Review: Dinosaur-Riding Nazis in ‘Iron Sky, The Coming Race’

Friday, July 19, 2019

Iron Sky The Coming Race Promo

The Laibach song that plays under the opening credits to “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” ends with a heavily accented voice growling, “Let’s make Earth great again,” just before the movie commences a fantastical tale of ancient shape-shifting aliens controlling human affairs. It’s a provocative start. What does this goofy science-fiction picture have to say about foreign meddling and populism?

Anyone who saw the original 2012 moon-Nazi movie “Iron Sky” already knows the answer: Not much. It’d be a stretch to call these clumsy adventure-comedies “satires.” Any references to contemporary politics are merely meant to titillate.

Picking up nearly 30 years after the original “Iron Sky,” “The Coming Race” stars Lara Rossi as Obi, the daughter of the first film’s heroes. When the last survivors of the human race — huddled on the Third Reich’s old moon base — realize their colony’s on the brink of collapse, Obi leads an expedition to obtain a new power source from the fabled underground home of the alien Vril.

The scenes inside the Vril’s “hollow Earth” HQ are suitably wacky, with alien versions of world leaders, ranging from Caligula to Mark Zuckerberg. Anyone who’s ever wanted to see action sequences involving a dinosaur-riding Adolf Hitler or a robed cult of Steve Jobs disciples will find what they’re looking for here.

But just like the first “Iron Sky,” the sequel is frustratingly unfocused as a commentary on the modern world — and even more so as a story. It has the seeds of several nifty ideas, scattered loosely, left untended.

Source: www.latimes.com