For as long as I have been conscious, Markiplier (real name Mark Fischbach) lived on the phone screen of my best friend. Our walks around our idyllic, grass-laden middle school during the perpetually hot Floridian (insert literally any season here) were soundtracked to the famous “My name’s Markiplier” introduction to his YouTube videos and girlish screams. See, Natalie and I created a friendship of both being “othered”: we bonded on the first day of middle school over loving the Beatles, having lunchboxes, and my undying obsession with Disney Channel Original Movie Teen Beach Movie. At 13, we would huddle up in our school cafeteria, her phone set up on her lunchbox, and share earbuds as we watched Fischbach conquer the new game of the day.
In our adult life, this has grown into the most mutually encouraging, optimistic, and honest friendship I’ve ever had. Now, as we’ve been in a long-distance bestieship for the past four years, I’ve been missing her like a hole in my heart, so I wanted to learn more about what she loves, which led to my turning on Markiplier’s YouTube videos whenever I felt lonely. I never imagined that the silly man on my best friend’s phone (and lockscreen) would someday be capable of dominating box offices through an impressive grassroots campaign that has quietly revolutionized the way we think about film distribution and audiences’ interaction with movies.
Fischbach first played the “Iron Lung” video game back in May 2022. His affinity for the project was evident: I’ve come to learn you can tell when Fischbach loves a game when you see him getting quieter and more contemplative while playing, commenting on the ideas presented to him rather than just nitpicking the mechanics or cracking larger-than-life jokes (I shamelessly recommend his play-through of “Slay the Princess” for the magnificent off-the-cuff commentary on existentialism). The “Iron Lung” game takes place in a dystopian world after an event called “The Quiet Rapture,” in which planets and stars have begun disappearing one by one. You play as a part of the survivalist group from the space station Eden, which was captured by rival group Consolidation of Iron (COI). No reasons for your imprisonment are given, but your sentence (which you play through) involves being welded into a submarine and made to search for falling stars through an ocean of blood, in the hopes of being able to conduct tests that will assist in humanity’s restabilization.
For those in the know, Fischbach’s interest in this game is lovingly ironic: one of his lifelong interests has been space and the vast mystery of it, while one of his biggest fears has been the ocean. For his debut film undertaking to be one that touches on his deepest fear and his greatest love is poignant.
It came as no real surprise — more of an exciting shockwave — when, in April 2023, Fischbach announced that he had purchased the rights to the “Iron Lung” game and narrative. Working with the game’s developer David Szymanski to bring the film to life, Fischbach would serve as writer, director, producer, and star in the adaptation. In the announcement, Fischbach consistently emphasized he would make sure that this adaptation, unlike so many before it, would be a true adaptation — not a copy, not a completely different IP, but the true reinvention for the big screen that the game deserved. At each stage of creative development, Szymanski was present: the two collaborated heavily on the screenplay, production design, and on-set touches, with Szymanski even making a small cameo in the big-screen adaptation of the game he so lovingly developed.
The results of this painstaking work is 2026’s Iron Lung. As a film, it’s gritty, intimate, and gruesomely thrilling. The film builds on the game’s Player character lore by expanding them into a main character: Simon (Fischbach), a spy from Eden who has been captured by COI after a mission gone wrong, and is now imprisoned in the Iron Lung submarine on a reconnaissance mission to find anything in the blood ocean that can improve humanity. The thriller is effective, and Fischbach compellingly plays Simon’s hardness balanced with the attitude of a man desperate to survive despite his faults. Simon frantically attempts to survive in a submarine slowly running out of oxygen, all while encountering blood splatters that are covered up as mere ocean condensation and beginning to hear a voice over the disconnected intercom.
Iron Lung is evocative of Arrival in the way it builds a narrative around simmering suspense. Simon exists both within a submarine that’s falling apart around him and the real in-universe reality of humanity decaying after “The Quiet Rapture,” a fact expressed in Simon’s physicality the more he stays in the submarine. While the constraint of being set completely within a very dimly lit (hinderingly so, at many times) location only allows Fischbach to do so much with his performance, he balances the tenderness of a man begging a voice that may or may not be in his head to just keep talking to him with the compelling anguish of a man outraged, demanding to know how the group directing his penance could send him down to die and not even know his name. The relationship we get to have with Simon is deeply intimate and gruesome, as his own relationship with himself oscillates violently from disgust to hatred to begrudging acceptance, the reality around him becoming more and more warped. His conscience — which may or may not also be a horrific creature that lurks in the ocean of blood — takes the voice of the woman overseeing his mission, albeit with a different accent. As an adaptation of source material, and as an entry into the oft-stereotyped and cringe-inducing genre of “video game movies”, I find Iron Lung to be an artistic feat that is more aligned with TV’s critically acclaimed The Last of Us.
Since Fischbach secured the rights to “Iron Lung,” he was free to self-produce, direct, star, and write with no intervention from a studio giant. The promotional campaign for the film did not take place on the likes of a Hot Ones chair or BuzzFeed puppy interview, but where Fischbach’s fanbase is most alive: social media. After his experience with producing and starring in limited series Edge of Sleep for Amazon Prime Video — an entertaining entry into science fiction that was sadly not promoted by the streaming giant (to the point it wasn’t even featured on the press website and quietly moved to Tubi after a few months) — one could sense a distrust, or rather an apprehension in Fischbach to interact with “mainstream” media sources, outlets, or routes. Taking into consideration that the project was self-funded, the majority of Iron Lung‘s promotion took place on the social media accounts of the cast and crew, including, of course, Markiplier’s social media accounts. The film’s trailer was seen by millions of people in just a few days, with fans emailing their local cinemas to ask them to show Iron Lung on opening weekend. This resulted in an unprecedented amount of interest, and the roll-out — which originally targeted around 60 theaters nationally — ended up including more than 4100 theaters internationally.
Fans’ demand for a figure so universally beloved by the online generation (Fischbach sits comfortably in the internet hall of fame of YouTubers who “raised” Gen Z, including Tyler Oakley, Jacksepticeye, MattPatt, Zoella, and Dan and Phil) shows the power Gen Z has as an educated, avid, passionate consumer of media — as well as consumers’ desire to go outside of the home and seek communion in community at the cinema. Iron Lung went so far as to become the box office king, sitting at number one at the domestic box office for the first Friday and Saturday of its release against heavyweights and awards-baiters like Zootopia 2 and Send Help. All of this is astounding and unprecedented for a completely independent release, and taking into account the numbers only makes it more so: Iron Lung cost approximately $4 million to make. Dominating the box office through independent means, the movie grossed an overwhelming $21 million globally in its opening week. It is inconceivable for an independently made, non-traditionally promoted film to recuperate seven times its original budget within its first week, so, in light of its unprecedented success — and as a thank you to the cast and crew — Fischbach paid a bonus of the amount of their original salary in a profit-sharing agreement that shows the importance of supporting indie cinema.
The numbers and public support prove it: what Fischbach has managed to accomplish with his debut independent film is precedent-setting. Iron Lung delivered cinematically despite not being the corporate ideal of what a video game movie can be — instead, it was made with sweat, grit, and indie artistry, and cultivated and encouraged a fanbase that loves rabidly and unconditionally, Fischbach has shown studios that threaten to replace human ingenuity with AI and insist on feeding us movies with lobotomy-levels of nuance that there are financial gains to be had from passion projects made with an indie ethos and deep love for the subject matter. Never has the disconnect between what studios think we want and what we actually want been clearer: it is always by artists, for artists, and in the spirit of passion.
