Magazine Dreams is a time based Rorschach test. At the time it was about to be released, this was gonna be the Jonathan Majors breakout party: he was gonna be the big bad of the MCU, and this film would have been his Oscar campaign cementing him as Hollywood’s next big thing. Today? Well, because of what Majors did, the movie carries with it extra baggage, that drags it into “what might have been” territory.
Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) has built his life around two things. He cares for his pop pop (Harrison Page), a Vietnam war vet nearing the end of his life. And bodybuilding. Maddox treats the sport as his calling, worshipping the best builder Brad Vanderhorn (Mike O’Hearn) like a hero and a template for his own life. But that life comes at the cost of any non pop pop human connection, despite Maddox’s attempts to try to make friends or date the cute supermarket girl Jessie (Haley Bennett).
Elijah Bynum’s movie almost gets to something important. For anyone who doesn’t understand what incels or male fragility are, Magazine Dreams takes us into that dark rabbit hole. I was squirming in my seat a lot in this film, as Bynum plants us into the mind of Killian. At times your heart breaks for this person, who’s had no guiding light of any kind besides his ailing grandpa, not exactly the most nurturing figure. Maddox is trapped in a box, unable to figure out how to escape it, pushing us toward the self-fulfilling prophecy of a life like this. Unless he finds success in his bodybuilding, Killian is going to lose his will to live, warping the fragile mind of his into a volatile projection of the rage building inside of him. That transformation is slow, and brutal, as all hope for this man gets sucked away because as he says “there’s a sickness inside of him” that can’t be cured.
As you might guess, Magazine Dreams flirts pretty liberally with the unwatchability line because of its subject matter. Only a great film can thread that needle and become something special. Unfortunately Magazine Dreams isn’t that film, despite Jonathan Majors almost willing it to be so in his performance. The script is the biggest reason, unable to strike the pose it wants. The first 45 or so works, as we see the slow descent of Killian from a well meaning weirdo to a rageful monster. Then it’s almost like the story realizes it has to wrap up, and speeds up the fall, resulting in blunt force trauma dialogue punches, that undercut the grounded story we’ve been watching. The movie resorts to cheap editing tricks to elicit chaos going through Killian’s mind as his thoughts grow darker and darker. But at the last second, the movie loses faith in where it was going to go for the gooey manipulative ending that will appeal to no one. At the end of the movie I just felt gross, like I was chained to my movie seat forced to watch what something thinks is beautiful and is screaming at me cause I don’t agree, not an ideal lasting impression.
So keep worshipping Arnold Schwarzenegger body builders. Magazine Dreams might have been something awesome for your community, but instead it’s tainted by the ghosts of what could have been. So let’s bury this like everyone wants to, and move on with our lives. We’ll just say Ant Man did it.