Markiplier Iron Lung movie opens to 21 million dollars on the weekend

What are reviews looking like for people who aren't part of his existing fanbase? I really liked the idea of Iron Lung the game, but idk how well it would translate to a movie, especially with Mark acting in it as the main character. I don't think he is able to carry that.

I also wonder what the legs are for this sort of movie. I'm expecting it to fall off a cliff now that all of his fans have watched the movie

EDIT: lol
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"For far too long, we watch Fischbach turn knobs. We watch him look at screens. We watch him write down things. And sometimes, we watch him argue with voices on the other side of the radio. But it’s very rarely engaging."

Yea...im out.
 
Jabroni31169 said:
"For far too long, we watch Fischbach turn knobs. We watch him look at screens. We watch him write down things. And sometimes, we watch him argue with voices on the other side of the radio. But it’s very rarely engaging."

Yea...im out.
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Definitely seems like the type of story that would be better served as a short film, but those rarely get any attention outside of their little film festivals. Way more attention and prestige to make it a proper movie
 
Im just happy to see someone take a chance and make something different and actually succeed. We constantly get fed remakes and cash grab slops in the theater now that anything that tries to break the mold is a welcome thing to me.

My kids have both watched it and liked it alot (both said it was a bit slow but otherwise really good). I have 0 interest in going to the theater but im excited to give it a watch at home down the line.
 
Ragenrok said:
We constantly get fed remakes and cash grab slops in the theater now that anything that tries to break the mold is a welcome thing to me.
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I am not sure how a video game franchise adaptation by a star streamer is less remake/cash grab slop than the average movies of that genre (people wanting to hang out with people in that field, passionate about the medium, states wanting to promote things, etc... financing movies not because they are good returns is quite common).

Of the 400+ movies released in American theaters, a lot would be quite different than the mold that people imagine and a lot do not feel like cash grab (or really bad at it if that the case, the Brutalists and One battle after another were not cash grab and when one of those end up loosing money it is not a surprise to anyone ).

small budget horror movies do still work commercially in theater, that not really where offering is low.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Ah, ok. That was not apparent to me from the news post.

I had never heard of this Markplier person, and I had never heard of the game "Iron Lung". I thought we were talking about some reference to polio patients 😅
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Yeah, get in line with me boomer
 
I saw him on a Corridor Crew youtube video a while ago. I had never heard of him before that, but I guess he is mega popular.

Corridor are visual effects guys, they make videos and show how it's all done. They said Mark was an intern learning how to do VFX. I think they were only partially joking. He must have been learning all this for his movie.

He seemed like a cool guy. His movie is probably good, but I'll never watch it. It's just not my kind of movie.
 
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sharknice said:
He seemed like a cool guy. His movie is probably good, but I'll never watch it. It's just not my kind of movie.
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I mean, not that critic ratings are always correct but it has pretty "meh" scores from the critics. My guess is the initial success is all the fanboys running to watch it and it probably will peter out.
 
sharknice said:
I saw him on a Corridor Crew youtube video a while ago. I had never heard of him before that, but I guess he is mega popular.

Corridor are visual effects guys, they make videos and show how it's all done. They said Mark was an intern learning how to do VFX. I think they were only partially joking. He must have been learning all this for his movie.

He seemed like a cool guy. His movie is probably good, but I'll never watch it. It's just not my kind of movie.
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He was in fact learning for the Markiplier in Space Youtube series. Not to be a full VFX artist himself, but to learn how to direct scenes for budget VFX.

As for the Iron Lung movie- from what I heard, it's for people who want to see Markiplier or enjoy Eldritch horror type movies. A slow burn for sure, and pretty much the entire movie takes place inside the Iron Lung submarine.
 
The reviews are mixed but I'll still watch it. Who doesn't like Markiplier?
 
So save me the googlin trouble, was he one of those video game playing tubers/twitchers?
 
Markiplier has been a pretty popular YouTube game influencer and streamer. Maybe not as famous as PewDiePie, but pretty close.

He is most famous for his Five Nights at Freddy's playthrough which, at the time, were funny and entertaining. His schtick has always been horror games.

He also did an OnlyFans thing purportedly for charity. Something of a publicity stunt that I found strange. Then again, Drea de Mateo did OnlyFans too and she won an Emmy back in the early 2000s.

Seems like he's branching out into film. Good for him. Hollywood needs some new ideas. Since they suck at video game adaptation, why not let the people who play them for a living try at it?

