A God Dies in Reverse: How Marty Anderson Taught the Apocalypse and Stole The Life of Chuck

Some characters steal scenes. Marty Anderson stole the entire cosmos.

You walk into The Life of Chuck expecting Tom Hiddleston. The trailers promised charm, dance, and emotional poignancy dressed in quirky trailer polish. Instead, the world ends with a monologue. A classroom. A chalkboard. A teacher. And Chiwetel Ejiofor, in one of the most disarmingly harrowing performances of the year, detonates the narrative in the opening act by doing something quietly catastrophic: he explains the universe.

And suddenly, this is his movie.

“I’m teaching the kids Carl Sagan right now…”

The first words out of his mouth are a philosophy exam disguised as science class. Marty Anderson begins the film—Act 3—with what sounds like a harmless thought experiment: the Cosmic Calendar. But this isn’t a lecture. It’s a eulogy with the lights still on.

“Well, the universe is fifteen billion years old, and if you took all of that—all fifteen billion years—and compressed them into a single calendar year., then the Big Bang happens in the first second, January 1st, and today—right now—we’re in the final millisecond of the last minute of the last day, December 31st….”

The way Ejiofor delivers this? It’s not performance—it’s prophecy. His voice is pained but precise, like someone watching their own heartbeat flatline on the screen and still having to teach you about plate tectonics. His existential dread is dignified, never theatrical. It isn’t panic, it’s knowing. And that’s what makes it unbearable.

The more he speaks, the more you realize: this is the end of everything. Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Not narratively. Literally. Everything is ending. And he, somehow, has to finish the school day.

Act 3: When the World Ends and One Man Stays Still

There’s no monster. No virus. No bomb. Only the slow erosion of existence. And Ejiofor, as Marty Anderson, navigates it with the type of performance that feels like it was directed by Oblivion itself.

He speaks to his ex-wife on a dying phone network. Tries to reach her in person. Fails, walks, succeeds. And when he finds her—when he finds her—he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t cry. He just looks at her. Like he’s memorizing her for the last time. And we feel it: this is it. The final look. The last syllable. The extinction of connection.

He chokes on a sentence that never arrives. He disappears mid-expression. And somehow, we hear the rest of the sentence anyway. Because grief can finish thoughts even after the mouth is gone.

This isn’t just acting. It’s emotional neutron radiation. And Act 3, as a standalone short film, would’ve been enough. I would’ve paid a full ticket price to watch just this chapter. Some may grumble that Hiddleston was barely there, that they came for Loki and got a substitute teacher. Good. That’s the point. The unexpected weight of Ejiofor’s performance is exactly why it crushes.

This is not Tom Hiddleston’s movie. Not here. Not in the beginning. This is Ejiofor’s apocalypse.

Act 2 & 1: Rewinding the Cosmos

After Ejiofor's sublime annihilation of Act 3, the movie rewinds. We see Hiddleston’s Chuck dancing, grieving, remembering. Act 2 flirts with magical realism. It plays like a grief-musical. Act 1 dives into childhood myth, the mystery of the forbidden room, the generational weight of upbringing, and the deep roots of mortality planted in early life.

There are beautiful moments here—make no mistake. The concept is still fascinating, the cinematography lingers with meaning, the sound design plays like God breathing through a modem. The forbidden room becomes a narrative device for both wonder and dread. The story, told in reverse, becomes an elegy in slow rewind.

But for all its mytho-scientific ambition, these acts orbit something brighter that came before. Or, technically, after. They orbit Marty Anderson.

The Teacher as Oracle

Let’s be precise here: Marty Anderson is not the protagonist. He’s barely a constant. But in that first act, he is the thematic core. The secret spine of the story. He doesn’t scream or collapse. He teaches. And that’s what makes it hurt. He embodies what it means to understand too much too late and remain upright anyway. That’s what steals the show.

Ejiofor doesn’t act like a man surviving the apocalypse—he acts like a man deserving it. And that’s the genius. He’s not panicked. He’s not righteous. He’s just deeply, heartbreakingly present.

Final Verdict: Give Him the Universe

If you’re watching The Life of Chuck and wondering why the walls feel like they’re closing in—thank Chiwetel Ejiofor. He doesn’t just steal the show. He hijacks the cosmos, teaches its funeral, and walks off screen while the rest of the film tries desperately to live up to his absence.