Observation: Irriversible changes
So! I rewatched Iron Lung with my friend Bunkeror and we ended up putting our heads together on a series of theories. We ended up with a lot of theories so this will have multiple posts dedicated to each one so stay tuned!
Eyes and sight/seeing are a massive theme and reoccurring motif in Iron Lung. There's eyes absolutely everywhere in the movie:
The porthole looks like an eye and when it's cracked it looks like a vertically narrowed pupil watching him. Simon is even temporarily blinded by a spray of blood from the ocean from it.
The pendant is rounded and cracks just like the porthole to resemble a bloodshot eye too.
Jack's eyes are spared the radiaton burns by his welding goggles- he was protected from the light emitted from his welding gear but that wasn't enough to save him from harm. From my theories perspective, this is a massive bit of foreshadowing.
Simon is blind to the ocean outside of the Iron Lung for the entire movie, he sees the world outside second hand as described to him by X-rays. The dive crew don't have a video feed on Simon, they have to rely on what they hear from him and not what they see too.
We don't know how Ava lost her eye, it's never mentioned. But considering the COI are at war with Eden and the lengthy scar down her face she likely lost it in the conflict. Up until Simon, there's no remorse for putting prisoners through the Iron Lung missions. She's carrying out "An eye for an eye," in her duty to punish killers. Simon also meets the Light with his blood drenched hair covering over his left eye- quite literally meeting it "Eye to eye" as well.
There's so much interplay between what any given character in the film can see at a given point. And that also extends into what any given character knows about what's happening. It all serves towards the ultimate feeling that Simon, Ava, Elli, the COI and the rest of humanity are just fumbling about in the dark trying to get observe as much as they can though secondhand means and proxies before it's too late and they can see and learn nothing at all.
I mention this because I have a theory that it isn't the blood ocean that mutates people into blood Eels. It's being observed by Light that did that to Elli. Light- the entity (Bunkeror called it Singularity which is also a fitting name), is so powerful that anything it observes or attempts to observe is changed as a result of doing so. It's the effect known in physics and quantum physics as "The Observer Effect" magnified a thousand times.
This could be what Elli is referring to when she says;
"An ignorant god see a sliver of our universe through a pinhole and thinks it understands all that is and all that will be- and it will."
"Because a god makes sense of what it sees despite what it should be,"
In quantifying the neighbouring universe it's peering into, it fundermentally changes it and causes the Quiet Rapture. What this change is- whether it was the space stations and ships dragged into Light's universe or the Rapture was a deliberate act to order what it saw, or some other event happened is uncertain. But was we can assume is that whatever it views, it irreversibly changes.
The crew of the SM-8 met Light and ended up merging into Elli. Simon meets Light and transforms into a tree grown from the sapling he has. These changes are based upon what they value most as well as what surrounds them. For the SM-8 crew it was each other and the blood ocean, so they were fused into a form that can never be appart. Simon valued the sapling in his pendant that he never parted with upon finding it. Therefore his transformation sees him fuse with it.
If you extrapolate this theory further that the Blood moon Simon explores used to be earth, then being viewed by Light could have merged the two most plentiful and highly valued things together. In their universe and as much as ours, humanity only has each other with seeming aliens just being a different form of human. We collectively value ourselves and our biosphere and for that we are horrifically merged into it.
I don't think either the SM8 crew or Simon can ever change back into what they once were, in much the same way the Quiet Rapture seemingly can't be undone...
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