Short: On Purpose & Survival

[00:00:00]I tend to prefer one and done video essays for whatever media I want to talk about, but Iron Lung's tagline has actually consumed my waking brain. I wanted to make this a short about survival and living with a sense of purpose, but it spiraled to be over 20 minutes after the final edit. So, I consider this a companion piece to the first video I made on Iron Lung since the role the COI and Eva play is more of the focus in that one. Well, here we're going to be talking about the blood ocean and Ellie the eel. So, spoilers immediately after this for the end of the Iron Lung movie and the video game Soma.

[00:00:36]I remember coming out of Iron Lung and being unable to get the comparisons to the video game Soma out of my head. Not only for the fact that Simon sends up this data for the sake of humanity that he will not be a part of, but also because of the movie's attitude towards the story's biggest existential threat.

[00:00:53]>> A natural paradise. Forget the surface.

[00:00:56]It's bliss. The eternal bliss among the stars. It's like poetry.

[00:01:01]>> It's not for us.

[00:01:03]We're going to die down here.

[00:01:06]>> [screaming] >> If you haven't played it, in the universe of Soma, a comet struck the Earth and triggered a massive extinction event. The world is on fire and the only life left is miles underwater. The last of humanity is down to a few staff members who are stationed at an underwater space tech facility who just happened to be on shift at the time.

[00:01:26]Facing the existential horror of that guaranteed end of all things is only exacerbated further when the artificial intelligence unit that controls the facility, the WAU, starts to get a little too effective at its prime directive.

[00:01:40]>> You won't let me die.

[00:01:42]Nothing is allowed to die.

[00:01:44]>> Which has been in this case to preserve life. Which leads to inorganic material integrating itself into the surviving humans to prolong their lives for however long as possible. So long as it can keep lungs pumping and hearts beating and keep consciousness going, that counts. The story of Iron Lung confronts us similar thematic base.

[00:02:05]>> I just want to live.

[00:02:09]Is that so wrong?

[00:02:12]>> What are you asking for when you ask to live in a world that's dying around you?

[00:02:16]The quiet rapture has destroyed the stars. A massive extinction event has left few remaining pockets of civilization on space colonies stranded and facing down their inevitable demise once their resources run out. The colony of the COI reacts to this by exploring and venturing into unknowns, trying to find answers to what caused the quiet rapture or find a way to gather and synthesize food and air from unconventional sources. The estimate research team seems to have been sent into the blood ocean for that very purpose before everything went wrong.

[00:02:45]They take calculated risks and individual losses are worthwhile for the sake of the cause.

[00:02:51]>> Dwelling on it doesn't help the cause.

[00:02:53]>> Yeah, and what causes that?

[00:02:55]>> Survival.

[00:02:56]The only cause we have left.

[00:02:58]>> This is bigger than us, they say.

[00:03:00]Finding a way to preserve humanity means smaller sacrifices must be made. And I'm sure it helps a lot that those sacrifices are usually the COI's undesirables, convicts that they don't really care about in the first place.

[00:03:13]For members of the space colony Eden, they've accepted that the stars are gone and they see dying to explore new unknowns to be a waste. They have instead turned to presumably attacking and taking resources from others, ending lives to keep themselves alive a little bit longer. That's what I get from this general implication.

[00:03:31]>> It's all over. That's what Eden understands. At least they're not deluding themselves with some big future for humanity if we all just believe hard enough.

[00:03:40]>> Is that why you destroyed Filament Station?

[00:03:42]>> The wiki goes darker than me and says that the Eden brothers may be needing the COI bodies for the soil for their last tree. Either way, Eden isn't too keen on looking for an alternative future, but is more about accepting the end. It seems the death of the last tree, the symbol of their hope, contributed to a dogma that stressed the acceptance of death.

[00:04:01]>> We will die.

[00:04:02]>> We know that when we die >> When we die >> our bodies become as one.

[00:04:08]>> So, there's this prevalent question in the film. What's the point? What's the point if we're all dead anyway? And more interestingly to me, what's the point if we have nothing to live for? Protagonist Simon on the dying space station of Eden. He laments like his brother's recorded message that even if he is freed after completing this task, he doesn't really have anything to go back to. If he does take enough pictures and leave the iron lung and the COI keeps their word, he'll be thrown into another struggle to survive. This time as a member of the COI colony who will likely treat him worse than Eden did given their history. I doubt the nickname The Butcher and resentments over Filaments Station won't follow him to his dying day. If he has nothing to live for outside of the blood ocean and he's going to die anyway, what's the point of the struggle? Well, life. Just life.

[00:04:59]>> Sorry, brother.

[00:05:00]But I want to live.

