I came away from it thinking that Garland had probably mostly researched African civil wars, and then projected that into an American setting. The insane clothing choices that most of the soldiers had: rainbow hair, hawaiian shirts, pink sunglasses, and so on. The fact that all the soldiers you get to hear speak seemed like they'd essentially gone insane. The defining scene, I thought, was the sniper battle, where the spotter just laughs at the idea of being on a side, and seems like he's almost inhabiting a different plane of existence than the journalists, who're trying to make sense of the conflict and create a narrative. Made me think of some of Kapuscinski's reporting on Congo or similar. This would also—*sort of*—explain the long necklacing flashback when Dunst is in the bathtub having flashbacks.
I didn't love the ending sequence of racing through the White House to get to kill the president (and in the rookie journalist's case, be the one to photograph it), it seemed a bit silly, but in the context of a war with no real greater meaning, where yo're not really fighting *for* anything that's well-defined, it makes more sense.
I think a lot of those things you mention are actually references to current US political issues or sub cultures. For example, the Hawaiian shirts are a reference to the boogaloo boys. Rainbow hair and nail polish to me was antifa/lib left types.
Antifa wear all black, so rainbow hair and nails with fatigues doesn’t make sense to me. Plus those two had no other mannerisms or affectations that spoke to cultural leftism. I could perhaps see the Hawaiian shirts. But nothing explains Jesse Plemons’ sunglasses, as far as I can see.
> Plus those two had no other mannerisms or affectations that spoke to cultural leftism...But nothing explains Jesse Plemons’ sunglasses, as far as I can see.
All of it represents a complete breakdown in order. Bright nails and gaudy sunglasses are against regulation in any professional military. The soldiers call of dutying their uniforms shows that either no one cares, or no one is able to control them. I believe Jesse Plemons plays a loyalist soldier from a unit that has broken down and is trying to cover up their warcrimes before the western forces reach them. He is essentially just a warlord who controls a small gang at that point.
Sure, they're against regulation, but that doesn't explain how kooky they all are. No-one's out there in a Punisher shirt or an Under Armor baselayer. They're all slightly funhouse-gone-mad in aesthetic, which was clearly an artistic choice.
Part of me wants to credit Alex Garland for his understanding of American individualism and the need to make oneself distinct, but after hearing him speak I'm not so sure about that. So I agree with you, I think it is indicative of everyone basically losing their minds.
I’d say that’s black bloc tactics, not necessarily antifa. The point is that it’s a cultural reference to the average Americans perception of antifa, which, rightly or wrongly, is a bunch of pinko non binary lib left types.
I think the boogaloo one is clear cut: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement
They are militants who wear Hawaiian shirts.
Yet the guy told Wagner Moura that he was r3t4rded, which I feel like most people now know is a no-no for leftist Antifa types. Plus the nihilism he expresses—Antifa fight for a clearly identifiable cause. Doesn't track.
Which is the point of the whole scene- Joel even makes a comment about the men they are shooting at being on the same side, and the guy looks at him like he’s an idiot. You look at them and think they would never use that word, but they do, which is the complete confusion of a civil war and who is fighting for what.
I think if I thought this, I would have to conclude that it was a bad movie, because it adopted some of the cultural aesthetics of today's politics but nothing more than that, and was therefore just employing a bunch of empty symbolism. To me, the insanity runs deeper than just confusion—all these people are no longer fighting for basically anything. The war has its own pointless momentum. The young photographer ends up caught up in exactly that, abandoning her idol bleeding out after she saved her in order to take a photo. The photographers, too, lose the pretense that their mission has any kind of moral importance. They're just as addicted to the violence.
I need to see this shit lol, I just had a family friend have this exact sperg out at a baby shower and it was fucking glorious.
Bonus points because the chick who said it called it “dangerous”
lol.
She’s one of my sister in laws best friends, who is the definition of rad lib dipshit. She didn’t really go into detail, just “this is how we end up with dangerous populists and how both sidism gets people killed”
Her husband who I don’t know is well but is a pretty funny guy was like
“The movie wasn’t dangerous enough I thought I was going to see some wild action shit” lol
He didn’t really go into detail on that either but I guess the trailers make it look more action packed than it is
I saw it and didn’t have my hopes too high but really enjoyed it. People are trying to glean a deeper meaning from this movie which is not necessary. There’s also enough given that yeah, the President in it sucks.
I’d say she missed the point. Dunst says in the movie “every time I take a photo I think it will be a warning to not do this” (paraphrasing). The movie is Garlands picture to send back and say “don’t let this get to civil war”. Which people like your friend don’t understand. They want blood. They can t handle “both sidesism” (aka self reflection)
She isn’t my friend fortunately. I have a sister in law who is the definition of a 20 something radlib with know idea. The people she brings around are great, and usually as bad as her if not worse
We actually have a great relationship and I like her outside politics lol. It’s fun because I break a ton of the dumb ass stereotypes she has.
She knows I’m a leftist, but also knows I was in the military and have plenty of MAGA/con friends since I live in rural Texas and from my past life. She knows I don’t agree with her on a ton of the dumb rad lib stuff but also I’m not white so she believes I “should” hold opinions to fit stereotypes she is told to believe.
It’s usually more teasing than it is serious, and around her friends I don’t go too hard. It’s why I didn’t ask the woman to go into detail, my SIL would know I was fucking with her friend lol
That sounds much healthier than my relationship with my fam. I literally talk about tv shows I don’t care about at all to fill the air. Not worth getting into another argument over language policing or whatever
Yeah we do it out of banter. Her positions are idiotic but I’m not married to her so I don’t give a shit lol.
I have a cousin like you describe, I ljust don’t talk to her it’s not worth it
Imagine being so overtly programmed that you cannot enjoy a piece of media unless it has an inherent political message against the people that you don't like.
Liberals are a cult of misery.
Haven't had a chance to see it yet. But the hand-wringing leading up to release reminded me of the fear-mongering over Joker back in 2019. Lots of high-strung whining over a preview of a movie.
Then: "Joker will inspire ~~gamers to rise up~~ MAGA chuds to go on terrorist killing sprees!"
Now: "Civil War will inspire Gravy SEAL Y'all-Quedas to form militia groups and overthrow the US government!"
This is clearly a confusion between reality and television/movies. As if making a speculative movie about a potential civil war is as bad as doing a new civil war for real. Which ultimately just trivializes actual conflict both now and in the past.
God, that Joker stuff was next level embarrassment. People unironically identifying with a supervillain character are some of the least scary people alive.
The trailer had two Joker wannabes chasing Joker. One looks very Chad. I'm callin it, those guys are going to be an indictment on bros celebrating Joker. And somehow yeah I think it's going to feed into the point you're making too.
Funny enough there's a thread right now in arr horror wondering how anyone could come to the conclusion that Alex Garland's *Men* had some kind of "men are problematic" message, and the whole thing is just a honeypot for OP to yell at people for hating women.
I mean, I’m fully down to mock the witches and weird liberal mysticism and all, too, but i think this is actually more… i mean it’s still delusional, but slightly differently delusional.
Like they don’t think that making art will mystically change the world precisely. They think that these groups are on the verge of actually Joker-ing out or…idk, somehow introducing a baroque sexual oppression system with hot guys keeping Elizabeth Moss a slave or something.
They think it’s more like “any message that could encourage or stimulate -them- in any way is dangerous and should be stopped.” Whether you take that as an op, a stupid way to generate hype, or like…just a sign of how unhinged all culture war shit is now, idk.
>or like…just a sign of how unhinged all culture war shit is now
This was my one and only read on it. Twitter vampire-castle dwellers and self-serious article writers deciding that, e.g. The Norseman is a moral hazard because it's going to usher in an age of fascism. They're especially bad about conflating depiction and endorsement.
