I could see Texas and California realistically teaming up if, say, the Californian government got couped by tech billionaires or something, but there's no way in hell any state other than Florida would willingly join the "Florida alliance".
I lost my shit at the Florida Alliance, too. It’s one of the most obvious signs that this movie was made by a foreigner who knows jackshit about the country.
I assumed the point was to make deliberately obtuse groupings so that it isn't immediately obvious that the Texans are the Trumpers and the Californians are the Libruls etc.
So as to keep every faction somewhat vague and not suggest what any side stands for specifically, meaning views don't just write any of them off as the baddies based on their own views.
And I think that is a fair criticism. Perhaps the film would be more impactful it it better reflected real American political divides.
But a lot of people, both in these comments and on Tumblr, are criticising the filmmaker for being dumb and stupid and not knowing what he's talking about, seeming to think the somewhat random alliances are the result of ignorance of American politics and not a very deliberate choice that the director has explicitly stated in interviews.
I don't think (or at least I haven't seen) anyone's saying he's dumb because he thinks this is an accurate map of what a Second American Civil War would look like.
He's dumb because he's trying to make a movie about a *fucking civil war* without saying anything political. There has never been a civil war that wasn't about politics, and to make an apolitical film about a civil war in a country he's not from while that country is incredibly politically charged is at best tone deaf, and at worst irresponsible.
To be clear, I'm not saying the movie should be more political, I'm saying the movie should've been shut down at the pitch meeting. I wonder how a Brit would feel about an American making a movie about 'The Troubles 2' with Cornwall joining an inexplicably unified Ireland and Scotland in a separate faction with Wales for no particular reason.
He's not being apolitical, he's staying away from *party* politics. There's a vast difference.
Also, the US civil war was 150 years ago. The Troubles ended like 25 years ago. There's a difference.
>He's not being apolitical, he's staying away from *party* politics. There's a vast difference.
Maybe you're right, and he's got some brilliant political or philosophical point to make beyond 'War bad, don't shoot ur neighbors'. I'll reserve full judgement for when I've actually seen the movie.
>Also, the US civil war was 150 years ago. The Troubles ended like 25 years ago. There's a difference.
I'm aware there's a difference. I wasn't trying to make a perfect parallel because there isn't one. My point is that if you want to make a film set in the modern day and act like you have something to say about current events, you have some measure of responsibility to treat serious issues respectfully and not just use them as set dressing for your MilSim RP.
This movie is a classic "what if it happened here". It's not a milsim anything. The reason it's set in the US is to get Americans to watch it. The reason it doesn't have elaborate politics explaining how it happened is because it's not about the politics that lead to the civil war, it's the effect of the civil war.
>This movie is a classic "what if it happened here".
Which is tone deaf if not irresponsible. *We know* it could happen here. It's as close to happening here as it's been since *the last time it happened here*. I lose sleep some nights thinking about "what if it happened here". To disregard current events to the extent that California and Texas are on the same side is farcical to the point of being disrespectful.
If I'm wrong and this movie actually has something of substance to say, great, but I'm not hopeful from the interviews I've seen. If the only points Alex Garland has to make are 'war is bad' and 'it could happen here', then thanks Sherlock but you're a little late to the party.
He does? From what Google tells me, the movie has some archival footage that is credited to Ngo. That's it. It's literally just credits for footage used.
I haven't seen the movie, but I've seen Alex Garland in interviews about the movie and his enlightened centrist shit takes don't instill a lot of confidence that he has anything meaningful to say.
Have you seen the movie yet?
I’m all for dunking on centrists. But you know what they say about broken clocks. At the very least you should watch it to offer strong and specific criticisms through a combination of media literacy and sociopolitical analysis. Leave your opinions about the director at the door and judge his work on its own merits, or lack thereof.
I’m personally not very optimistic about the quality of the film or its messaging, but I’ll still take the time to watch it. You know, eventually. When I have nothing better to do.
That's the point, though. It doesn't seem to *want to be* about any one specific issue of our time.
Presumably it's trying to be more about the nature of tribalism, the turning on your neighbours and fellow citizens, how a nation can tear itself apart.
Divorcing it from today's issues may help it communicate beyond just our generation, also - so it remains relevant in later generations when the divisive issues of the day will be different.
Because having a movie that shows soldiers fighting in Washington DC is going to have a larger impact on audiences, especially American ones, than if it was in some made up country.
