Magazine Dreams

Movie Review

Dear Brad.

Unfailingly, so the letters begin. It’s a term of endearment, between friends. And certainly, Killian Maddux feels that they would be friends, if only Brad Vanderhorn would write back.

But perhaps he’d rather call, so Killian leaves his number. We can talk about training, or diet, or anything, really.

Killian would love to hear Brad’s thoughts on training, or diet or anything. Killian knows so much about Brad: He’s seen Brad’s pictures grace the covers of bodybuilding magazines, has his posters hanging up on his wall, watches his previous competitions with a sort of religious fervor.

I hope one day to build a physique as magnificent as yours, Killian writes. Please call or write back. Your number one fan …

Killian has worked to build his own physique. Indeed, he’s dedicated his life to it. Relentless workouts in the gym. A 6,000-calorie-a-day diet. Steroid shots. A snort of cocaine or two to power his work. Posing incessantly in front of the mirror to showcase his muscles in just the right way.

Years ago, a judge suggested his deltoids were small. No longer: He’s honed that muscle group to perfection. But his legs … they simply resist change. If only Brad would talk to him. If only Brad would let him in on a secret or two. Then he—Killian Maddux—might become a bodybuilder worth recognizing. Worth featuring on a magazine cover. Worth remembering.

People don’t remember him now. If they do, it’s for all the wrong reasons. They laugh at his online bodybuilding lessons. He works at a grocery store, and customers sometimes eye him nervously or walk the other way.

Sure, he’s had his issues. Maybe he has threatened folks a time or two. But he was tired. Anxious. Anyone can have a bad day.

Only his Pawpaw, war hero William Lattimore, could care whether he lives or dies. And as Killian fixes Pawpaw’s lunch or gives him his medicine or adjusts his oxygen hose, Killian knows that Pawpaw appreciates him.

And Brad—surely Brad would appreciate him, too. He’d embrace him as a brother.

If only he’d write back.

[Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections.]

Positive Elements

Killian has his issues. But deep down, he wants to be a good guy. He cares for his Pawpaw with tender diligence. He often treats people with practiced civility. He Googles, “How do you make people like you?” Because that, really, is what Killian is after: to be liked. To perhaps even be loved.

We all have that longing. But some, like Killian, find real human affection tragically elusive. And that makes Magazine Dreams a reminder to us all to be kind, when we can. It’s important to understand that the villains of many a story could’ve been better … if the people around them had been better, too.

Spiritual Elements

Killian and Pawpaw are at least nominally Christian, if the crosses we see hanging up in their shared home are any indication. We hear an insult lobbed against Muslims.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Perhaps in an effort to find that elusive sense of connection, Killian hits the streets looking for a prostitute. He meets a pimp who tells him (in very crude terms) about the sorts of ladies he offers (including a “tranny”). Killian drives past him, but he does pick up a lady of the evening, and they head to a hotel room.

We see the prostitute in her lacy undergarments. When she undoes her bra, we see glimpses of her breast. (Killian is also in brief-style underwear, but that’s hardly unusual, as we’ll see.) She encourages him to do what he paid for, and she seems to try to arouse Killian out of the eye of the camera. But when Killian tries to kiss her, she slaps him and tells him that kissing is not allowed. He had hoped to make it more romantic and, without that hint of romance, he no longer wants her services.

Two male bodybuilders apparently have sex. We don’t see the actual sexual encounter, but we do see the two talk beforehand and what happens afterward. In the aftermath, one of the guys gets up to retrieve his phone, naked. (We see his bare rear for several moments.) It’s suggested that he’s talking with his wife as his confused, ashamed partner puts on his pants, throws on a coat and leaves. (Later, the partner suggests the other owes him, because “you did those things to me.”)