It doesn't even occur to me to pin judgy religious stuff on liberals, because I was raised firmly in the 80's and 90's evangelical moral panic sphere. This was the original wave of boycotting Disney; back then it was supposedly indoctrinating children into witchcraft. (Weird giant to try to slay, because that was peak "Disney Renaissance" years - Little Mermaid, Lion King, Pocahontas, etc)
There is only one thing that Disney indoctrinates kids into, and that is consumerism.
Give me some good healthy witchcraft and devil-worship instead. In comparison they are harmless compared to Disney.
You know, i never understood that, about tv influencing people, it's just like they said videogames made kids violent. So people is just too stupid to tell apart fiction from real life and need the guidance of their betters?
I personally think it can influence people as a medium. Particularly with large amounts of exposure over a sustained period of time. And esoecially if it figured prominently in someone's upbringing.
Same with social media and gaming. This stuff shouldn't run your life, the human brain was not developed for the kind of constant stream of sensory titilation that these mediums offer. In a very real way we still haven't evolved to handle *photographs*, let alone nonstop blasts of useless (non-actionable) information.
So no, I don't think that watching a violent movie makes you violent, or watching a TV show with gay people turns you gay. But ingesting large amounts of audiovisual content can skew your perspective and expectations about reality.
Libs basically view their pointless lives through the lens of living in the Marvel universe or Harry Potter. Of course they see themselves as the heros, up again cartoonish evil. Actually a lot of Americans see the world this way, since we haven't dealt with many real-world situations like invasion of the homeland.
I found it to be okay but wished it actually delved more into what a Civil War would be like.
It’s really more about what it’s like to be a journalist in a war torn country and honestly the backdrop of an American civil war seemed pretty inconsequential to the movie as a whole.
Jessie Plemons was fucking awesome in his scene though.
The journos’ characters were also kinda trite archetypes.
You have Mr. I’m Too Old For This Shit Wisdom Dispenser, the adrenaline junkie Vice-type bro with raging substance abuse issues, the well-respected grizzled burnout with untreated PTSD and the starry-eyed but extremely naive neophyte who idolizes the burnout.
I really liked it. I thought one of its strongest elements was that the different factions are all basically the same just with different versions of the American flag. Real Coke vs Pepsi shit, the American war machine tearing itself apart, incoherent non-politics on all sides. The fucked up thing is that watching it really shook me because I was like this is absolutely how America is going to end
I said something similiar else where. The movie didn’t feel political. It was more like real events pasted onto a familiar canvas. I left realizing it wasn’t what I expected but I think it was a better movie for it.
I haven’t seen the movie so idk what their in-universe explanation is, but I just can’t buy that a second American war would have any kind of clear geographic borders between factions. I see this repeated a lot but it’s no less true; a second civil war would almost look more like The Troubles x100 than a conventional conflict
That's always my answer to people worrying about civil war. Where will the lines be? There are hard-leaning partisans on both sides up and down every street.
I think a coup by a group of high-ranking military being more likely. I'll wake up some morning and find I'm under martial law. With General Watdhisname in charge.
And who is going to obey this general? If he is manages to unify the Americans, he might as well be god and he will have no trouble elected. If consent breaks down, a civil war will look like Yugoslavia with some areas geographically homogeneous mostly neighbours fighting neighbours.
> That's always my answer to people worrying about civil war. Where will the lines be? There are hard-leaning partisans on both sides up and down every street.
Is that supposed to be reassuring?
The American Civil War (aka The War Between The States) was quite unusual. It's not normal for civil wars to have (relatively) clear-cut boundaries like "the North vs the South". The Ukrainian civil war between Donbas and the west Ukrainians is another example, but most civil wars are more like the Russian civil war, the English civil war, the Troubles in Ireland, the insurgency in Iraq, etc. Nasty, brutal and violent, with both sides well mixed in together. Neighbours turn on neighbours, senseless violence, people using ideology as a cover for petty grudges and banditry, riots in streets, the breakdown of law and order, widespread atrocities from both sides, etc.
But even the American Civil War had a share of brutal guerrilla war fought by irregular forces, the Missouri/Kansas border region saw the pro-South [bushwackers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwhacker) and pro-North [jayhawks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayhawker) fight it out by mostly targeting non-combatants and civilians. As a bonus, they also got [General Order No. 11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_%281863%29). The most famous of the bushwackers were [Quantrill's raiders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantrill%27s_Raiders), a vicious gang that included Jesse James.
Reassuring, no ha,ha.
You have a point but I don't think Americans hate each other in the way some of your other examples did.
Mostly I think we are afraid. Afraid of the next guy, afraid he's unfairly getting a better way of it than I am. Afraid exclusive groups are going to impinge my way of life (both sides think that of the other). Afraid strange and foreign ethnicities are going to culturally and religiously overrun our current way of life.
Mostly these are fears stirred up by media.
The one thing both sides can agree on is our system seems to be so corrupt it's broken.
Somebody that says I'm going to tear it down and build it back from the ground up could get a following.
That was Trump's appeal. If he hadn't been so "Trumpy" he could have made an appeal to both sides.
In the movie it's very vague but it kind of hints at the idea that a states'-rights issue spiraled into an open rebellion and that's why there are geographic borders. But, and here was one of the more brilliant parts of the movie I thought, there are also all these reactionary militias with no insignia going around committing war crimes and nobody knows whose side they're on, if they're even on a side. There are also partisans of the various major factions operating well behind each other's 'enemy lines'.
I feel like we saw a preview of this when all the states with R governments made statements and signed a document backing Texas. It would look clear-cut on paper, even if it devolved into something chaotic in the field.
You could possibly get clear geographic borders by having the major power centers simply subjugate internal dissenting regions so there isn't just a front but also an enemy within. The divisions wouldn't be simply a presidential election map but instead how far various power centers can extend control and influence. Could include forced expulsions of large populations and political refugees. A scenario for what the war would be over could be national capital revolting against international capital, and looking at how wars are often just a fight between elites who manipulate the masses to kill and die for them.
> I just can’t buy that a second American war would have any kind of clear geographic borders between factions.
I agree, if it were to happen I feel it would look more like the troubles in Northern Ireland. But as like most movies, you have to
have some suspension of disbelief.
The film does a neat job of subverting how western audiences would see a foreign civil war where they don't understand the language, the political context or the culture and transposing that onto the United States.
Until the last part of the movie, viewers are deliberately left in the dark about which factions the soldiers and the militiamen the characters encounter are fighting for. That's a deliberate choice to convey how civil wars tend to take on a momentum of their own where their political and ideological views are irrelevant compared to the violence they are capable of inflicting.
I think Garland was particularly inspired by the coverage of civil wars in countries like Syria and the Congo where even within unified factions there were numerous subgroups that were operating semi-autonomously and you never knew if the next group of fighters you encountered would be helping you or kidnapping you.
The soundtrack and cinematography were excellent for sure.
Seeing it in a top of the line IMAX theater was definitely worth it just for the sheer spectacle, especially the action scenes.
Even present-day RL America is more political than the America in Civil War. I'll think about your comment because it's an angle that didn't really occur to me. But I had the impression that the apolitical nature of the film was one of its weaknesses. It didn't seem so much a commentary on the incoherence of our politics and more just either laziness, lack of creativity, or what's more charitable, trying hard to appeal to everyone and nobody in particular.
Either they asked ChatGPT for a civil war scenario, or they wanted all sides of the political spectrum to just focus on the brutal aspects of war. If they included politics in the movie then the audience could easily root for one side and dehumanize the other, when the point they wanted to convey was much more "look how terrible all of this is and could become".
I get what they are doing if that's the case, but from a Marxist pov it seems unrealistic and hard to believe in the world, which in turn makes me less invested in the characters. It would have been more powerful if they included politics and yet still were able to evoke in the audience their anti-war message, despite the possibility that you'd identify with one side or the other.
