Iron Sky’s War Bonds: Cult SF Cinema and Crowdsourcing

Abstract

In February 2012, after six years of planning, fundraising, and production, the sf film Iron Sky premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. Although Iron Sky featured a provocative plot—one in which Nazis who had been hiding on the dark side of the moon return to earth in the year 2018— along with a couple of familiar international stars, including German actor Udo Kier, and a soundtrack by the Slovenian avant–garde band Laibach, the film was discussed most frequently because of its unusual production history, which involved the contributions of thousands of fans and followers who donated time and money in order to see the project reach completion. Crowdsourcing , the process of drawing from the wisdom or talents of the crowd, along with the companion practice of crowdfunding , tapping into the wallets of supporters, has increasingly shaped the discourses around independent film production, and indeed of cult film formation, in an era of digital delivery. As one of the first high–profile films to use practices such as crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, Iron Sky presented a challenge to critics and reviewers, who were reluctant to criticize a film that deliberately challenged norms of both provocative content and innovative distribution practices. Brian Clark, writing for Twitch Film , an online magazine dedicated to promoting international, independent, and cult film, admitted, “I”m torn about how to review Iron Sky . Is it really fair to criticize a movie about Nazis from the dark side of the moon invading the earth for being too goofy? Hell, is it really fair to criticize that movie for anything at all?” Similarly, David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter found himself puzzling over the film's uneven efforts to juggle a B–movie premise with a relatively sophisticated use of CGI special effects. Meanwhile, Senh Duong of the blog Movies with Butter , reported that searches for news on Iron Sky were driving traffic to his website, as fans clamored to find more information about the film, which many of them may have had a hand in making or financing. Notably, all of these critics were describing Iron Sky as a cult sf film, even before fans could see the completed work, raising important questions about how that classification is conferred:[…]