[00:05:01]>> When Simon says he just wants to live, you're shown what a version of just living can mean and it doesn't look great unless you agree with the logic of a Resident Evil boss. From what we learn over the course of the movie, it seems that the blood ocean, however it got there, is a larger consciousness. The SMA8 research lead says that it's human and {quote} {unquote} us. The implication from the few lines of dialogue we have suggest that it could literally be every human being that was perceived by God smushed into a churning mass of, yes, blood. And it seems that it's still accepting new additions. Once the blood ocean makes physical contact with Simon, it begins to grow inside of him. In the SMA8 logs, we hear the crew getting sick after presumably drinking some form of it. And in both cases, we see that this blood tends to merge with its new host.

[00:05:47]>> Who are you?

[00:05:49]Is this another trick?

[00:05:51]>> We told you to stop, >> [laughter] >> Simon Jarrett.

[00:05:54]We know.

[00:05:57]>> I know, but it's just I just don't know what that means.

[00:06:01]>> What do you think?

[00:06:02]>> I think it must be an anomaly.

[00:06:05]>> When I think of the eel in particular, I think about how it uses the estimate researcher's voice and probably very real fear and memories and our consciousness to lure Simon to where she wanted him to go. We also have the Eden brothers' voice making appearance at the end speaking through the hallucinations of the blood ocean.

[00:06:22]>> I'm just the guy that told you to cross the wires.

[00:06:26]>> And we have this future version of Simon wandering about. All this comes together to make me wonder between all the whispers if yes, the eel or the ocean at large is a being beyond time that actually did incorporate Simon into it.

[00:06:40]And this is the new him re-experiencing the events of Iron Lung in an internal cycle. It could also just be a hallucination or Simon's future self with some semblance of free will helping himself out. Or it could be the ocean's will helping him so he'll eventually find the light. I could spin in circles on this forever and I don't get to know for certain.

[00:07:07]What I do get to know is that the ocean or just the eel basically offered Simon exactly what he was asking for on a platter.

[00:07:14]>> Would you give everything just to survive?

[00:07:17]>> Yeah.

[00:07:20]I never had anything to begin with.

[00:07:22]>> In a world where Simon had very little to call his own, stripping away the last of his identity might be considered just one more drop in the bucket. But of course, it isn't. Because the last thing Simon has to lose is what I would argue is most precious and hard-earned for him, his sense of self. Simon grew up in a very religious colony where authority figures were given this title of paternity of the father. His other colony members were called brothers and all of that creates a sense of community that interlocks with itself and encourages uniformity. He grew up being told the world could only be one way and that was probably very mixed with a religious view of accepting and embracing hopelessness after the death of the last tree.

[00:08:02]>> I just want to live. Is that so wrong?

[00:08:06]Why doesn't anybody else want that?

[00:08:09]Everyone [snorts] in Eden just screws up.

[00:08:11]>> The fact that Simon was not only able to think differently than his brothers and maintain those beliefs probably after a lot of correction, but then actually act against his colony of Eden probably for the sake of what he thought was right.

[00:08:25]>> You're going to have to kill your little brothers to stop this.

[00:08:28]>> is an incredibly vital point to me in this movie. This is a guy who was probably rewarded in his own colony for attacking the COI so effectively that he got a nickname out of it and his first definitive act of defiance or free will is the thing that lands him in the iron lung. He stops, surrenders and tries to make amends for the last attack his colony organized that he didn't want any part in. And we know he carries a lot of guilt for what he has done despite him sometimes dismissing the idea that he didn't have any choice in the matter.

[00:08:59]>> When did you grow a conscience, Simon?

[00:09:02]You got the highest body count out here, killer.

[00:09:05]Not one of us has more blood on their hands than you.

[00:09:08]>> Which I also take as him valuing his identity in a small twisted kind of way, taking on a personal responsibility instead of shrugging off his actions as just a result of being another cog in the machine. Maybe this is a bit too Catholic, but you know, mea culpa and all that. We also see how much Simon values his own name.

[00:09:25]>> You sent me down here to die and you don't even know my name.

[00:09:29]>> Being called convict by the COI strips a layer of personhood from him.

[00:09:34]>> He is not worth IT. IT IS NOT WORTH LOSING YOU OVER SOME [ __ ] CRIMINAL.

[00:09:38]>> AND it also feels violating when we realize alongside Simon that he accidentally gave away his name to the eel creature.

[00:09:44]>> Just pretend like I'm not even here.

[00:09:48]If you see anyone looking for Simon, tell them I'm still alive.

[00:09:52]>> We will see, Simon. We will see the answer together.

[00:09:57]>> I didn't tell you my name.

[00:10:00]>> Yes, you did.

[00:10:01]>> It's such a small scene, but it feels to me like a piece of him was stolen. You get the sense that he gave something away without really having any say in it, which also bleeds into this element of the terror surrounding the light.