Not expecting an Oscar performance here. Game was great horror.
 
Saw it.

It's a slow-burn, low budget, art-house-style passion project.

It was great for what it was. Would I recommend it to my normie drinking buddies? No. If the idea of the concept isn't enough to interest you, it's 2 hours of watching a 7/10 actor in a metal box.

That's not a lack of endorsement. I really enjoyed it, and I saw a LOT of good ideas that haven't been done before. But it's a cerebral, slow, high-concept dive into cosmic dread and madness. It's not a Hollywood blockbuster.
 
Absalom said:
Markiplier has been a pretty popular YouTube game influencer and streamer. Maybe not as famous as PewDiePie, but pretty close.

He is most famous for his Five Nights at Freddy's playthrough which, at the time, were funny and entertaining. His schtick has always been horror games.

He also did an OnlyFans thing purportedly for charity. Something of a publicity stunt that I found strange. Then again, Drea de Mateo did OnlyFans too and she won an Emmy back in the early 2000s.

Seems like he's branching out into film. Good for him. Hollywood needs some new ideas. Since they suck at video game adaptation, why not let the people who play them for a living try at it?

Not expecting an Oscar performance here. Game was great horror.
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The OnlyFans thing was meant to be a joke to promote his Distractible podcast. He never expected his rabid fans to actually get it to the top of all 3 streaming services, let alone in only a single week (or was it 2?) So he had to keep his word and make one.

He says his passion has always been movies and he initially tried to make videos on Youtube but that didn't go anywhere. Then he tried some Let's Plays as an experiment, Five Nights at Freddy's happened, and the rest is history. Now that he has the means, he's circling back to his original passion.
 
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Went to see it over the weekend, it was really great and enjoyable in a cosmic horror way.
Watching the movie, you don't see Markiplier, you see a competent actor portraying a cog in a machine in a doomed and dying universe in a horrible situation.

The game itself was fun, but the movie really expands on it in a way that makes it worthwhile.
10/10, would watch again. 💀 🩸🩸🩸
 
Sycraft said:
I mean, not that critic ratings are always correct but it has pretty "meh" scores from the critics. My guess is the initial success is all the fanboys running to watch it and it probably will peter out.
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Professional critics are fucking stupid and almost completely worthless. I say almost completely worthless because typically anything critics find bad is usually good and anything they say is great it a steaming pile of shit. Professional critics are divorced from reality and don't have anything in common with the vast majority of the population. Their only purpose is to suck the dick of Hollywood.
Absalom said:
Seems like he's branching out into film. Good for him. Hollywood needs some new ideas. Since they suck at video game adaptation, why not let the people who play them for a living try at it?
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This isn't about helping or rejuvenating Hollywood. This is a bitch slap to the face of Hollywood. A guy went out and self financed a film which means none of the typical Hollywood machine and grift was involved. He managed to do this on a budget that wouldn't pay for the catering of a Hollywood movie and it's a huge success. The point of the movie wasn't to insert a message but to adapt a story he loved and to do it relatively faithfully while making it enjoyable for an audience who enjoys this type of story. This is something Hollywood abandoned long ago and will never get back.

What he accomplished is necessary and hopefully the first of many to do something similar. Hollywood needs to be put down and replaced and this is one of the best ways to make it happen. It's even more important for people who want to see games adapted to movie format. He didn't try to make this for the largest possible audience. He adapted it to be close to the story of the game for an audience who wants to see specifically that and made sure the budget wasn't outrageous so the risk was small and in this case the reward is huge. In one weekend he not only made back every penny spent but added a huge profit.

Hollywood is simply incapable of doing this anymore. It's why they don't take risks. It's also why game adaptations are usually terrible. Besides inserting whatever message is currently popular in Hollywood, Hollywood budgets require changing and mangling the stories to attempt to appeal to a huge audience in order to have a chance of being profitable. In doing so Hollywood alienates the fanbase who would have enjoyed the original story and rarely manages to expand the number of viewers to make it work.

Markiplier has managed to show that it's still possible to make "niche" movies and make a profit. It simply requires a will, an ability to tell a good story and almost as important, keep the budget reasonable. It doesn't hurt that he didn't have to deal with all the stupidity of the unions and guilds which are nothing more than a parasite on the industry.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Ah, ok. That was not apparent to me from the news post.

I had never heard of this Markplier person, and I had never heard of the game "Iron Lung". I thought we were talking about some reference to polio patients 😅
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When I saw the name that's where my head went as well. The title screamed "this is some medical documentary".
 