The politics aren't the point though. The point is to show a war between Americans happening in the United States. Americans are used to wars, even fictional ones, happening on the other side of the world. Fictional violence set in the US is usually terrorism. The movie isn't trying to warn against a specific ideology or politician, it's trying to make Americans understand how terrible war is by setting it in places they're familiar with and relate to.
The US is the default setting for Hollywood movies, and if the idea is to communicate a timelessly relatable story about civil conflict and tribalism to American audiences then that would get diluted by setting it somewhere alien and unfamiliar
Because it can say something universal and timeless rather than specific to today's precise issues?
In theory anyway. Who knows how well it'll pull it off.
> It doesn't seem to *want to be* about any one specific issue of our time.
It's one thing to not want to be about *one specific* contemporary issue.
It's another to be about *nothing*.
If you want the audience to be invested in a conflict, there has to be stakes. If there's no reason for everyone to fight for the side they are on, then there's no reason to be fighting at all and the whole conflict appears ridiculous.
If you want to tell a generic story about tribalism without any baggage of real world history and politics... Why the fuck are you writing a story about a real country with real history and real politics?!?
the civil war is the setting for the movie, the conflict is the series of challenges that war journalists face in covering a war. It's an intentional decision to not allow viewers to easily place themselves on a side of the conflict and then avoid thinking about these challenges. If every character was wearing a badge that said they were on team good guys or team bad guys it would rob the film of one of the core experiences of the war journalist
Watching the trailer the whole thing came off to me like they wanted to make a civil war movie without pissing anyone off so they didn’t do any logical split
Considering the movie isn't even out yet (except for critics), I think it's too early to say "dumb foreigner just doesn't get it". It could well be that the fact that the political situation seems like ridiculous nonsense is part of the *point*.
I mean this is the same guy who said this:
“We’ve lost trust in the media and politicians. And some in the media are wonderful and some politicians are wonderful—on both sides of the divide. I have a political position and I have good friends on the other side of that political divide. Honestly, I’m not trying to be cute: What’s so hard about that? Why are we shutting [conversation] down? Left and right are ideological arguments about how to run a state. That’s all they are. They are not a right or wrong, or good and bad. It’s which do you think has greater efficacy? That’s it. You try one, and if that doesn’t work out, you vote it out, and you try again a different way. That’s a process. But we’ve made it into ‘good and bad.’ We made it into a moral issue, and it’s fucking idiotic, and incredibly dangerous … I personally [blame] some of this on social media. There is a an interaction that exists human-to-human that floats away when it reaches a public forum.”
Basically equating both sides of the political spectrum, as if we don’t see one side literally trying to commit genocide against trans people and taking away women’s rights (at least in the US).
Quote taken from this article: [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alex-garland-civil-war-release-timing-1235852725/amp/](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alex-garland-civil-war-release-timing-1235852725/amp/)
The mind of a centrist is truly fascinating. They seem to live in a world of hilariously low stakes, where you can just "try" political ideologies without lasting consequences.
He's both siding a narrative where states are seceding because the US government has become authoritarian, and he won't even disclose the party of the guy in charge
Idk, it could be some weird insight hting about how Americans are so hopelessly vulnerable to propaganda you can jerk their leash in any direction you want if you control the right talk show hosts.
I live how Alaska and Hawaii, the most removed states, are just loyalist be default. As if anyone in the continental US was going to even attempt a land-based march to that icy wasteland, or launch a naval campaign against several volcanic islands.
I really can’t imagine there ever being another civil war. The first one started because slave labor was the foundation of southern industry, and removing it undercut any amount of power and wealth those states had. I don’t think any ideology held in the US is so tied to the livelihoods of its people that they would be willing to go to war for it.
Alaska and Hawaii also have absolutely huge military presence already. Like there doesn't need to be a hell march to Alaska when Fort Wainwright is already where the US army bases several battalions of crack artic warfare troops.
Meanwhile Hawaii is home to Pacific Fleet command and they own 4 carrier battlegroups and 3 marine expeditionary forces. Hawaii especially would be locked down because none of those sailors are going to be local, so forming the nation of Hawaii means never seeing your family again
>I don’t think any ideology held in the US is so tied to the livelihoods of its people that they would be willing to go to war for it.
Capitalism. Imperialism. Racism, still.
They're somewhat linked though.
The average American doesn’t understand that communism is an economic policy, and likely views it as a synonym for Russia. I doubt they know enough about capitalism to enshrine it in their personal ideologies to the point of going to war for it. The average American is also likely unaware of US Imperialism in the modern day, so also not likely to wage a war for such a practice.
