“Iron Sky: The Coming Race is a fun-as-hell movie.”
In 2012, Finnish filmmaker Timo Vuorensola, gave us the film ‘Iron Sky‘, which was about the defeated Nazi soldiers from WWII, who somehow retreated to the dark side of the moon, built a home base, and prepped to bring a big war back to Earth in 2018. Oh what a fun movie that was. It even became a cult hit amongst the horror genre crowd. Some seven years later, Timo took to the crowdfunding sites and brought in enough cash to make a sequel called ‘Iron Sky: The Coming Race‘. Oddly, this is the only film he’s done since the first ‘Iron Sky‘ movie and I can’t figure out why, because both these films are visually great and pack a ton of fun and action from start to finish. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want more from Timo Vuorensola.
Timo has upped the ante with his sequel in terms of story, creatures, and a hilarious satire on our current political and social climate. I was on board the whole way. Taking place some 30 years after the events of the first film, the remaining few survivors of Earth have relocated to the moon-base and are living with moon-nazis. All seems relatively peaceful, however the moon-base itself isn’t functioning well and looks like it will explode any minute. The hero of the first film Renate (Julia Dietze) is now older and is dying of an unknown illness where her daughter Obi, (similar to Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica) is trying to take care of the moon-base, her mother, and the survivors.
Obi crosses paths with the Führer Kortzfleisch (Udo Kier), where he reveals that he is not human, but an alien race that crash landed on Earth during the time of the dinosaurs and forwarded humankind through the ages, all while staying out of sight at the center of the Earth. The Führer also tells Obi that there is this energy source in the form of a candy that magically heals people and that a ton of it is at the center of Earth.
This sets the story in motion where Obi, a muscle-bound man that has a pension for comedy and a bumbling Russian pilot , along with Tom Green who plays the leader of the cult called the Jobsists (Steve Jobs and Apple followers), all head to the center of the Earth where they find these reptile-like aliens who act like nazis. Oh yes, and a ton of dinosaurs. Not only that, the leadership of this alien race have been in human disguise as the world’s worst people throughout history, including Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and just to make people laugh – Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Margaret Thatcher are thrown in for good measure.
From there, it’s dinosaur chariot races that pays homage to ‘Ben-Hur‘, a T-Rex traveling to the moon with Hitler, and some fairly solid action sequences that is perfect for cheering and eating popcorn. With a story like this, I expected something like I’d see on the SyFy channel. You know, cheap. That’s not the case here. I was pleasantly surprised by how great this movie actually looked visually. All of the visual effects and fight scenes were incredibly well-done and looked highly detailed like a big-budget action movie. The performances were al solid in that they all knew what type of movie they were in and went with it. It’s a good mix of of over-the-top and subtle here. The character were all likable and you could tell that everyone just had a wonderful time making the film.
I for one can’t wait for the sequel and or prequel, because it looks like Timo is not done telling this story as he alludes to in the end credit sequence. Iron Sky: The Coming Race is a fun-as-hell movie for fans of the genre.