SmokeRngs said:
This isn't about helping or rejuvenating Hollywood. This is a bitch slap to the face of Hollywood. A guy went out and self financed a film which means none of the typical Hollywood machine and grift was involved. He managed to do this on a budget that wouldn't pay for the catering of a Hollywood movie and it's a huge success. The point of the movie wasn't to insert a message but to adapt a story he loved and to do it relatively faithfully while making it enjoyable for an audience who enjoys this type of story. This is something Hollywood abandoned long ago and will never get back.
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In that genre it is not uncommon and not something Hollywood has not been doing for a long time,
https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Boy-Next-Door-The-(2014)#tab=summary
https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/production-company/Blumhouse

Blumhouse (set in Los Angeles) has been making under 5 millions horrors movies for decades now and Universal stroke a deal with them for more than one

The first big one was, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal_Activity, $15,000 for the production, couple of hundreds for post-production once Paramount Pictures got involved.

SmokeRngs said:
Markiplier has managed to show that it's still possible to make "niche" movies and make a profit
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I am not sure people realise how popular (one of the last genre able too) small horror worked theatrically, a genre that people like in a crowd, from blair witch to Saw (under 2 millions budget I think the first one) to Paranormal activity. The Babadook was not a huge production or the first Purge movie, this is not showing unknown things to anyone in the industry or a message about starting to do small budget horror movies, Blumhouses and othres will continue making them. Taylor Swift has been going around them and distributing by herself dealing with theater chains directly already, with Paramount consent decrees out it open the door quite a bit for all kings of deals.

SmokeRngs said:
Their only purpose is to suck the dick of Hollywood.
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maybe more independant reviewer that need access for a living, professional critics paid by a publication do not tend to really go gentle on Hollywood productions over the rest of the world at all.

That the most acclaimed movies by critics of the 2000s:
https://www.theyshootpictures.com/21stcentury_allfilms_table.php

6 Americans one in the top 25 or here, https://www.metacritic.com/pictures/best-movies-of-2025/23/, people tend to say they do not suck studios and their big movies dicks enough, they are a particular audience because when you watch 350 new movies a year plus hundreds of classics, you can start to reward originality way too much, something that mostly irrelevant for the regular people that go watch 4-5 new movies a year (they have no idea if a movie is the 6th recent remake of Fargo or not)
 
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KazeoHin said:
Saw it.

It's a slow-burn, low budget, art-house-style passion project.

It was great for what it was. Would I recommend it to my normie drinking buddies? No. If the idea of the concept isn't enough to interest you, it's 2 hours of watching a 7/10 actor in a metal box.

That's not a lack of endorsement. I really enjoyed it, and I saw a LOT of good ideas that haven't been done before. But it's a cerebral, slow, high-concept dive into cosmic dread and madness. It's not a Hollywood blockbuster.
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Yea, this is me, I really don't have an interest in watching 2 hours of one man in a box. That's not to say the movie isn't good or enjoyable for others, its just not my thing.
 
SmokeRngs said:
Professional critics are fucking stupid and almost completely worthless. I say almost completely worthless because typically anything critics find bad is usually good and anything they say is great it a steaming pile of shit. Professional critics are divorced from reality and don't have anything in common with the vast majority of the population. Their only purpose is to suck the dick of Hollywood.
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I disagree. I find their ratings a hell of a lot more useful than user ratings. It is far from perfect, but usually if something has a high metascore and is the kind of movie/game I'd like, I enjoy it.
 
Sycraft said:
I disagree. I find their ratings a hell of a lot more useful than user ratings. It is far from perfect, but usually if something has a high metascore and is the kind of movie/game I'd like, I enjoy it.
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Thats the problem with reviewers, its so subjective and may or may not align with your tastes. I find averaging critics and user reviews normally lands alot closer to how I find movies.
 
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SmokeRngs said:
Professional critics are fucking stupid and almost completely worthless. I say almost completely worthless because typically anything critics find bad is usually good and anything they say is great it a steaming pile of shit. Professional critics are divorced from reality and don't have anything in common with the vast majority of the population. Their only purpose is to suck the dick of Hollywood.
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This is how I determine to watch movies, except it's usually a flip. Critics loved it but people hated it? Automatically bad movie. Critics hated it but people loved it? Movie worth watching. But critics and people loved it, and at that point I cast doubt. Someone or bots are fucking with me.
 