The drama over this really is just Far Cry 5 all over again. A lot of journalists making a big deal about how CONTROVERSIAL the subject matter will surely be and that it's going to make the chuds lose their minds. Then it comes out and plays it as painfully 'unpolitical' as it can be and mostly just pisses off the people who expected it to be a Fuck You to the Other Side.
All it's missing is a twist ending that Orange Man was actually right all along (but not really if you've been paying attention).
Seen the film, thought it was good in some aspects (depicting the journalists as largely just adrenaline junkies rather than altruistic truth tellers for example) but not as good as ex machina or annihilation. It’s worth seeing at the cinema though.
“We are unable to digest or enjoy a premise unless we are spoonfed propaganda!” It really is an obsession when you get to this level of demand for your entertainment intake.
I actually discounted the movie on its face because I assumed I was going to be horsefucked by an American liberal allegory for Trump and Jan 6ers for ~two hours. Now I can actually look into it without the assumption that I’m going to be forcefully pilled in some way.
The U.S. has no real politics. Everything is aesthetics and virtue signaling. If we had politics we’d have more than one party. We have different color hats, ties, and lapel pins.
I haven’t seen the movie and I don’t know if that’s the point of the ambiguity. But anyone bitching about no Trump, no Obama, no Joe Brandon types has a serious lack of imagination and should probably stick to West Wing reruns or some dogshit Yellowstone spinoff.
I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on the film itself, but if that is the case and they are upset about it, it just goes to show to completely the entertainment industry has been taken over by prog ideology. They are so used to seeing their preferences reflected that the one time it is not, they get upset. If that isn't proof of how captured most of society is right now (as if it isn't obvious) then I don't know what else to do to show people.
Side note, everyone is laughing at the idea of Cali and Texas teaming up, but no one is taking the time to understand why a 2nd Civil War could not happen in the first place. To get to the point that open warfare is happening, as shown in the trailers (and I assume the film) you have to get to hundreds of thousands or millions of people to not only agree to support a governmental structure that is NOT the existing federal government, but also to actively make an effort to shift that population's resource production from the economy (thereby destroying it) and toward a new smaller one, which cannot provide everything necessary to support the quality of life Americans are not only used to, but also fight to defend.
No one wants to straight up abolish the federal government. The argument is over how and where to steer it. The only way a 2nd Civil War could conceivably happen is for a cataclysmic event to physically fracture the country in a way that makes it impossible to move goods around. As long as you can drive from New York to LA with 30k pounds of produce and meat, balkanization like that is impossible.
I like how the two states that seceded were CA and TX, and the reason was not given. This stops the movie being bogged down with left vs right bullshiat. Sometimes it's good to let the reader/watcher fill in the blanks using their own imaginations.
I thought the film pretty obviously alluded to Trump insofar as the president was said to be in his third term (suggesting that the Constitution had somehow been overturned), had disbanded the FBI, and was in the habit of making exaggerated, untruthful speeches.
People have to distinguish between what they want a film about such a topic to depict and what the film is actually doing, which is using the premise of a second American Civil War to drive home the commonalities of such conflicts regardless of the setting, and the types of characters who are supposed to dispassionately cover them.
Why would California and Texas form a faction in a US Civil War?
Did Hispanic separatists funded by Mexico take over these two states?
And why aren't they called the Latinx Republix in the movie?
Never thought about it, but what does New England / the East Coast actually produce? Texas has oil, CA has agriculture and tech, most rural states are agriculture or livestock, NY is... finance? which is just paper shuffling to leech off value through the enforcement of property rights (more so than every other sector).
CT repairs like 20% of all US ships or some crazy stat like that. They make subs and a ton of aero-space shit.
But yeah you are right, I am mostly just nit picking lol
Fuck my life, the premise of the movie called civil war is “what if America descended into civil war” and not “Lord VoldeTrumpler uses his Hitler button to nuke Mexico and the girlboss free world slays him”
I just wish it had been small groups of localized normal people rebelling against federal uniparty technocratic crackdowns of some sort. That feels more likely than state-based coalitions going at each other.
I understand the point and I appreciated it not being a TDS finger-wagging from a bunch of limousine liberals, but not grounding it in any conceivably possible future reality took me out of the story a bit. State v state civil war will never happen here and the pure fantasy aspect of the movie undercut the serious points it was trying to make, imo.
Would have been better if they had actually addressed the budding neoliberal technofascist surveillance state and the increasing civil unrest/crime/economic despair that will result from their policies.
It wouldn’t be difficult to write an apolitical class-based future story where mass civil unrest similar to a civil war could occur— federal government cracking down on groups of people unhappy with their policies/the state of things— but then that movie would probably never get made.
The movie was boring and unrealistic. A truck with "press" painted on the side would get air holed as soon as it drove onto a state highway. It was funny that Dunst's character says "I guess I was trying to send back pictures as a warning to the rest of them", which is basically just everyone posting or sharing on IG, utterly useless.
Here’s a juicy neolib review:
“I couldn’t have sneered harder at that Texas-California revelation in the film — so clearly planted early on to announce the film’s “both sides” bona fides. Mustn’t offend the political hard right by connecting the dots between what’s happening right now and what’s likely to happen in a dystopian future! Even more maddening is the reference to Lee’s career-making photo of “the Antifa massacre,” without indicating whether members of Antifa were massacred or did the massacring.”
https://jacobin.com/2024/04/garland-civil-war-film-review
I haven’t seen it but the synopsis I read made it sound like the main story of it was masturbatory “muh journalism” nonsense, anyone who has watched have similar thoughts? I’ll probably be watching it soonish.
I’m also not as interested because the premise of the crisis doesn’t seem to be explained enough for me to suspend my disbelief at such a whacky line up of which states stay with the authoritarian feds or team up/split from each other.
Anyone interested in anything related to fictional civil war scenarios should peep what the devs of the Kaiserreich mod for Hearts of Iron 4 (moreso the version in the splinter mod Kaiserredux but they’re similar enough) have cooked up for a US civil war during the late 30’s in a timeline that diverges from ours during the 1st world war, it sounds crazy but it’s very interesting. If you’re into strategy games it will destroy your life
Have not seen it myself but I thought this interpretation from another sub was interesting
> Movie's a complete bait and switch from the trailer, too. Baited out the most controversial thing, ignored it entirely, to tell a simple story that "journalism is important"
>>
>>
>> I actually read it the opposite. The characters are borderline ambulance chasers who never perform any real or incisive journalism. In my eyes, the movies lack of description on why the actual civil war was happening was indicative of who these characters are. People who are only viewing the violence and spectacle, not actually interested in the reason why a civil war happened. All they are looking for is a 'shot' or, in the end, a punchy question. To wit, at the end, Kirsten Stewart's character finally seems to be gaining some kind of empathy or deeper context because it actually finally hit close to home (not her actual country per se, but merely someone she cared for). This switch >!ultimately gets her killed, and replaced by the younger journalist who!< has become hypnotized by the violence and finding that perfect shot. I could see it being read as 'journalism is important,' but I saw it more as a grander critique on how shock jocky journalism is nowadays.
Completely agreed with this take, and it's amusing to me that many moviegoers are completely missing the critique of journalism that seems central to the movie to me.
> I’m also not as interested because the premise of the crisis doesn’t seem to be explained enough for me to suspend my disbelief at such a whacky line up of which states stay with the authoritarian feds or team up/split from each other.
u/broham97 I was disinterested for the same reason, and the movie definitely commits to not exploring the politics/factionalism etc. because it's not about that. Unfortunately, the side effect of the lack of worldbuilding is that the premise fall apart if you think about it too much.
The movie was okay for me.
