Galactus: «I had no choice» and free will versus determinism
Galactus devours worlds and says he cannot choose: he is a hunger, not a tyrant. His alibi starts to crack the moment he offers a deal.
Galactus, the World-Devourer of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, arrives at Earth and does not come to do evil: he comes, he says, because he can do nothing else. He does not hate the planets he consumes; he needs them so as not to die. He presents himself not as a tyrant but as a phenomenon: a cosmic entity, a hunger older than intelligent life, older than morality itself. Other villains want something—power, revenge, money—but Galactus claims to want nothing: only to be what he is.
That sentence —«I have no choice»— is far older and far more dangerous than any cosmic beam. It is the deepest alibi there is, because it denies neither the facts nor the victims: it denies the will. And if no one chooses, no one answers. Galactus, without meaning to, poses criminology's final exam: does free will exist, or are we all —heroes and world-devourers alike— links in a chain of causes we did not begin? To understand his argument is not to grant it.
// The theoryFree will and determinism, in brief
All criminal responsibility rests on a philosophical bet: that we are able to choose. The Classical School of the eighteenth century took it for granted. Cesare Beccaria, in On Crimes and Punishments (1764), and Jeremy Bentham, with his calculus of pleasure and pain, imagined a rational offender who weighs costs and benefits before acting: if punishing the crime makes it unprofitable, the free man will choose not to commit it. Without free will, punishment would have no moral sense: we would only be punishing someone who could not have acted otherwise. You can read it developed in our file on the theory of free will.
Against that bet stands determinism: the idea that every decision is the necessary effect of prior causes —genes, brain chemistry, biography, circumstances— that the subject did not choose. The neuroscientist Sam Harris takes it to the extreme in Free Will (2012): if we could rewind the universe to the exact instant of the choice, with the same atoms in the same positions, the outcome would be identical. In that light, «choosing» would be an illusion the brain tells itself after the causes have already decided. And there, exactly there, the abyss opens beneath every conviction.
«I had no choice» is the deepest denial of responsibility
The other alibis dispute the facts: it wasn't me, there was no harm, they had it coming. This one disputes nothing: it accepts the whole act and dissolves the author. If Galactus is only a hunger obeying its nature, then there is no one to judge, just as we do not judge an earthquake or a hurricane. Radical determinism, carried to its end, does not lower a villain's guilt: it evaporates it. That is why it is tempting for anyone who has done harm, and why it is worth facing head-on rather than looking away.
But there is a way out that modern criminology takes seriously: compatibilism. Even if the universe is causal, there is a real difference between the act of someone who can deliberate, weigh reasons and change conduct accordingly, and the act of someone who cannot —the earthquake, the reflex, the utter delirium. That capacity to respond to reasons is what we call responsibility, and it does not require a soul free of all cause: it requires an agent who reasons. The right question about Galactus is not «is his conduct caused?» —everything is— but «can he hear reasons and act on them?». And the film answers yes.
Galactus's character in First Steps
I am not cruel. I am inevitable. Hunger does not choose.
Galactus
Read Galactus’s full case file · Free will →
// The caseGalactus bargains: the crack in his alibi
Galactus's argument holds as long as he behaves like a blind force. But The Fantastic Four: First Steps gives him away in its own script: Galactus does not simply lay waste to Earth. Galactus offers a deal. He will spare the planet in exchange for Franklin Richards, the child whose potential could sate or replace his hunger. That gesture changes everything. A hurricane does not haggle; an earthquake does not propose alternatives; a force of nature does not evaluate options and choose among them. Galactus does. His case file describes it precisely: a being who deliberates, calculates and decides is, by definition, a being who could have decided otherwise.
There is the crack. Whoever can bargain can abstain; whoever puts a price on a life admits there is more than one road; whoever says «I'll spare you if you give me the child» is confessing that sparing was in his hands. Survival explains Galactus's hunger, but it does not explain the choice of method: to seek another world, to accept a sacrifice that was not a child, to hold back. The «I have no choice» collapses the moment the character shows he does weigh options. The need to eat does not dictate whom you eat.