DukenukemX said:
This is how I determine to watch movies, except it's usually a flip. Critics loved it but people hated it? Automatically bad movie. Critics hated it but people loved it? Movie worth watching. But critics and people loved it, and at that point I cast doubt. Someone or bots are fucking with me.
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I don't pay attention to ratings at all usually. Lots of time the people willing to review a movie are either angry about something or super excited about loving it.
 
Ididar said:
I don't pay attention to ratings at all usually. Lots of time the people willing to review a movie are either angry about something or super excited about loving it.
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My default for 2025 was to avoid watching movies all together. What was the best movie of 2025? Don't say Zootopia 2. What movie do I have to look forward to right now? The Odyssey where Hollywood can't stop being anymore antiHellenic? The reason I look at ratings is to see if all the Pedos from Hollywood got fired so good movies can be made. By the way, the answer is still no.
 
Ididar said:
I don't pay attention to ratings at all usually. Lots of time the people willing to review a movie are either angry about something or super excited about loving it.
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That's usually how I feel about games. I've never read a game review. I generally know the types of games I like, and the people who I know enjoy them and get most of it via word of mouth.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That's usually how I feel about games. I've never read a game review. I generally know the types of games I like, and the people who I know enjoy them and get most of it via word of mouth.
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Same for me.

it seems like a large chunk of people that watch and read reviews are people that already bought the game or watched the movie and want to validate their opinion or get something else out of it other than figure out if they should watch or play it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That's usually how I feel about games. I've never read a game review. I generally know the types of games I like, and the people who I know enjoy them and get most of it via word of mouth.
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When I do read reviews I check out the 1 and 2 star reviews. The goal is to see if the things people bitch about bother me at all. The 5 and 4 star customer reviews I generally find only summarize what I already know about the game.
 
DukenukemX said:
. What was the best movie of 2025?
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Lot of people would say One battle after another, but not in my top PTA list at all.

That I enjoyed:
Ballad of wallis island
Sinners (for all is issues, quite ambitious and going for it, Googler do not shy away from big emotions, spectacle and always deliver)
Train Dreams
weapon (like virtually all horror movies do not hold up at all once reveal start, but like many of them solid first half)

Do not watch movies like before so cannot have an opinion on 2025 outputs, and that a general phenomenom, if you are not professionally forced to watch movies you like them and watch them or you have no idea what is going on and cannot have an opinion, maybe we would love Bugonia or To a land of Unknown quite a lot would we watch it.

sharknice said:
it seems like a large chunk of people that watch and read reviews are people that already bought the game or watched the movie and want to validate their opinion or get something else out of it other than figure out if they should watch or play it.
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Critics/essay audiences is a lot for people that have seen/read/listened to the product. like 2 people having watched the movie and talking about it in the ride home; reviews is more for should you watch or play for it.

A 7 minutes or more video to know if you want to watch a movie or not, would be a bit strange, quick resume and a score would do.
 
LukeTbk said:
Lot of people would say One battle after another, but not in my top PTA list at all.

That I enjoyed:
Ballad of wallis island
Sinners (for all is issues, quite ambitious and going for it, Googler do not shy away from big emotions, spectacle and always deliver)
Train Dreams
weapon (like virtually all horror movies do not hold up at all once reveal start, but like many of them solid first half)

Do not watch movies like before so cannot have an opinion on 2025 outputs, and that a general phenomenom, if you are not professionally forced to watch movies you like them and watch them or you have no idea what is going on and cannot have an opinion, maybe we would love Bugonia or To a land of Unknown quite a lot would we watch it.

Critics/essay audiences is a lot for people that have seen/read/listened to the product. like 2 people having watched the movie and talking about it in the ride home; reviews is more for should you watch or play for it.

A 7 minutes or more video to know if you want to watch a movie or not, would be a bit strange, quick resume and a score would do.
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I think the distinction between a review and an analysis/essay is the important part here. If I'm deciding whether to spend two hours watching something, I usually don't need a seven-minute video explaining every theme and production detail. A short synopsis, a few useful observations and an indication of who it's likely to appeal to is enough.


Once I've actually seen the movie, though, the longer discussions become much more interesting. That's when I want to hear someone unpack the choices, compare interpretations, or point out things I missed.


And I agree that the audience has changed. A lot of people now encounter reviews after they've already watched something, partly because they want to see whether other people noticed the same things they did. That's less about making a purchase decision and more about extending the experience.
 
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