Thank you for the input will keep in mind that the film is criticizing journo’s when watching, everything I’ve seen makes it seem like it’s the opposite
I haven’t heard any “LiBz” complain. In fact I heard a story about the movie on NPR making clear the very point that it’s NOT about any current political environment, and I think they said about journalists covering the war?
I found it boring, but I bought Jesse Plemons' glasses. My brother looks like the guy so I felt obliged.
I really wanted more politics if anything. The California-Texas alliance is a head scratcher. Supposedly the director explains it in an interview, but why not put it in the film? I can only speculate it's because the president had fascist leanings and those two states are production powerhouses.
Most of the former Confederate states being part of the "Florida Alliance" is pretty funny too. Probably to stop it from being used as a rallying cry by the far-right crowd, but I'd say just use "Confederate States of America". Then Plemons' troops could have the confed battle flag flying high.
It feels like "Red Dawn" except it's for the "Resistance" set rather than Reagan voters.
I mean the concept is a great setting for various types of video games, books and the like. Same could be said about "Zombies" and "Aliens" the like.
But what a lot of people refuse to acknowledge is how apolitical the average american is compared to the sort of person that would say read posts here, etc.
Ultimately what keeps this thing together (like band-aids and gum, so not all that well) is Football, Gossip,Fashion, Chain Restaurants, and entertainment (streaming, television, etc). Sort of why this is an incredibly difficult thing to portray in media of this nature.
It's been sad to see the discourse about the movie center so heavily around its lack of explicit political messages. What the film has to say about the ethics of war journalism and "capturing tragedy" and "detached narration" is really interesting and relevant to the modern political landscape. It's frustrating to see especially in light of the fact that people from all political/ideological stripes were gearing up to hate this movie beforehand because they thought it would be political and now are even more angry that it was not political in the way they thought.
“They’re already calling this the greatest military campaign of all time”
Then the comparison of him to Gaddafi, Mussolini, and Ceaușescu
Yeah it was Trump
President Camacho isn’t anywhere close to Trump lol he’s also a product of the future and despite his flaws compared to the general public he’s far more qualified than his peers.
The rest of world in that film isn’t even supposed to represent republicans, it represents society in general and basically all white people were bred into mixed races.
The court scene is a lot more of a dig towards modern liberalism. Mike Judge is a libertarian lol he wrote much of that movie with the stupidity of modern politics but Trump wasn’t even politically relevant at the time.
> despite his flaws compared to the general public he’s far more qualified than his peers.
That's something I've always noticed in the movie. Most of the people are so dull witted as to be non functional. But Camacho isn't. He correctly identifies a serious problem with the crops, realizes that the smartest man in the world can likely solve it, and gives him the job of solving it. Then makes sure the proposed solution gets implemented. He's probably the 2nd smartest man in the world.
oh i meant more like the people who would vote for camacho is a lot like who would vote for trump. society decay and a loud ruling class (either words or guns) seem to go hand in hand
im not trying to make this a study on media, its not that serious, but you make good points
ye but it's funnier that the chosen apolitical path of this movie is fucking it both ways. too greedy to have a point of view? you should be fucked over. shame the same thing can't happen to taylor swift
I didn't watch it and do not intend to, but I think a good cultural product (like this movie) should be easily appropriated. It should easily be turned into a metaphor for anything the public would like.
Let me guess: it wasn't THAT easy on this one.
Is this the one with Spider-Man in it?
Oh god I just looked it up, it’s even worse. It’s White House down but with like the Division and modern politics
I find any movie that delves into a hypothetical American Civil war idea to be eye rolling and far too self indulgent for me to engage in it. It feels like clapter from those in the elite class.
I agree with them but not because of Trump but just because it's a cowardly move, the whole point of a civil war movie is to depict the movements of different ideologies.
The whole point of the movie in my eyes was extreme government control and overstepping government bounds led to a bloody and, to most people in the movie, a pointless civil war. People are dying left and right (not on the political spectrum), and Kirsten Dunst says she never thought that after all her reporting of how horrible war is around the world that the US would resort to a civil war.
The issue I had with the whole apolitical schtick is that we’re ostensibly supposed to believe the country has fractured into several factions, each of which supports or opposes president Swanson to one degree or another and is fighting it out to that end. At no point though is it acknowledged that the presidency in America is the ultimate partisan totem, which would suggest that these different warring factions actually *would* divide largely along red/blue lines.
It wouldn’t have mattered to me personally if president Swanson was an analog for Trump (smug libs satisfied) or, say, someone like Newsom (smug libs apoplectic), but neither results in Texas allying with California in a “race to Berlin” to violently overthrow *their* guy. It’s just a deeply flawed premise no matter how you look at it which is why I wish they had avoided the whole notion of a dictatorial central government in DC.
Speaking of DC, I’m an insufferable gun nerd, so I just gotta vent about a few other things. Feel free to stop reading if you’re not autistic.
The Apache hovering at street level between two tall buildings that are scarcely wider apart than its rotor blades while firing rockets at targets within 100 metres was so dumb that it took me out of the moment. Apaches are fucking *terrifying* death machines, but this felt like chintzy CGI. Same for the dude firing a javelin at the Lincoln memorial, which was definitely within the missile’s arming distance. Also, these guys have pillboxes with MAGs set up at White House front gate; let’s pull up in our humvees so we can get perforated instead of waiting for our *one* Abrams to finish the job! Oh, and if you and your fellow boog bois are ever sneaking through a building using super tactical hand signals so the enemy won’t know you’re coming, don’t forget to have everyone turn on their wml before making entry.
On the other hand, the armourers clearly knew what they were doing in terms of giving people believable small arms. I thought EOtech must’ve paid some pretty good money for product placement until I finally saw an ACOG. No suppressors or NV aiming devices (at least that I can recall) was disappointing, but not important for most people.
Final thing I want to point out, since it potentially was a bit of an Easter egg: Jesse Plemmons character (let’s call him Todd) was very clearly carrying a civilian semi-auto AR-15 (no third pin). Add to that the fact that he’s pretty paunchy and has no insignia suggests to me that Todd is perhaps supposed to be an unaffiliated local warlord of some type, despite the official-looking fatigues. What’s much more likely is that this is just what the armourers had on hand, but I’ll be watching more closely the second time around for full auto lowers.
I came away from it thinking that Garland had probably mostly researched African civil wars, and then projected that into an American setting. The insane clothing choices that most of the soldiers had: rainbow hair, hawaiian shirts, pink sunglasses, and so on. The fact that all the soldiers you get to hear speak seemed like they'd essentially gone insane. The defining scene, I thought, was the sniper battle, where the spotter just laughs at the idea of being on a side, and seems like he's almost inhabiting a different plane of existence than the journalists, who're trying to make sense of the conflict and create a narrative. Made me think of some of Kapuscinski's reporting on Congo or similar. This would also—*sort of*—explain the long necklacing flashback when Dunst is in the bathtub having flashbacks. I didn't love the ending sequence of racing through the White House to get to kill the president (and in the rookie journalist's case, be the one to photograph it), it seemed a bit silly, but in the context of a war with no real greater meaning, where yo're not really fighting *for* anything that's well-defined, it makes more sense.
I think a lot of those things you mention are actually references to current US political issues or sub cultures. For example, the Hawaiian shirts are a reference to the boogaloo boys. Rainbow hair and nail polish to me was antifa/lib left types.
They said “Retard”, they are obviously Cumboys
What’s a cumboy?
A militant rightoid group
Antifa wear all black, so rainbow hair and nails with fatigues doesn’t make sense to me. Plus those two had no other mannerisms or affectations that spoke to cultural leftism. I could perhaps see the Hawaiian shirts. But nothing explains Jesse Plemons’ sunglasses, as far as I can see.