[00:10:14]From what I can gather from the eel's dialogue, the light is a lot of things and it's doing a lot of things. It's a god that looked at our universe through a pinhole and caused the quiet rapture.

[00:10:25]When it saw us, it rearranged us to make sense of us. And it's hinted that it made the humans it perceived into the blood ocean itself. If this being behind the light sees you, it will look into you, drawing you into its otherworldly allure, great and terrible. But I also know that I know this because it's what the eel tells me. She says it's god.

[00:10:44]It's a fragment of what caused the quiet rapture. It's called the answer.

[00:10:49]>> They're calling to us. This is our salvation.

[00:10:53]>> When we finally get to discover the secrets of the blood ocean and find that life inhabiting it is beholden to a god that presumably caused their apocalypse and it finds beauty and enlightenment in the wake of its destruction, I realize there's a second reason this movie reminds me so much of Soma.

[00:11:09]>> What are your thoughts on the ark project?

[00:11:12]>> You have provided a platform which is not necessarily restricted to our digital progeny, but a means of actual survival. It's my sincerest belief that we can go on living through the reality of continuity.

[00:11:28]>> In Soma, when the humans are faced with the understanding that they are the final remnant of life on Earth. They obviously fall into a period of hopelessness and malaise. But one of the researchers, Catherine Chun, decides to finish a little pet project she had, taking brain scans of every member of the crew who wants it and loading them into a digital habitat called the Ark.

[00:11:46]She wants to launch this Ark into space so that some form of humanity can be preserved out in the stars. It'll be no more than a collection of data points mimicking brain activity, but it'll also be a marker that we were once here. Some people find this project pointless. Some people consider it the last worthwhile thing they can do to honor the memory of humanity. And some people get superstitious enough to consider the Ark their literal salvation. And when you throw the Wow into the mix, that can make new forms of life, it starts getting a little culty in here. It's actually surprising to me how much Iron Lung has given me to chew on concerning the idea of belief and faith and religion.

[00:12:24]>> THE ANSWER IS RIGHT THERE.

[00:12:28]>> [laughter] >> IT WAS THE LAST ARK.

[00:12:29]>> [screaming] >> BELIEVE TO SEE >> [snorts] >> IT.

[00:12:33]I WISH I COULD SEE.

[00:12:34]>> LIKE THERE'S the spaceship that is the literal decaying Garden of Eden and the through line of Simon being sent to a hell as punishment for his sins.

[00:12:41]>> Maybe you do deserve this.

[00:12:44]I sent you all down to hell to see.

[00:12:48]>> All that is more obviously stated in the text, but I don't really care to talk about capital C Christianity aside from like the fun asides that it brings out.

[00:12:55]I care to talk more about the portrayal of belief. It's a cousin to hope, which I think is the movie's larger focus in my opinion, but it's definitely also a part of what bolsters that underlying theme. When faced with the end times, do you despair that your God abandoned you?

[00:13:11]Or do you believe that it was all a part of its design? Or do you put your faith in more material ideals? Blind, unquestioning worship is presented in this film with all of its hazards, while at the same time, the need to believe in something is shown to be pivotal for the characters in the bleak world.

[00:13:28]>> The last tree will live again. WHEN THE LAST SUN OF EDEN ENJOINS THE GROWTH, THERE WILL BE A THOUSAND TREES.

[00:13:38]>> The fashion in Eden is clean and it's all shades of life, food, air. Beneath this surface is the seal of us.

[00:13:46]>> Do you believe in God?

[00:13:48]>> Let's not get into that. I hear enough of that kind of talk on Eden.

[00:13:51]>> I know this movie signals truths to you and you're probably meant to take this I being the quiet rapture at face value is even what it's called in the script, but the script is also working from a flawed perspective. Simon's called convict at the beginning of the script until he reveals his name. And there's definitely lines attributed to the blood ocean that I don't think count. With Simon having come from the colony of Eden where the apocalypse was filtered through their last tree dogma, it feels thematically right for me to doubt everything this ocean or this eel creature is telling me.

[00:14:19]>> All a god is really is a cult with a franchise.

[00:14:22]>> I find Simon's position as a religious defector to be multi-layered in this context. Not only was he able to develop and act on his own beliefs when pressured from all sides to think one way, but he was also likely wary of other absolutes after leaving his own.

[00:14:37]>> This is bigger than us.

[00:14:39]>> So I've heard. It's not about the tree.

[00:14:42]But Eden gave me a tattoo. The COI made me burn it off. I didn't choose either.