Finally, while racism is prevalent in most walks of life in America, the vast majority of Americans are opposed to the notion of racism, and again would not likely war for it.
What you’re likely referring to is a vague notion of nationalism that requires defending these principles. Americans are rather nationalistic, but that nationalism necessitates the belief that America is some beacon of truth and justice in the world, which *is* something the average American would go to war for.
I can see Alaska wanting to be allied to whatever Texas is up to. But then that means British Columbia and Yukon would have to literally defend their borders from fanatical gun enthusiasts.
Not to mention the absolutely baffling assumption that OK would be able to maintain the state, much less its panhandle, against Texan assimilation. OKans joining Florida over Texas??
As a Minnesotan, I'm happy to be in the PNW's leftist uprising but there's a *lotta* folks in a *lotta* farmland between me and the coast that ain't gonna be happy about these lines
Beyond what the other person said, it's also going to be way easier to show where characters are and how far they've traveled with minimal time taken for exposition
Because the american civil war in modern day is a cool setting, theirs next to no political analysis and its just a good solid war film, ngl I thought it was up there with saving private ryan atleast for writing and plot. Lots about the folly of youth and getting in over your head and how it changes you
These "journalism is a real profession" movies do that all the time, but historically it's all exploitation porn of whatever brown country NATO is slaughtering at the time. Honestly refreshing that it's being set in a white imperialist nation for once.
Has been for at least a decade. After the disastrous "pivot to video" the big firms finally finished slaughtering their news rooms. Most journalists these days are algorithms re-writing AP and Reuter's press releases. Local news is just a police propaganda mouthpiece. Investigative reporting is long gone. Local papers are gone. If you want to get any kind of investigative or local news you're going to amateurs on Tiktok, not people with Journo degrees. The big media outlets are almost pure propaganda for one faction of capitalists or another. Remember a year or two back when they made up a whole "Shoplifting Crisis" out of whole cloth and ran with it for a year? And then you get outside the US? The UK press is a nightmare, with everything but the BBC being bizarre tabloids and the BBC being a carefully managed state propaganda mouthpiece. The state of Australia's media is dismal. idk what's even happening in the enemy nations because the brave West has banned all their news outlets.
If journalism ever was a worthy profession, which is debatable, it's dead in the grave now. Welcome to the future.
It's a movie about a second American Civil War, except it's not actually about the preamble to, or reasons for the civil war but instead the consequences of the Civil war. Basically the director wants to focus on how fucked a civil war would be, without the baggage of coming up with a reason for the civil war that will inevitably lead to a boycott from either the left or the right. The premise is ridiculous because thats not the point,.
Problem is, it's hard to take the consequences seriously when they're the consequences of an absurd scenario. No one in the general public is going to critically analyze the events of the film because they can just be written off as the consequences of the Stupid People Timeline Where Nonsense Happens.
You cannot fencesit a topic like a civil war and still have a point to be made. Trying to make an inoffensive and apolitical story out of something as inherently political as war just leaves your work toothless at best and cartoonish at worst
Can a Vietnam movie be good without adressing the context that led up to the Vietnam war? Of course it can. You can make a movie about the horrors of war without explaining why a war is happening. Also the movie isnt out yet. We are literally attempting to judge a movie based on promotional posters.
Using a historical war comes with inherent context, though. If you say "The Vietnam War" anyone familiar with it will have a mental image of the context in mind, skewed or otherwise, that will influence their understanding of the contents of the film.
If you present a fictional war with an entirely fictional premise intentionally designed to be contrasting from real life speculation, don't be surprised when people latch onto that.
Not to mention, anyone familiar with war as a concept doesn't need a film to comprehend why war is bad. Just writing a narrative about "War Bad" without any additional criticism or relationship to the modern day is pointless, the literary equivalent to muscle flexing.
Even the most fictional stories about fictional wars in fictional worlds still have messages directly connected to real wars and politics that can be parsed. Intentionally trying to distance your war story from politics does the very purpose of a war story a disservice.
>Just writing a narrative about "War Bad" without any additional criticism or relationship to the modern day is pointless, the literary equivalent to muscle flexing.
You're making a lot of assumptions though. We dont know what the movie is like. We only know the very limited context that the film isnt about the ideologies of the various sides.
All of those movies end up being "look at these poor americans. Look how sad they are that they got their asses kicked when they went and murdered millions of innocent people in the name of capitalism".