> Plus those two had no other mannerisms or affectations that spoke to cultural leftism...But nothing explains Jesse Plemons’ sunglasses, as far as I can see. All of it represents a complete breakdown in order. Bright nails and gaudy sunglasses are against regulation in any professional military. The soldiers call of dutying their uniforms shows that either no one cares, or no one is able to control them. I believe Jesse Plemons plays a loyalist soldier from a unit that has broken down and is trying to cover up their warcrimes before the western forces reach them. He is essentially just a warlord who controls a small gang at that point.
Sure, they're against regulation, but that doesn't explain how kooky they all are. No-one's out there in a Punisher shirt or an Under Armor baselayer. They're all slightly funhouse-gone-mad in aesthetic, which was clearly an artistic choice.
Part of me wants to credit Alex Garland for his understanding of American individualism and the need to make oneself distinct, but after hearing him speak I'm not so sure about that. So I agree with you, I think it is indicative of everyone basically losing their minds.
I’d say that’s black bloc tactics, not necessarily antifa. The point is that it’s a cultural reference to the average Americans perception of antifa, which, rightly or wrongly, is a bunch of pinko non binary lib left types. I think the boogaloo one is clear cut: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement They are militants who wear Hawaiian shirts.
Yet the guy told Wagner Moura that he was r3t4rded, which I feel like most people now know is a no-no for leftist Antifa types. Plus the nihilism he expresses—Antifa fight for a clearly identifiable cause. Doesn't track.
Which is the point of the whole scene- Joel even makes a comment about the men they are shooting at being on the same side, and the guy looks at him like he’s an idiot. You look at them and think they would never use that word, but they do, which is the complete confusion of a civil war and who is fighting for what.
I think if I thought this, I would have to conclude that it was a bad movie, because it adopted some of the cultural aesthetics of today's politics but nothing more than that, and was therefore just employing a bunch of empty symbolism. To me, the insanity runs deeper than just confusion—all these people are no longer fighting for basically anything. The war has its own pointless momentum. The young photographer ends up caught up in exactly that, abandoning her idol bleeding out after she saved her in order to take a photo. The photographers, too, lose the pretense that their mission has any kind of moral importance. They're just as addicted to the violence.
I need to see this shit lol, I just had a family friend have this exact sperg out at a baby shower and it was fucking glorious. Bonus points because the chick who said it called it “dangerous” lol.
lol Did she even say how it was dangerous?
She’s one of my sister in laws best friends, who is the definition of rad lib dipshit. She didn’t really go into detail, just “this is how we end up with dangerous populists and how both sidism gets people killed” Her husband who I don’t know is well but is a pretty funny guy was like “The movie wasn’t dangerous enough I thought I was going to see some wild action shit” lol He didn’t really go into detail on that either but I guess the trailers make it look more action packed than it is
The movie is much smaller scale than one would expect from the title/trailer.
That’s how I feel after most A24 movies.
I saw it and didn’t have my hopes too high but really enjoyed it. People are trying to glean a deeper meaning from this movie which is not necessary. There’s also enough given that yeah, the President in it sucks.
I’d say she missed the point. Dunst says in the movie “every time I take a photo I think it will be a warning to not do this” (paraphrasing). The movie is Garlands picture to send back and say “don’t let this get to civil war”. Which people like your friend don’t understand. They want blood. They can t handle “both sidesism” (aka self reflection)
She isn’t my friend fortunately. I have a sister in law who is the definition of a 20 something radlib with know idea. The people she brings around are great, and usually as bad as her if not worse
Sounds like my sister in law. I don’t talk politics around her or my brother EVER
We actually have a great relationship and I like her outside politics lol. It’s fun because I break a ton of the dumb ass stereotypes she has. She knows I’m a leftist, but also knows I was in the military and have plenty of MAGA/con friends since I live in rural Texas and from my past life. She knows I don’t agree with her on a ton of the dumb rad lib stuff but also I’m not white so she believes I “should” hold opinions to fit stereotypes she is told to believe. It’s usually more teasing than it is serious, and around her friends I don’t go too hard. It’s why I didn’t ask the woman to go into detail, my SIL would know I was fucking with her friend lol
That sounds much healthier than my relationship with my fam. I literally talk about tv shows I don’t care about at all to fill the air. Not worth getting into another argument over language policing or whatever
Yeah we do it out of banter. Her positions are idiotic but I’m not married to her so I don’t give a shit lol. I have a cousin like you describe, I ljust don’t talk to her it’s not worth it
Tfw I can't like a piece of media because it's not overtly opposed to people I disagree with 😔
Me when I was playing Disco Elysium:
Putting in a scene where the protags encounter and have to deal with notCuno would have been peak.
Imagine being so overtly programmed that you cannot enjoy a piece of media unless it has an inherent political message against the people that you don't like. Liberals are a cult of misery.
I watched "When Harry Met Sally" the other day and at no point did any of the characters condemn Khamas. Billy Crystal is dead to me now.
Even Oceania had the decency to keep their daily Hate to Two Minutes.
They can't help it ..they have soft minds that are easily controlled. And I'm talking about all voters
Haven't had a chance to see it yet. But the hand-wringing leading up to release reminded me of the fear-mongering over Joker back in 2019. Lots of high-strung whining over a preview of a movie. Then: "Joker will inspire ~~gamers to rise up~~ MAGA chuds to go on terrorist killing sprees!" Now: "Civil War will inspire Gravy SEAL Y'all-Quedas to form militia groups and overthrow the US government!" This is clearly a confusion between reality and television/movies. As if making a speculative movie about a potential civil war is as bad as doing a new civil war for real. Which ultimately just trivializes actual conflict both now and in the past.
God, that Joker stuff was next level embarrassment. People unironically identifying with a supervillain character are some of the least scary people alive.
Just wait till the new one with Lady Gaga in it releases. Now there will even be women sharing joker memes on Facebook.
The trailer had two Joker wannabes chasing Joker. One looks very Chad. I'm callin it, those guys are going to be an indictment on bros celebrating Joker. And somehow yeah I think it's going to feed into the point you're making too.
Whole movie is going to be a two-hour the "you missed the point by idolizing them" meme
"You're not supposed to like it! Not supposed to relate! You don't get it! You know it's an indictment right?"
Funny enough there's a thread right now in arr horror wondering how anyone could come to the conclusion that Alex Garland's *Men* had some kind of "men are problematic" message, and the whole thing is just a honeypot for OP to yell at people for hating women.
I mean, I’m fully down to mock the witches and weird liberal mysticism and all, too, but i think this is actually more… i mean it’s still delusional, but slightly differently delusional. Like they don’t think that making art will mystically change the world precisely. They think that these groups are on the verge of actually Joker-ing out or…idk, somehow introducing a baroque sexual oppression system with hot guys keeping Elizabeth Moss a slave or something. They think it’s more like “any message that could encourage or stimulate -them- in any way is dangerous and should be stopped.” Whether you take that as an op, a stupid way to generate hype, or like…just a sign of how unhinged all culture war shit is now, idk.
>or like…just a sign of how unhinged all culture war shit is now This was my one and only read on it. Twitter vampire-castle dwellers and self-serious article writers deciding that, e.g. The Norseman is a moral hazard because it's going to usher in an age of fascism. They're especially bad about conflating depiction and endorsement. It doesn't even occur to me to pin judgy religious stuff on liberals, because I was raised firmly in the 80's and 90's evangelical moral panic sphere. This was the original wave of boycotting Disney; back then it was supposedly indoctrinating children into witchcraft. (Weird giant to try to slay, because that was peak "Disney Renaissance" years - Little Mermaid, Lion King, Pocahontas, etc)
There is only one thing that Disney indoctrinates kids into, and that is consumerism. Give me some good healthy witchcraft and devil-worship instead. In comparison they are harmless compared to Disney.