[00:14:48]>> It might feel safer for him to believe in nothing when the dogma of Eden is what led him astray, but he still embraces the comforts and symbols of his old religion. Simon has multi-layered reasons to be glad for his pendant, but under a religious framing to me, this feels like a man trying to come to terms with the point of his faith if he has any left when larger society previously used it to encourage him to do some heinous things. He can feel betrayed by the father or his brothers, but where does that leave God or his understanding of his purpose in the world? The people who used to define those things are gone and now he's left with the question of how he wants to answer that. I think that's yet another layer of isolation that he's facing down. One that leaves him vulnerable to accepting the nearest new answer if it sounds good enough.

[00:15:31]>> Ready to do some good for a change?

[00:15:34]>> Yeah.

[00:15:35]>> And when I have all of that context for Simon as a character, to me, that makes the eel's explanation of the quiet rapture feel a lot less like an indisputable truth. It instead feels like an interpretation of this being behind the light that the eel has done by perceiving this thing right back and making sense of it in turn.

[00:15:52]>> We will see the answer together.

[00:15:55]>> I think the problem is that you've never actually known what the question is.

[00:16:00]>> I imagine Simon saw in the light the same thing the S8 researcher and the eel creature saw. He's observing the same phenomena, experiencing a being that can cycle through memories and make him hallucinate and lose time. Perhaps it can physically pull him into other realms. Or this is all in Simon's head and this may be not so insignificant radiation poisoning. Who's to say? Not to say that Simon isn't shaken or that the eel has to be wrong or that this can't be what's true. But this feels like attributing a will onto something greater to explain a great and unexplainable tragedy of the universe.

[00:16:34]This feels like in the themes of the story, Simon's last god failing to guide him and leaving him with a withering garden, a decaying paradise. And the disciple of this new god offers to save him if he joins in their worship. Snakes and apple trees if you want to get all Sunday school about it and retain the hell and devil energy. I like to think that Simon's background as a man who has already been skeptical once before is a part of why this remarkable demonstration of power and the eel's offer doesn't take.

[00:17:01]>> There is nothing else for us now.

[00:17:04]>> Nothing else.

[00:17:06]What do you know?

[00:17:07]It is a piece of [ __ ] that doesn't even know it's dead.

[00:17:10]>> WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

[00:17:11]>> WHAT SEEMS CERTAIN TO ME IS that even if that thing did cause the quiet rapture, the eel themself has a minimal understanding of what this thing actually wants. I can't help but think about the eel's outrage and confusion demanding to know why Simon is so special and what secrets the light told him.

[00:17:33]Intention given to experience based on vibes is my point. What you perceive and what you understand is not what's actually happening and sometimes it feels like desperation speaking.

[00:17:43]What I find most interesting about this, especially after a rewatch, is how this eel creature after saying it has found salvation feels less like its life is sustained and more like it's not allowed to stay dead. It seems that the reality of a life submitting to the light is much more torturous than it wants to admit. The eel later begs to keep the light hidden away and talks antagonistically about it. We don't know if that comes from wanting to prevent others from falling into that same fate once they remember the horrors of what they saw or if it's more like they are hiding a covetous prized secret. We also don't know what specifically lies in the data of the SMA 8's black box. There's the SMA 8 commander's record and probably some info on the light itself, but there's anything more on how to defeat it or if it'll lure more people in like an angler fish is really only implication to go off of. What we do know is that the eel is a liar who has been trying to seed doubt in Simon to get him to do what she wants. The most genuine thing I ever feel like I hear from her is this first offer.

[00:18:36]>> Would you give everything just to survive?

[00:18:39]>> This is maybe met with regret once the offer is actually accepted. I don't know how the movie wants us to feel about this creature's final pleas, but I wonder if this line >> [screaming] >> is a threat or a mercy when this line >> [laughter] >> comes right after it and this line is this creature's last cry before the seed from the last tree, a symbol of religion that carried the acceptance of death in its dogma, but also the promise of renewal for what will come after your passing, blooms and flourishes in the hardships of the blood ocean to destroy it.

[00:19:24]Whether or not sending the data on is salvation or doom, whether Simon lives on as something else or I guess to stay dead, you're kind of confronted with this idea of what do you hope for in the ambiguity. Simon's actions and final words plead to something greater than himself and have their own framing and belief where he pleads or prays to the memory of his mother to keep the data safe.

[00:19:51]But while he takes comfort from certain elements of his religion concerning the last tree, the something greater, the something more than him is not that tree nor the fragment of the quiet rapture.

[00:20:00]It seems for Simon he's chosen to believe in people, in Ava, the commander of the COI, who says all this data will be used to save countless lives. And that certainly takes its own measure of faith. He doesn't just go down fighting out of spite, but makes sure to secure and protect this data in the hopes that someone out there that he doesn't know will do some good with it and make things better for everyone after him.

[00:20:23]And that, to me, takes a lot more faith than pledging his immortal soul to a fish monster that offers him a tangible, if bleak, eternity.