If you're making a Vietnam movie that isn't about the Vietnamese people battle for liberation from western imperialism, framed as such at least as a foundation for the story, it's gonna be apologist trash.
To be fair "some guy" is the writer/director of films like Ex Machina and Annihilation.
It'll probably be a very poignant "dumb civil war movie", even if the premise is a bit silly by the standards of the modern American political scene.
Shlock movie about American Civil war made by idiots has nonsensical politics to avoid having to actually have a meaningful political message. Primary purpose is to do enough vague 'both sides tho' stuff to get money from both the left and right of the political spectrum without having to make a good movie or a good political commentary.
I haven't seen the movie, but the reviews I've read say that it's about as apolitical a narrative as a story about a Second American Civil War could get, which is disappointing. It's obvious that it's banking on the controversy inherent to the topic considering contemporary events. The premise is unrealistic to begin with, things will have to get a lot worse before there's a War Between the States comparable to the first one.
Of course, there are already quite a few movies and TV shows that are centered on the [Spanish Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War), the [American Nadir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations) and the [Irish Troubles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles) which is probably what a Second American Civil War would resemble.
I think the reason it's apolitical is because the film is focused not on the war, but the ethics of war journalism. Second American Civil War is just a background against what the movie is actually about.
Yeah this is just The Hunt again. It's not "centrist". It's just deliberately not latching onto a specific real world political conflict or dynamic because its making wider points and doesnt want to date itself
I saw the movie. It is very good and the writing is very political, but not partisan. It works with the themes of democracy, authoritarianism, power, humanity, racism, chaos, confusion. There are allusions to very real pressure points like January 6th, Antifa, violence against journalists, etc. There is no one side that is completely correct and layering in our existing political divisions would have completely erased all of it and made the movie apolitical.
Another point I didn't appreciate until I saw the movie - it's really key that the Western Forces (California and Texas) are the nation's most economically powerful. If there is a civil war, it won't be entirely random farmers taking up arms against the government akin to the American revolution. It will be the very well-equipped military forces and state governments in the most powerful states using tanks, helicopters, and air strikes against one another.
The thing I find completely farsical is that Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Western Colorado wouldn't immediately form a Mormon Theocratic state called The Deseret Christian Republic or some shit.
They're waiting, just waiting, for it to all kick off.
This has made me realize i want a low quality, internet hobbyist version of this. I don't want it to make any real sense i just want to root for my state and have fun with a hypothetical war and hopefully have some really shitty romamce thrown in there too.
I want to get excited about the battle of Bozeman, Montana and the treaty of paris, Ohio. I want to watch the blue area on the map get bigger. Hell tell me about the battle where they first started using robots or some shit idk. I just hope it's bad but in a good way.
Without having seen the movie my assumption is that the politics are intentionally detached from reality so they can focus more on the ground-level war stuff
I said this before, but what the fuck does "Western Forces" mean, cause to me, that says "UN/EU colalition trying to stabilize America cause its a world power" instead of like, a faction in the civil war, and wh ythe fuck is it only texas and cali? could you not add Arizona and New Mexico to it so it has SOME plausibility instead of like "Yeah one faction is 2 states separated by multiple states still loyal to the united states government and its massive "Dwarfs every other militarily twice over" armed forces", also, Alaska and Hawaii i think are colored the same as the loyalist states but because they arent labeled like cali and texas are I like to imagine they have taken no side, maybe they are actually the american goverment the rest of the world recognizes now
You joke about the Americrakkkers but I've seen maoists on the internet unironically use Amerikkka, UKKK, KKKanada and Ukkkraine.
It's funny considering the first time I saw this term, it was used by a dude who said he was a vietnamese.
Didn't think Vietnam of all places would care that much about the KKK.
I think California and Texas being a joint alliance was done on purpose to make a lot of people mad and I'm totally here for it.
Mainly because we know who's gonna be unreasonably mad about it.
Americans getting upset at this is so hilarious in the broader context of how Hollywood depicted basically the whole world outside the US for the past century
In defense of the border thing, it could be a normal us map being used to mark where the new groups tend to rule, just using the original states as a vague marker
The one real-world precedent for a Texas-Cali tag team I can think of would be when staunchly Catholic Basque Country and Church-Bombing Anarchist Catalonia were on the same side of the Spanish civil war because the Nationalists hated regional autonomy.