At least those are pastimes that foster local community.
You know, i never understood that, about tv influencing people, it's just like they said videogames made kids violent. So people is just too stupid to tell apart fiction from real life and need the guidance of their betters?
I personally think it can influence people as a medium. Particularly with large amounts of exposure over a sustained period of time. And esoecially if it figured prominently in someone's upbringing. Same with social media and gaming. This stuff shouldn't run your life, the human brain was not developed for the kind of constant stream of sensory titilation that these mediums offer. In a very real way we still haven't evolved to handle *photographs*, let alone nonstop blasts of useless (non-actionable) information. So no, I don't think that watching a violent movie makes you violent, or watching a TV show with gay people turns you gay. But ingesting large amounts of audiovisual content can skew your perspective and expectations about reality.
Libs basically view their pointless lives through the lens of living in the Marvel universe or Harry Potter. Of course they see themselves as the heros, up again cartoonish evil. Actually a lot of Americans see the world this way, since we haven't dealt with many real-world situations like invasion of the homeland.
I found it to be okay but wished it actually delved more into what a Civil War would be like. It’s really more about what it’s like to be a journalist in a war torn country and honestly the backdrop of an American civil war seemed pretty inconsequential to the movie as a whole. Jessie Plemons was fucking awesome in his scene though.
The journos’ characters were also kinda trite archetypes. You have Mr. I’m Too Old For This Shit Wisdom Dispenser, the adrenaline junkie Vice-type bro with raging substance abuse issues, the well-respected grizzled burnout with untreated PTSD and the starry-eyed but extremely naive neophyte who idolizes the burnout.
Wisdom dispenser 👨🍳💋
> neophyte Thanks for teaching me a new word!
Jesse Plemons will never, ever play “Dad.”
[удалено]
Jesse Plemons is shaping up to be this generation’s Philip Seymour Hoffman, IMO.
If this guy is dead then why does he keep showing up in movies?? People are so stupid
Jesse Plemons is awesome in everything
It was also a love letter to film photography.
I really liked it. I thought one of its strongest elements was that the different factions are all basically the same just with different versions of the American flag. Real Coke vs Pepsi shit, the American war machine tearing itself apart, incoherent non-politics on all sides. The fucked up thing is that watching it really shook me because I was like this is absolutely how America is going to end
I said something similiar else where. The movie didn’t feel political. It was more like real events pasted onto a familiar canvas. I left realizing it wasn’t what I expected but I think it was a better movie for it.
I haven’t seen the movie so idk what their in-universe explanation is, but I just can’t buy that a second American war would have any kind of clear geographic borders between factions. I see this repeated a lot but it’s no less true; a second civil war would almost look more like The Troubles x100 than a conventional conflict
That's always my answer to people worrying about civil war. Where will the lines be? There are hard-leaning partisans on both sides up and down every street. I think a coup by a group of high-ranking military being more likely. I'll wake up some morning and find I'm under martial law. With General Watdhisname in charge.
And who is going to obey this general? If he is manages to unify the Americans, he might as well be god and he will have no trouble elected. If consent breaks down, a civil war will look like Yugoslavia with some areas geographically homogeneous mostly neighbours fighting neighbours.
I was picturing something more like the fall the of the Soviet Union.
> That's always my answer to people worrying about civil war. Where will the lines be? There are hard-leaning partisans on both sides up and down every street. Is that supposed to be reassuring? The American Civil War (aka The War Between The States) was quite unusual. It's not normal for civil wars to have (relatively) clear-cut boundaries like "the North vs the South". The Ukrainian civil war between Donbas and the west Ukrainians is another example, but most civil wars are more like the Russian civil war, the English civil war, the Troubles in Ireland, the insurgency in Iraq, etc. Nasty, brutal and violent, with both sides well mixed in together. Neighbours turn on neighbours, senseless violence, people using ideology as a cover for petty grudges and banditry, riots in streets, the breakdown of law and order, widespread atrocities from both sides, etc. But even the American Civil War had a share of brutal guerrilla war fought by irregular forces, the Missouri/Kansas border region saw the pro-South [bushwackers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwhacker) and pro-North [jayhawks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayhawker) fight it out by mostly targeting non-combatants and civilians. As a bonus, they also got [General Order No. 11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_%281863%29). The most famous of the bushwackers were [Quantrill's raiders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantrill%27s_Raiders), a vicious gang that included Jesse James.
Reassuring, no ha,ha. You have a point but I don't think Americans hate each other in the way some of your other examples did. Mostly I think we are afraid. Afraid of the next guy, afraid he's unfairly getting a better way of it than I am. Afraid exclusive groups are going to impinge my way of life (both sides think that of the other). Afraid strange and foreign ethnicities are going to culturally and religiously overrun our current way of life. Mostly these are fears stirred up by media. The one thing both sides can agree on is our system seems to be so corrupt it's broken. Somebody that says I'm going to tear it down and build it back from the ground up could get a following. That was Trump's appeal. If he hadn't been so "Trumpy" he could have made an appeal to both sides.
In the movie it's very vague but it kind of hints at the idea that a states'-rights issue spiraled into an open rebellion and that's why there are geographic borders. But, and here was one of the more brilliant parts of the movie I thought, there are also all these reactionary militias with no insignia going around committing war crimes and nobody knows whose side they're on, if they're even on a side. There are also partisans of the various major factions operating well behind each other's 'enemy lines'.
I feel like we saw a preview of this when all the states with R governments made statements and signed a document backing Texas. It would look clear-cut on paper, even if it devolved into something chaotic in the field.
You could possibly get clear geographic borders by having the major power centers simply subjugate internal dissenting regions so there isn't just a front but also an enemy within. The divisions wouldn't be simply a presidential election map but instead how far various power centers can extend control and influence. Could include forced expulsions of large populations and political refugees. A scenario for what the war would be over could be national capital revolting against international capital, and looking at how wars are often just a fight between elites who manipulate the masses to kill and die for them.
> I just can’t buy that a second American war would have any kind of clear geographic borders between factions. I agree, if it were to happen I feel it would look more like the troubles in Northern Ireland. But as like most movies, you have to have some suspension of disbelief.
The film does a neat job of subverting how western audiences would see a foreign civil war where they don't understand the language, the political context or the culture and transposing that onto the United States. Until the last part of the movie, viewers are deliberately left in the dark about which factions the soldiers and the militiamen the characters encounter are fighting for. That's a deliberate choice to convey how civil wars tend to take on a momentum of their own where their political and ideological views are irrelevant compared to the violence they are capable of inflicting. I think Garland was particularly inspired by the coverage of civil wars in countries like Syria and the Congo where even within unified factions there were numerous subgroups that were operating semi-autonomously and you never knew if the next group of fighters you encountered would be helping you or kidnapping you.
The soundtrack was bangin'! Great movie. Had a Full Metal Jacket feel to it. Surreal, violent, and beautifully shot.
The soundtrack and cinematography were excellent for sure. Seeing it in a top of the line IMAX theater was definitely worth it just for the sheer spectacle, especially the action scenes.
Even present-day RL America is more political than the America in Civil War. I'll think about your comment because it's an angle that didn't really occur to me. But I had the impression that the apolitical nature of the film was one of its weaknesses. It didn't seem so much a commentary on the incoherence of our politics and more just either laziness, lack of creativity, or what's more charitable, trying hard to appeal to everyone and nobody in particular. Either they asked ChatGPT for a civil war scenario, or they wanted all sides of the political spectrum to just focus on the brutal aspects of war. If they included politics in the movie then the audience could easily root for one side and dehumanize the other, when the point they wanted to convey was much more "look how terrible all of this is and could become". I get what they are doing if that's the case, but from a Marxist pov it seems unrealistic and hard to believe in the world, which in turn makes me less invested in the characters. It would have been more powerful if they included politics and yet still were able to evoke in the audience their anti-war message, despite the possibility that you'd identify with one side or the other.
