Movie Review - Bible Based: Iron Lung

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

Steel Resolve

Plot Overview

water balloons Having neglected stewardship of Earth, mankind sought refuge in the stars. As a divine check to his celestial aspiration, though, the stars winked out, trees quit sprouting, inhabitable planets are no more, and human populations evaporated in a “quiet rapture.” The few survivors on rocket ships & space stations had an apocalyptic war in space.

reject Daniel's accusers fed to lions volunteers needed POW Simon (Mark Fischbach) in lieu of a prison term elects to go on an exploratory dive beneath a sea of blood on a surviving moon, in a jury-rigged submersible dubbed Iron Lung. Too late he discovers that, “This is not an expedition. It is an execution. When they put you in here, they don't want you to return.”

Ideology

rotating earth The wipe out of trees, the decimating of populations, seas turning to blood, and stars falling from heaven are common apocalyptic tropes found in the book of Revelation, the biblical prophets, and elsewhere signifying a disruption of business as usual. In fact the movie title “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is an apocalyptic description of Earth at a crossroads, not a cessation of its rotation per se. Apocalyptic writing occurs in contemporary literature, as well. For example Joshua Ferris:

Better luck next time, she thought in the dark. Better luck making the stars align. Wouldn't it have been a luxury to have some crystal ball into which a diviner gazed to map for the young couple their future in sickness and in health, the specifics therein. Not too far down the line, sweetheart, he will break, and you will be left carrying the load. And a heavy load it will be. Abort the union while you still have the chance, or accustom yourself to the short end of the stick. Because a failing body is no grounds for divorce. A failing body and not even your own becomes your personal cross to bear and how fair is that? How desirable? (89)

Realigning the stars would have been an apocalyptic luxury.

Judging by his moniker “Convict” and the oft-mentioned disaster on space station Eden we take it that Simon's cinema predicament was bespoken by an event that occurred up there for which he got the blame being the commander whether it was his fault or not. He's incarcerated but under some kind of parole monitored by Ava (Caroline Kaplan.) These putative beast(s) in the depths of the blood sea are but a MacGuffin. The term MacGuffin is attributed to Alfred Hitchcock who used it to refer to some object in a movie while not its main focus moves the plot along. Reporter Winston Ross of The Register-Guard quoted attorney Shaun McCrea, “A ‘MacGuffin’ is a meaningless object—money, jewelry, a briefcase—that the film's actors would hunt throughout the movie, a plot element that would often disappear by the film's end.”

The main drama here is Simon's change of heart about being down there at all, his efforts to persuade his controller to pull him out to serve his sentence, and her insistence that he needs to complete his assignment for the good of mankind (“It's not just about you.”) He uses too many words to convey his objection over a sporadic radio connection that cuts in & out throughout his transmission. I in the audience want to tell him to say, “I demur to it.” One strong word, two syllables, gets the job done. Webster defines “demur vi 3: to take exception: object — often used with to or at.” I heard on the radio that the word demur was slated to be retired from the English language. Sure enough, my comprehensive, up-to-date dictionary app. no longer carries it. But it's still useful and by no means gone. Go figure.

hairy chin That brings us to a rather queer Bible passage, (Eccl. 4:13-14) “Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor.” Children of Eden put in an appearance, and they seem wise enough while having limited resources. Simon is bearded and shabbily dressed. Among the youthful astronauts, he could pass for an old man. He takes foolish risks with radiation exposure. If he lives he'll be free again to join the Consolidation, perhaps as a member of the council. “He that is born in his kingdom becoming poor” could refer to word usage that starts frequent when a language is newly minted, but can decline over the years through no fault of its own. His stint in prison affected his vocabulary for the worse in terms of profanity. Purity is a relative matter. Those accustomed to the high tone of the King James Version would similarly find the lower tone of modernized versions off-putting. As George P. Marsh put it in an 1859 postgraduate lecture on the English Bible:

the English Bible sustains, and always has sustained to the general English tongue, the position of a treatise upon a special knowledge requiring, like any branch of science, a special nomenclature and phraseology. The language of the law, for example, in both vocabulary and structure, differs widely from that of unprofessional life; the language of medicine, of metaphysics, of astronomy, of chemistry, of mechanical art, all these have their appropriate idioms, very diverse from the speech which is the common heritage of all. Why, then, should theology, the highest of knowledges, alone be required to file her tongue to the vulgar utterance, when every other human interest has its own appropriate expression, which no man thinks of conforming to a standard that, because it is too common, can hardly be other than unclean? (448–9)

We shouldn't be quick to replace sound English words in the KJV with less viable ones simply because the former have grown poor in frequency of use.

Production Values

“” was written and directed by Mark Fischbach who goes by the pseudonym Markiplier. It was conceived by David Szymanski based on his 2022 video game. It stars Mark Fischbach and Caroline Kaplan. It's mostly a one man show, who knows his stuff being the one having written and directed it.

MPA rated it R for language, bloody images and some gore. It won a Guiness world record for the most fake blood used in a movie, 80,000 gallons. The submarine set was low budget and looked it. The whole movie was intrinsically claustrophobic. It had some pretty good horror scenes and even the banal threats of a submarine under pressure worked well. Runtime is 2 hours 5 minutes.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

This one kind of crawls under your skin then jerks you awake with unpleasant surprises. It would be good to fall asleep to if you can take it. Belief in God is mentioned in passing.

Movie Ratings

Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.

Marsh, George P. “Formation of our English sacred dialect.”
Lectures on the English Language. London: John Murray, 1863. Print.
——available to read or download at www.bibles.n7nz.org.

Movie: Iron Lung

Bible Based Review