Hullo hullo. Welcome to God posting. The time after work where I'm really hype about my own ocs and want to post the completed ref/character design sheets for the 5 I have done (One is in the works right now and he will be posted about later. I've got all the tumblr users on the pages and they're all real awesome so I suggest giving them a look. Anywho.
I've gotten really into my own characters again so.
day one after changing sheets: ok im gonna kick my bad habits i won't eat in bed or leave knives or scissors or lighters in bed I'll have only normal bed things in my bed and I'll change the sheets more often too
day two after changing sheets: oh yeah this half eaten bundt cake is sleeping with me tonight
Simon saying "fuck that" to literally every other problem was so real of him. He really felt like one of the top five horror movie protagonists that I've watched. Cursing up a storm seeing the dark crawlspace for the first time. Labelling the map with stuff like "buncha rocks" and "alien shit". Drinking the rubbing alcohol like it's the last liquor shot he's gonna get before deployment. Wasting almost all of his tape just trying keep that damn button taped down. The more I think about him the more I'm delighted by him. Mark played him so damn well
This is gonna seem so silly- but one of my favourite things about Iron Lung was how easy it was to forget about Markiplier.
Some actors (and yes hes an actor) you can only ever see as themselves. Especially if you watch a lot of their movies/content.
Nicholas Cage, Jack Black, The Rock, literally any of the actors from Avengers series, hell even tumblr favs like Benedict Cumberbactch.
Thats not Cameron Poe, Ghost Rider, Ben Gate, or, idk, the guy from Wicker man- Thats Nickolas Cage.
Thats not Steve Minecraft, thats Jack Black. You get the idea.
And Markiplier. Well. I had concern that watching him routinely for 10+ years would make it Very hard for us as an audience to shed that view of "Thats just Markiplier" and to fully be immersed in the character he's built for us.
Thats NOT an easy task for any actor to do. And while there have been some that have been able to pull it off (Think Robert Pattinson), even some of the most experianced actors get stuck in that hole.
Well, it turns out Mark isnt one to get stuck.
There was no hint of Markiplier in this film. But rather it was Mark Fischbach, the actor, who was able to weave a raw and beautiful performance for us.
First off I want to say that I'm so proud of Mark, of Amy, of the whole crew, but especially Mark because holy fuck was that amazing. I was so immersed and caught up in the world and I knew I was going to be because he's an amazing storyteller but holy fuck he knocked it out of the park.
My inner media studies freak was having a grand ol' time with everything. No spoilers (those are under the cut) but the whole build and release of tension as the story unfolds??? Masterful. I was worried (a lil bit) about how he'd flesh out the lore because obv the characters in the movie don't need the lore dumps from the computer the way the player does in the game but he knocked it out of the park. There were so many little touches that made it feel so human and real and grounded even in an ocean of blood. I loved the way he took the plot of the game (or lack thereof) and made it a full movie.
ALSO the effects? In. Sane. Some made me a lil nauseous, I will admit, but oh my god were they incredible. There's one moment (or a series of moments) in particular where I literally had the 'oh no my mortal eyes are not meant to witness this' (which was the point) but they were done SO WELL
All in all? 10/10. So glad I saw it in theaters, especially after hearing Mark talk about how much work he and the team put in to making it ready for theatrical release.
SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT I REPEAT SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT PROCEED WITH CAUTION YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED REACHING CRUISING DEPTH IN 2 MINUTES
okay first off simon's little notes? on the map? adorable. i love how HUMAN simon is through the whole thing, asking names, giving the engine a little pat-pat when it turns back on, UGH i love him protect him get him the fuck OUT of there
the rivalry/hostility between the coi and eden was also really well done. i wasn't sure how much mark was gonna use/lean into that but i LOVED having simon be from eden and there for the filament station disaster--him finding the note from the previous convict? calling him 'brother' when he heard the recording of the note you find in the game???? the pendant he wore on his arm and how it was the thing keeping him TETHERED for better or for worse??????? oh my god it was so fucking good. the way that filament station haunts the narrative, the questions/reveals we get about simon's life, his own ghosts and regrets, the questions about life and death...
the shots. oh my fucking god the shots. those shots in the beginning where the porthole is almost like a halo for simon??? the part where he's begging for the voices over the radio to be real and he moves so his shoulder blocks the indicator light so we can't see if it's on or not??? the dutch angle when the first drop of blood hits his hand to immediately signify something's wrong??? the shot of ava looking through the blood with her damaged eye and it perfectly parallels the massive eye looming out of the blood later in the movie???? the CRACK in the porthole looking like a tree and the pendant from eden cracking in the same way??? again i knew they were gonna be on it but holy FUCK were they on it.
and simon was smart. thank god simon was smart. he drew the map when he didn't have it--which i didn't even realize the map wasn't the complete one you see in game until he started drawing the rest of it!!! he used the binder to hold the lever forwards so he could keep moving. he used the camera as a source of light. he spat on the indicator to make it light up. at no point was i like NO YOU IDIOT and that's what makes horror SCARY.
i also loved how the movie paralleled the game in interesting ways!!! simon goes down once, gets pulled back up, goes down again to get more info, mirroring how there was a massive lore update to the game that included the computer on the ship and all the logs and entries about the worldbuilding. the part where the tether snapped and he got dropped into the weird cave was at the farthest node where normally you get the jumpscare and it's game over. the wibbly wobbly node being the blood portal to the blood dimension where the blood god stares into simon's soul and they recognize each other because we're all just blood--sorry.
and then the science!!! yeah every time you use the camera it's raditation--and GOD that picture in the space ship is terrifying--and so simon's slowly being irradiated over the course of the movie so who knows what's really happening. the hallucinations, the voices, the contaminated human blood. the black box log from the sm8 was HAUNTING. and the blood taking on such a life of its own with rather...disarming consequences, yes that ending sequence will haunt me too.
the whole debate between what's worth life and what isn't. simon so determined to live for so so long and you as a viewer go back and forth with him the whole time and he just wants to live and then the ENDING where he straps the life jacket to the black box and it's bigger than me and THIS POOR MAN. mark's an incredible actor and goddamn does this movie showcase it.
this movie is so goddamn good. it's good as a video game adaptation, it's good as an idie horror film, it's good as a markiplier story. it's truly so so so good and my entire hat off to mark for working so hard to make it a reality.
Ok, legitimately, Iron Lung was a fascinating sci-fi horror about the desire to live, and what is a single life worth... more importantly, what is worth trading a life for. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough!
*Me in the first half of the movie*: "Huh I was really expecting more blood in this considering the film broke a record with the amount of fake blood used"
*Me in the second half of the movie*: "Oh...Never mind!"
try and tell me literally any one of these would not fit above a short story about two wholly random men from the MCU fingering each other, or possibly 12 chapters of one or more characters from a CW show being in high school while having a photogenic but terminal kind of cancer. try.