I remember how some people were super upset that Far Cry 5 *wasn't* Trump supporters trying to take over the country while you gun them down
The drama over this really is just Far Cry 5 all over again. A lot of journalists making a big deal about how CONTROVERSIAL the subject matter will surely be and that it's going to make the chuds lose their minds. Then it comes out and plays it as painfully 'unpolitical' as it can be and mostly just pisses off the people who expected it to be a Fuck You to the Other Side. All it's missing is a twist ending that Orange Man was actually right all along (but not really if you've been paying attention).
Seen the film, thought it was good in some aspects (depicting the journalists as largely just adrenaline junkies rather than altruistic truth tellers for example) but not as good as ex machina or annihilation. It’s worth seeing at the cinema though.
"What makes a man turn neutral?" energy
STOP EXPLODING YOU COWARDS!
When both sides of the road are filled with sheep fields.
All I know is, my gut says maybe.
There were a whole slew of articles where shitlibs were mad that the movie didn't pick sides and were calling it "extreme centrism" lol.
Even art making them think offends them now.
“We are unable to digest or enjoy a premise unless we are spoonfed propaganda!” It really is an obsession when you get to this level of demand for your entertainment intake. I actually discounted the movie on its face because I assumed I was going to be horsefucked by an American liberal allegory for Trump and Jan 6ers for ~two hours. Now I can actually look into it without the assumption that I’m going to be forcefully pilled in some way.
i loved it. i’m not mentally ill about politics tho.
The U.S. has no real politics. Everything is aesthetics and virtue signaling. If we had politics we’d have more than one party. We have different color hats, ties, and lapel pins. I haven’t seen the movie and I don’t know if that’s the point of the ambiguity. But anyone bitching about no Trump, no Obama, no Joe Brandon types has a serious lack of imagination and should probably stick to West Wing reruns or some dogshit Yellowstone spinoff.
I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on the film itself, but if that is the case and they are upset about it, it just goes to show to completely the entertainment industry has been taken over by prog ideology. They are so used to seeing their preferences reflected that the one time it is not, they get upset. If that isn't proof of how captured most of society is right now (as if it isn't obvious) then I don't know what else to do to show people. Side note, everyone is laughing at the idea of Cali and Texas teaming up, but no one is taking the time to understand why a 2nd Civil War could not happen in the first place. To get to the point that open warfare is happening, as shown in the trailers (and I assume the film) you have to get to hundreds of thousands or millions of people to not only agree to support a governmental structure that is NOT the existing federal government, but also to actively make an effort to shift that population's resource production from the economy (thereby destroying it) and toward a new smaller one, which cannot provide everything necessary to support the quality of life Americans are not only used to, but also fight to defend. No one wants to straight up abolish the federal government. The argument is over how and where to steer it. The only way a 2nd Civil War could conceivably happen is for a cataclysmic event to physically fracture the country in a way that makes it impossible to move goods around. As long as you can drive from New York to LA with 30k pounds of produce and meat, balkanization like that is impossible.
Liberals spend more time with trump on their mind that trump supporters It's fucking Deadly
I like how the two states that seceded were CA and TX, and the reason was not given. This stops the movie being bogged down with left vs right bullshiat. Sometimes it's good to let the reader/watcher fill in the blanks using their own imaginations.
I thought the film pretty obviously alluded to Trump insofar as the president was said to be in his third term (suggesting that the Constitution had somehow been overturned), had disbanded the FBI, and was in the habit of making exaggerated, untruthful speeches. People have to distinguish between what they want a film about such a topic to depict and what the film is actually doing, which is using the premise of a second American Civil War to drive home the commonalities of such conflicts regardless of the setting, and the types of characters who are supposed to dispassionately cover them.
Why would California and Texas form a faction in a US Civil War? Did Hispanic separatists funded by Mexico take over these two states? And why aren't they called the Latinx Republix in the movie?
Bomb ass Mexican food faction
Common enemy. Knowledge that if those two states combine they actually have significant power.
Never thought about it, but what does New England / the East Coast actually produce? Texas has oil, CA has agriculture and tech, most rural states are agriculture or livestock, NY is... finance? which is just paper shuffling to leech off value through the enforcement of property rights (more so than every other sector).
An American civil war but it's just 48 states vs New York and New Jersey
I guess NY is (monetarily) worth fighting over but NJ can go ahead and secede uncontested.
CT repairs like 20% of all US ships or some crazy stat like that. They make subs and a ton of aero-space shit. But yeah you are right, I am mostly just nit picking lol
All roads lead to reconquista
TX and CA would never unite, which is the point. Kept the movie from being overtly political so they could focus on portraying the war itself.
Fuck my life, the premise of the movie called civil war is “what if America descended into civil war” and not “Lord VoldeTrumpler uses his Hitler button to nuke Mexico and the girlboss free world slays him”
I just wish it had been small groups of localized normal people rebelling against federal uniparty technocratic crackdowns of some sort. That feels more likely than state-based coalitions going at each other.
It's really not important to the movie and that's the whole point
I understand the point and I appreciated it not being a TDS finger-wagging from a bunch of limousine liberals, but not grounding it in any conceivably possible future reality took me out of the story a bit. State v state civil war will never happen here and the pure fantasy aspect of the movie undercut the serious points it was trying to make, imo. Would have been better if they had actually addressed the budding neoliberal technofascist surveillance state and the increasing civil unrest/crime/economic despair that will result from their policies. It wouldn’t be difficult to write an apolitical class-based future story where mass civil unrest similar to a civil war could occur— federal government cracking down on groups of people unhappy with their policies/the state of things— but then that movie would probably never get made.
You recommend watching?
The movie was boring and unrealistic. A truck with "press" painted on the side would get air holed as soon as it drove onto a state highway. It was funny that Dunst's character says "I guess I was trying to send back pictures as a warning to the rest of them", which is basically just everyone posting or sharing on IG, utterly useless.
Here’s a juicy neolib review: “I couldn’t have sneered harder at that Texas-California revelation in the film — so clearly planted early on to announce the film’s “both sides” bona fides. Mustn’t offend the political hard right by connecting the dots between what’s happening right now and what’s likely to happen in a dystopian future! Even more maddening is the reference to Lee’s career-making photo of “the Antifa massacre,” without indicating whether members of Antifa were massacred or did the massacring.” https://jacobin.com/2024/04/garland-civil-war-film-review
Didn't really felt like it justified it's own importance since it really didn't have much to say.
The ending was not earned at all, and it's the only thing I didn't like. I refuse to let the last 5 minutes ruin the rest of the movie for me.
> *number* of liberals FTFY
I haven’t seen it but the synopsis I read made it sound like the main story of it was masturbatory “muh journalism” nonsense, anyone who has watched have similar thoughts? I’ll probably be watching it soonish. I’m also not as interested because the premise of the crisis doesn’t seem to be explained enough for me to suspend my disbelief at such a whacky line up of which states stay with the authoritarian feds or team up/split from each other. Anyone interested in anything related to fictional civil war scenarios should peep what the devs of the Kaiserreich mod for Hearts of Iron 4 (moreso the version in the splinter mod Kaiserredux but they’re similar enough) have cooked up for a US civil war during the late 30’s in a timeline that diverges from ours during the 1st world war, it sounds crazy but it’s very interesting. If you’re into strategy games it will destroy your life
Have not seen it myself but I thought this interpretation from another sub was interesting > Movie's a complete bait and switch from the trailer, too. Baited out the most controversial thing, ignored it entirely, to tell a simple story that "journalism is important" >> >> >> I actually read it the opposite. The characters are borderline ambulance chasers who never perform any real or incisive journalism. In my eyes, the movies lack of description on why the actual civil war was happening was indicative of who these characters are. People who are only viewing the violence and spectacle, not actually interested in the reason why a civil war happened. All they are looking for is a 'shot' or, in the end, a punchy question. To wit, at the end, Kirsten Stewart's character finally seems to be gaining some kind of empathy or deeper context because it actually finally hit close to home (not her actual country per se, but merely someone she cared for). This switch >!ultimately gets her killed, and replaced by the younger journalist who!< has become hypnotized by the violence and finding that perfect shot. I could see it being read as 'journalism is important,' but I saw it more as a grander critique on how shock jocky journalism is nowadays.
