Mandy then rightfully points out that Galactus is, in fact, not a planet. A being so gargantuan in physical size and power that he must devour entire worlds to survive, Galactus ravages the cosmos with the Silver Surfer acting as his globe-seeking herald. Mandy loves Jupiter “because the surface of its atmosphere is a storm that’s been raging for like 1,000 years, and the eye of the hurricane is so huge that it could just swallow the whole Earth.” Red chooses Saturn, about which Mandy notes, “Saturn’s pretty cool, and that was one of the first ones that we discovered, that humans discovered, so there’s, like, a lot of cool ancient myths about it and stuff.” Red pauses, changing his mind: “I like Galactus,” he says, referring to the genocidal godvillain of Marvel comics. Lying in bed, their bodies overlaid with a celestial lattice of iridescent lights, Mandy and Red discuss their favorite planets-and in doing so, they each trace the arc the other will follow in the film.

At last -were the only words he could conjure with his inner voice, his thoughts were so frail and weakened.”īefore a chainsawed, magenta-bled hell floods Mandy ’s insular realm of tranquility and follows the moody, gossamer aching of the film’s first hour with a synapse-shredding panegyric to ‘80s action-horror and revenge films in its second before fantasy artist Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) is spied upon by Children of the New Dawn cult leader Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache) and kidnapped by his LSD-corrupted necrobiker monstrosities before Mandy’s partner, Red Miller (Nicolas Cage), is forced to watch her burn to death for rejecting Sand sexually before Red, armed with a fucking battle axe and reality-warping pain, metes coke-dusted vengeance upon the Children before the film’s 1983-set world of lunar rurality transmutates into a whirlpool of Frank Frazetta hellscapes and van mural fantasias straight from Mandy’s subconscious-before all of that, there is an essential moment of hushed domestic beauty in Mandy and Red’s secluded home on Crystal Lake. “All the suffering, all the sorrow, all the thirst and hunger, the loss and murder and blood had led him to this sliver of time in which he now found himself.

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