During bodybuilding competitions, Killian and other bodybuilders wear, obviously, barely enough to cover their anatomy. We see both men and women in the skimpiest bits of garb (men in brief-like trunks, women in thong bikinis) as they pose on stage or prepare backstage. One guy invites Killian to touch his abdominal muscles, and Killian does, tracing the curves as one might run their fingers over a sports car.

We also see plenty of Killian as he works out and poses at home—often wearing brief-style underwear. He sometimes exposes a bit of his rear end, too, as he gives himself steroid shots in the behind.

Killian takes a woman, Jessie, on a date. Both make small talk before Killian makes a couple of embarrassing faux pas, and the woman excuses herself, ostensibly to use the restroom. She never comes back.

After Killian posts a workout video, someone comments that it’s putting out some strong “incel vibes.” (Incel is short for “involuntarily celibate.” It’s a term used, according to the anti-defamation league, for “heterosexual men who blame women and society for their lack of romantic success.) Later, Killian meets someone who seems to fit that definition, discussing his hatred of women. Killian walks around in a hospital gown, exposing a bit of his rear.

Violent Content

Killian has struggled with his temper before: His counselor references a time when he threatened nurses by telling them that he’d crack open their skulls and “drink their brains like soup.”

He repeats that threat to a painter who did a shoddy job painting Pawpaw’s house—and he then drives to the painter’s business to confront him personally. The business is closed, so Killian breaks the windows, tips over tables and throws paint cans around, badly cutting his own hands and wrists in broken glass. (We see shards sticking out of his palms, and his white sweater is stained with red.) As he drives away—impaired by pain and rage—he runs into a parked car and is knocked unconscious.

He wakes up in a hospital, where a doctor tells him that he’ll need surgery to remove non-cancerous tumors (caused by steroid use) from his liver. “You’re not coming at me with a knife,” Killian warns him. “You can’t have a square. I’m a bodybuilder. Bodybuilders don’t have scars.”

As Killian’s life grows darker and more out of control, so does Killian. He threatens patrons at a restaurant, throwing things at a family and practically begs someone to call the police. They do, and they find Killian ramming his head into the closed windows of another parked car. Police wrestle him to the ground, pound on him with batons and spray him with mace.

But Killian is also a victim of a brutal attack himself. Three men attack him in his own driveway. They pull Killian out of the car and punch him repeatedly before one begins pounding on him with a metal pipe. Killian eventually sinks out of camera range, but we see his assailants continue to rain kicks, stomps and blows with the pipe on the man. After they’re done, Killian manages to get in his car and drive to a bodybuilding competition: He appears on stage, battered and bloodied and with one eye swollen shut. But as he poses—grinning and flashing his blood-stained teeth—he collapses.

The incident is an important catalyst in Killian’s real (and spoilery) descent into darkness. He tears his beloved bodybuilding posters off his walls and begins to order guns and gun accessories. He begins pointing his finger, like a gun, at people milling around in a parking lot and pretends to pick them off, one by one. He writes Brad a final letter, describing his intentions to kill someone, then kill himself. And we see a scene (which winds up being a fantasy) of Killian dispassionately gunning down someone on stage.

One night, he heads to the home of a judge who told him, long ago, that his deltoids were too small. He waits for the man to come home. And at gunpoint, he forces the judge to strip to his underwear and pose like a bodybuilder, lest Killian shoot him. After the man has been fully humiliated, Killian leaves.

We hear that Killian’s father shot and killed his mother before turning the gun on himself. (In a flashback, we see Killian’s mother holding his dad back from attacking Killian.) An online commenter encourages Killian to kill himself after watching his video.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear a dozen f-words and about five s-words. Other profanities, such as “b–ch,” “g-dd–n,” “h—” and two uses of the n-word, are also lobbed. Killian makes an obscene gesture at a grocery store customer.

Drug & Alcohol Content

As mentioned, Killian uses both anabolic steroids and cocaine. He snorts the former before workouts and shoots the latter in his rear periodically. The movie doesn’t glamorize either; indeed, it suggests that these substances have been a huge catalyst in Killian’s anger issues and spiraling life. In fact, a doctor tells him that his steroid use is killing him. And when Killian flushes a syringe and his stash of drugs down the toilet, we know he’s on a better path.