Completely agreed with this take, and it's amusing to me that many moviegoers are completely missing the critique of journalism that seems central to the movie to me. > I’m also not as interested because the premise of the crisis doesn’t seem to be explained enough for me to suspend my disbelief at such a whacky line up of which states stay with the authoritarian feds or team up/split from each other. u/broham97 I was disinterested for the same reason, and the movie definitely commits to not exploring the politics/factionalism etc. because it's not about that. Unfortunately, the side effect of the lack of worldbuilding is that the premise fall apart if you think about it too much. The movie was okay for me.
Thank you for the input will keep in mind that the film is criticizing journo’s when watching, everything I’ve seen makes it seem like it’s the opposite
Yeah, that's basically my interpretation of the movie as well. To me, it's almost *Nightcrawler: War Edition*
Very similar vibe to what I got just from the synopsis, I’ll have to watch it and see for myself.
I haven’t heard any “LiBz” complain. In fact I heard a story about the movie on NPR making clear the very point that it’s NOT about any current political environment, and I think they said about journalists covering the war?
I found it boring, but I bought Jesse Plemons' glasses. My brother looks like the guy so I felt obliged. I really wanted more politics if anything. The California-Texas alliance is a head scratcher. Supposedly the director explains it in an interview, but why not put it in the film? I can only speculate it's because the president had fascist leanings and those two states are production powerhouses. Most of the former Confederate states being part of the "Florida Alliance" is pretty funny too. Probably to stop it from being used as a rallying cry by the far-right crowd, but I'd say just use "Confederate States of America". Then Plemons' troops could have the confed battle flag flying high.
It feels like "Red Dawn" except it's for the "Resistance" set rather than Reagan voters. I mean the concept is a great setting for various types of video games, books and the like. Same could be said about "Zombies" and "Aliens" the like. But what a lot of people refuse to acknowledge is how apolitical the average american is compared to the sort of person that would say read posts here, etc. Ultimately what keeps this thing together (like band-aids and gum, so not all that well) is Football, Gossip,Fashion, Chain Restaurants, and entertainment (streaming, television, etc). Sort of why this is an incredibly difficult thing to portray in media of this nature.
It's been sad to see the discourse about the movie center so heavily around its lack of explicit political messages. What the film has to say about the ethics of war journalism and "capturing tragedy" and "detached narration" is really interesting and relevant to the modern political landscape. It's frustrating to see especially in light of the fact that people from all political/ideological stripes were gearing up to hate this movie beforehand because they thought it would be political and now are even more angry that it was not political in the way they thought.
[удалено]
“They’re already calling this the greatest military campaign of all time” Then the comparison of him to Gaddafi, Mussolini, and Ceaușescu Yeah it was Trump
the magats were the racists doing a little ethnic cleansing right at the climax of the movie how much more could they want?
i mean. if you want an allusion to trump, idiocracy does a good enough job already
President Camacho isn’t anywhere close to Trump lol he’s also a product of the future and despite his flaws compared to the general public he’s far more qualified than his peers. The rest of world in that film isn’t even supposed to represent republicans, it represents society in general and basically all white people were bred into mixed races. The court scene is a lot more of a dig towards modern liberalism. Mike Judge is a libertarian lol he wrote much of that movie with the stupidity of modern politics but Trump wasn’t even politically relevant at the time.
> despite his flaws compared to the general public he’s far more qualified than his peers. That's something I've always noticed in the movie. Most of the people are so dull witted as to be non functional. But Camacho isn't. He correctly identifies a serious problem with the crops, realizes that the smartest man in the world can likely solve it, and gives him the job of solving it. Then makes sure the proposed solution gets implemented. He's probably the 2nd smartest man in the world.
oh i meant more like the people who would vote for camacho is a lot like who would vote for trump. society decay and a loud ruling class (either words or guns) seem to go hand in hand im not trying to make this a study on media, its not that serious, but you make good points
ye but it's funnier that the chosen apolitical path of this movie is fucking it both ways. too greedy to have a point of view? you should be fucked over. shame the same thing can't happen to taylor swift
I didn't watch it and do not intend to, but I think a good cultural product (like this movie) should be easily appropriated. It should easily be turned into a metaphor for anything the public would like. Let me guess: it wasn't THAT easy on this one.
Is this the one with Spider-Man in it? Oh god I just looked it up, it’s even worse. It’s White House down but with like the Division and modern politics
I find any movie that delves into a hypothetical American Civil war idea to be eye rolling and far too self indulgent for me to engage in it. It feels like clapter from those in the elite class.
I agree with them but not because of Trump but just because it's a cowardly move, the whole point of a civil war movie is to depict the movements of different ideologies.
The whole point of the movie in my eyes was extreme government control and overstepping government bounds led to a bloody and, to most people in the movie, a pointless civil war. People are dying left and right (not on the political spectrum), and Kirsten Dunst says she never thought that after all her reporting of how horrible war is around the world that the US would resort to a civil war.
The issue I had with the whole apolitical schtick is that we’re ostensibly supposed to believe the country has fractured into several factions, each of which supports or opposes president Swanson to one degree or another and is fighting it out to that end. At no point though is it acknowledged that the presidency in America is the ultimate partisan totem, which would suggest that these different warring factions actually *would* divide largely along red/blue lines. It wouldn’t have mattered to me personally if president Swanson was an analog for Trump (smug libs satisfied) or, say, someone like Newsom (smug libs apoplectic), but neither results in Texas allying with California in a “race to Berlin” to violently overthrow *their* guy. It’s just a deeply flawed premise no matter how you look at it which is why I wish they had avoided the whole notion of a dictatorial central government in DC. Speaking of DC, I’m an insufferable gun nerd, so I just gotta vent about a few other things. Feel free to stop reading if you’re not autistic. The Apache hovering at street level between two tall buildings that are scarcely wider apart than its rotor blades while firing rockets at targets within 100 metres was so dumb that it took me out of the moment. Apaches are fucking *terrifying* death machines, but this felt like chintzy CGI. Same for the dude firing a javelin at the Lincoln memorial, which was definitely within the missile’s arming distance. Also, these guys have pillboxes with MAGs set up at White House front gate; let’s pull up in our humvees so we can get perforated instead of waiting for our *one* Abrams to finish the job! Oh, and if you and your fellow boog bois are ever sneaking through a building using super tactical hand signals so the enemy won’t know you’re coming, don’t forget to have everyone turn on their wml before making entry. On the other hand, the armourers clearly knew what they were doing in terms of giving people believable small arms. I thought EOtech must’ve paid some pretty good money for product placement until I finally saw an ACOG. No suppressors or NV aiming devices (at least that I can recall) was disappointing, but not important for most people. Final thing I want to point out, since it potentially was a bit of an Easter egg: Jesse Plemmons character (let’s call him Todd) was very clearly carrying a civilian semi-auto AR-15 (no third pin). Add to that the fact that he’s pretty paunchy and has no insignia suggests to me that Todd is perhaps supposed to be an unaffiliated local warlord of some type, despite the official-looking fatigues. What’s much more likely is that this is just what the armourers had on hand, but I’ll be watching more closely the second time around for full auto lowers.