// The same dilemma«It's my nature», the same old alibi
Galactus's pattern runs through fiction and real courtrooms. The predator who pleads that he is «just made that way»; the abuser who hides behind his childhood as if it were a sentence; the defense that turns a bad biography into an unappealable verdict to offend. All of them share the Devourer's grammar: turning a cause —real, sometimes tragic— into a total excuse. Criminology does study those causes: forensic neuroscience, epigenetics, trauma weigh for real and explain a great deal. But to explain why someone tends toward something does not prove they could not resist it. Between the tendency and the act there is still, almost always, a margin. And in that margin lives responsibility.
Explaining determinism is not conceding it
Here is the anchor of the case. Taking the determinist argument seriously —truly examining whether Galactus could choose— is the opposite of surrendering to it. Modern criminology does not ignore causes: it studies them to know where explanation ends and excuse begins. Galactus has a real hunger; that explains that he wants to eat. It does not explain that he chooses to devour inhabited worlds when he could negotiate, and the film shows that he negotiates. That is why «I had no choice» describes a temptation, not a truth: mapping how far determinism reaches is precisely what keeps it from swallowing everything.
Galactus, decoded
- Criminal responsibility rests on free will: the Classical School (Beccaria, 1764; Bentham) imagines a rational offender who can choose not to offend if punishment makes it unprofitable.
- Determinism replies that every decision is the necessary effect of prior causes —genes, brain, biography— we did not choose; Sam Harris (2012) takes it to the extreme: rewind the universe and the act repeats identically.
- «I have no choice» is the deepest alibi because it denies neither the facts nor the victims: it denies the will. If no one chooses, no one answers.
- Galactus embodies it: he presents himself as a force of nature, a hunger older than morality, obeying only his need to survive.
- But in First Steps he bargains: he offers to spare Earth in exchange for Franklin Richards. Whoever sets a price and haggles deliberates; whoever deliberates could have decided otherwise.
- To explain is not to excuse: taking determinism seriously helps see where explanation ends and excuse begins. Hunger explains that he eats; not whom he chooses.
Sources · further reading
- Beccaria, C. (1764). Dei delitti e delle pene [On Crimes and Punishments]. Livorno.
- Harris, S. (2012). Free Will. New York: Free Press.
- Morse, S. J. (2011). «Lost in Translation? An Essay on Law and Neuroscience». In M. Freeman (ed.), Law and Neuroscience: Current Legal Issues, vol. 13. Oxford University Press, 529-562.
// Quick challengeWhich theory best explains Galactus?
Frequently asked questions
If Galactus cannot choose, is he guilty?
The question is precisely whether he truly cannot. Responsibility does not require a soul free of all cause —every act has causes— but an agent able to deliberate, weigh reasons and act on them. Galactus does: in The Fantastic Four: First Steps he bargains, offering to spare Earth in exchange for Franklin Richards. Whoever haggles chooses; whoever chooses could have chosen otherwise. His hunger explains that he needs to eat, not that he decides to devour an inhabited world when he could negotiate. To explain is not to excuse: understanding the determinist argument does not oblige us to accept it.
What is the free will versus determinism debate in criminology?
It is the question beneath every conviction. The Classical School (Beccaria, Bentham, eighteenth century) assumed the offender is rational and free: he chooses to offend after calculating costs and benefits, so punishment makes sense. Determinism replies that every decision is the necessary effect of prior causes —genes, brain chemistry, biography— no one chose, and that freedom would be an illusion. Modern criminology usually adopts a compatibilist stance: even where there are causes, there is a real difference between someone who can respond to reasons and someone who cannot, and that is where responsibility holds.
Isn't it dangerous to «explain» a villain like Galactus?
Only if explaining is confused with justifying, and they are different things. To explain why someone tends toward something —Galactus's hunger, a trauma, a bad biography— describes the cause; to justify would claim he was right to do it. At kriminis we sum it up like this: to explain is not to excuse. Studying determinism serves precisely to draw the border between cause and excuse, not to erase it. Naming the «I had no choice» argument helps us recognize it when we hear it in real life, not to grant it.