A man invites Killian to do a “bump” with him in a saloon restroom. The man snorts cocaine and complains about women, advertisers and all of society as Killian looks on. Someone smokes a cigarette.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Magazine Dreams isn’t about race, but certainly racial themes come into play here—most obviously after Killian is attacked by three men. One, as he walks off, spits on Killian and calls him an “ape.”

We see a couple of TV reports of black men having been arrested. A patrol officer in a police car flashes his lights and triggers his siren for a moment as he drives slowly past Killian (who’s jogging and minding his own business). Killian doesn’t react, and the officer drives on by. Some people grow nervous when just standing next to a polite-as-can-be Killian—perhaps intimidated by his size, his color or both. A white man tells Killian that “Blacks” are trying to kill everyone. “No offense,” the man adds.

A grocery store bagger spits on a customer’s pie as the customer talks on her phone. Killian retches into a toilet. He sometimes talks about an unformed “they,” imagining a wide conspiracy against his success. Lies are told.

Conclusion

Magazine Dreams was, perhaps, intended to be a bit of awards-season push for the then red-hot Jonathan Majors. Already, he’d wowed audiences with his work in Creed III in 2023. He’d already been tagged as Kang, the next Big Bad for the Marvel Cinematic Universe—appearing in both Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Disney+’s Loki. Magazine Dreams, originally set for release in December, 2023, might’ve been an early bid for Oscar glory for the actor.

But in October of that year, Searchlight Pictures shelved the film the wake of assault allegations made against Major. And after his December conviction, Searchlight dropped the film entirely.

Briarcliff Entertainment scooped the picture up and released it in March 2025, more than a year later. And if nothing else, Magazine Dreams reminds us what a talented, and committed, actor Majors is.

The actor reportedly consumed 6,100 calories and worked out six hours every day to play the troubled, perhaps mentally impaired Killian Maddux. In Majors’ hands, Killian is both hero and villain, victim and terror.

But the film at which Killian stands at the center of? It’s rather dispiriting.

Sure, it’s supposed to be an uncomfortable film to watch. But Magazine Dreams also suffers from continuity errors: In one scene, Killian rips down his posters. But 20 minutes of movie-time later, they’re all back up on his walls. In another sequence, he’s beaten, then partly recovers, then seems freshly beaten again, with no explanation as to where all that new blood came from.

And most importantly, Magazine Dreams inescapably suffers from what the sport of bodybuilding itself suffers from: Its very intent is to make you ogle.

There’s certainly a homoerotic vibe at work in Magazine Dreams: In addition to the film’s brief same-sex intimacies, we see men enraptured by the male body. But whether or not the characters we see are sexually attracted to one another is more of an aside than the central issue. The thing is these men and women have honed their bodies specifically to be objectified. They have worked tirelessly to turn themselves into living He-Man toys—their bodies so contorted by muscle as to look like comic book superheroes and, ultimately, just as unreal.

And even while the film wants to say something important about celebrity and power and violence, it encourages its viewers to gape at these men, too.

That gives Magazine Dreams a curious dichotomy. It reminds us that we live in a culture of celebrity, where beauty feels all important and we’re not really alive unless we’re famous. In focusing on the curious sport of bodybuilding, Magazine Dreams pushes that truth to its apex and shows us how bad and harmful that can be. But in so doing, it encourages its audience to do the very thing it wants to condemn: To gawk. To stare. To marvel at not who someone is, but what they look like.

Magazine Dreams comes with other problems. The violence comes with a purpose, but it makes the film hard to watch and depressing to absorb. The language and drug use sully the workings even more.

In Magazine Dreams, we’re reminded why Jonathan Majors was such a big deal. But the film itself is less a dream and more of a depressing, conflicted slog.