so far we have created seven Star Wreck films.

NAMag: How do the Finns remember WWII? Given that Iron Sky is a Finnish/German co-production, how did that come about?

ST: Finnish people remember WW2 quite well. The Soviet Union tried to conquer Finland in 1939 which we call the "Winter War". Later on 1941-1944 Finland was again fighting against the Soviets -- but this time with the help from Nazis and their advanced weaponry (!). The U.K. actually declared war against Finland but they never did anything.

TV: They're more eager to forget that after that we teamed up with Nazis and got our asses kicked by both Russians and Nazis. So, like with most of the nations out there, Finnish memory for war history is very selective.

ST: The Finnish government turned their backs to the Nazis quickly and drove them away in order to restore peace with the Soviet empire. You could say that we had some history with the Nazis.

TV: The German side of the co-production happened in a very natural way: we needed German actors for the Nazi parts, found a good co-producer from Germany and found good funding options from there.

ST: ...And of course we knew that we'd really need native Germans to play the roles of the Nazi commanders so the German co-production wasn't a bad idea.

NAMag: Given your previous films about Star Trek, what made you decide on Space Nazis for this film? Other than the fact that it is, admittedly, very cool.

TV: Space Nazis were a topic tossed over to us by one of the writers of Star Wreck, Jarmo Puskala. He had been toying around the idea of Nazis on the Dark Side of the Moon for quite some time, and after the initial "no-it's-too-big-we-can't-do-that" chickenshit reaction, we decided to roll up our sleeves and make it reality, because, as you said, it's a damn cool idea.

NAMag: Who designed the Space Zeppelins?

ST: Our concept designer Jussi Lehtiniemi who does all our concept art. I think it is a shape that everybody connects to the evil Nazis. Such a simple form. In the film they act like aircraft carriers with huge Gustav cannons that can bombard the earth from orbit!

NAMag: You plan to release Iron Sky on 4 April, 2012. Any particular reason for that date, or are you just trying to upstage the Mayan Apocalypse?

TV: Honestly, it's a technical date - a good release date just around the Easter, which is a good time to put out a film in theaters. Nothing too dramatic with that :)

ST: Yeah, you need to set the deadline somewhere...

Watch more on Network Awesome

More information about the film and how you can help:
http://www.ironsky.net