IRON SKY: THE COMING RACE
Finland/Germany, 2019, 93 minutes, Colour.
Lara Rossi, Vladimir Burtakiv, Julia Dietze, Udo Keir.
Directed by Timo Vuorensola.
In 2013, a film from Finland, directed by T-Mobile Oren solar, Iron Sky, became something of a hit, cult film around the world. There were plans for a sequel but difficulties arose from copyright and crowdfunding. The sequel became the most expensive live-action film from Finland.
Audiences who enjoyed the original film will certainly be eager to see this sequel. There were political themes in the original as well is satire and science-fiction. The satire and the science fiction out of the four here but there is also political comment, especially about Nazis with a colony on the moon, theories about Hollow Earth and strange creatures including dinosaurs, a head full Aryan overlord and a bizarre retelling of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve, two monkeys, and evolutionary development! There is also satire and Steve jobs with a religion focused on controlled enterprise, Jobsism.
The basic plot concerns survivors from a destroyed earth settling and making a colony on the dark side of the moon, living adjacent to the Nazi colony. However, there is overcrowding, poverty, hunger, then the elite cult of Jobsism. A refugee Russian home-made spacecraft lands, the inhabitants wanting them off, but central character, Tobi Washington (Lara Rossi), who maintains the technical side of the colony, but clashing with her mother, pleads for the refugees.
Quite a complication when a bizarre Nazi character, played by Udo Keir, confronts Obi, giving her some powerful substance to heal her mother, explaining that it can be found in an expedition to Hollow Earth. Obi and Sasha, the Russian leader of the migrants, as well as several members of the colony and the leader of the Jobs cult, all travel to Hollow Earth – for all kinds of confrontations with the strange shape shifting creatures, Hitler, like leader, also played by Udo Keir.
Plot complications which even the writer and the director might find very difficult to explain, fights, confrontations, apocalyptic fire, deaths and funerals… Plus some comedy with the security guard who is a sendup of musclebound characters, turns up at opportune times, tough at fighting, confronting all the creatures, finally coming out as gay, dying but emerging from his coffin because of the temporary coma!
Ludicrous is a word that is very apt in describing the screenplay, bizarre is the word for the treatment – which many audiences have thought too silly. And critics were not kind! Plans for a third film in the series.