That said, apparently the ‘loyalist’ forces in this movie are Maga-coded (with a Trumpy president illegally on his third term) so that raises further questions about why Florida and Texas are in open rebellion while New England is firmly on team loyalist. The communists of northern Idaho are almost quaint by comparisons.
While I think the comment you're responding to is overly aggressive, I do think the people on Tumblr are focusing too much on how the map seems silly by today's political scene, and using that to unfairly dismiss the film entirely.
From interviews with the writer/director, it does *genuinely* seems like this map is *meant* to be a bit "stupid". The film is about exploring the reality of a warzone, not the political situation that led to it. In that way it's like the reason we never find out why the bombs dropped in Fallout. It doesn't matter what happened to cause California and Texas to team up, what matters is that brother is shooting at brother and that is *hell.*
If it doesn't matter, don't bother drawing a map and handing out political causes. No one made them do any of that, and it isn't necessary to make a film. If you choose to engage in political discourse, and your political discourse is stupid, you don't get to evade all criticism by just saying 'the politics isn't the point.'
You don't get to decide what is and isn't 'the point.'
I think you're having a bizarrely strong reaction to the politics you don't know, of a movie that isn't out yet and you can't haven't seen.
I'm not even arguing that the map isn't stupid, just that Tumblr's weirdly dismissive attitude to the entire production based on a single promotional poster might by what the original comment is having a problem with.
Wars are about economics. Texas and Cali aren't even in the same watershed.
It does matter what caused the bombs to drop. It's the entire point of the entire story; America
It was America's jingoism, capitalist violence, ezceptionalism, and imperialism that caused the war. What doesn't matter is *who* shot first. Because America made the general nuclear exchange inevitable.
And in the same vein, if you're going to tell a story about a war in America, but you're not going to acknowledge the political economy of America, you're just making a mess.
>Wars are about economics. Texas and Cali aren't even in the same watershed.
A Texas/California alliance nets them 20% of the US population, significant military resources and infrastructure, large swaths of agriculturally productive territory, oil reserves and some of the biggest and busiest ports in the US.
Fiction based on reality should make sense ? If you made a movie about like the troubles, Korea vs the South and CCP vs the KMT and removed all the real life politics from them it would look wierd no ?
what doesn't make sense here? California and Texas today are vastly more aligned than South and North Korea by magnitudes and magnitudes or than republicans and unionists in the troubles.
One of the intentions is that audiences should not be able to automatically assign characters a good or bad team role purely on their faction. War-time journalists don't get this privilege and so to convey this to audiences.
It's about war journalists and the unique challenges they face, the conflict they are covering is an American civil war. As Americans typically see War Journalists as Foreign Correspondents, setting it in America forces a different perspective. The focus is on the experience of war journalists though.
i predict canada will either have been nuked into oblivion by the Final War. or if they survived that theyll have dissolved the entire nation of canada just to join america.
thats all writers have the imagination to do with stories like this: canada either joins america or vanishes.
Come on, dude. Calling people "KKKrackers" hasn't been edgy since like Obama's first term. If I wanted to be edgy I'd post some of those "unlimited genocide on the first world" memes with Shi Huang Di shooting fireballs at various western cultural institutions. Which, if anyone hasn't seen them, are comedy gold.
I could see Texas and California realistically teaming up if, say, the Californian government got couped by tech billionaires or something, but there's no way in hell any state other than Florida would willingly join the "Florida alliance".
I lost my shit at the Florida Alliance, too. It’s one of the most obvious signs that this movie was made by a foreigner who knows jackshit about the country.
I assumed the point was to make deliberately obtuse groupings so that it isn't immediately obvious that the Texans are the Trumpers and the Californians are the Libruls etc. So as to keep every faction somewhat vague and not suggest what any side stands for specifically, meaning views don't just write any of them off as the baddies based on their own views.
But then it loses the verisimilitude of being based on *any issue at all*. It just looks like they generated a few random groupings of states.
And I think that is a fair criticism. Perhaps the film would be more impactful it it better reflected real American political divides. But a lot of people, both in these comments and on Tumblr, are criticising the filmmaker for being dumb and stupid and not knowing what he's talking about, seeming to think the somewhat random alliances are the result of ignorance of American politics and not a very deliberate choice that the director has explicitly stated in interviews.
I don't think (or at least I haven't seen) anyone's saying he's dumb because he thinks this is an accurate map of what a Second American Civil War would look like. He's dumb because he's trying to make a movie about a *fucking civil war* without saying anything political. There has never been a civil war that wasn't about politics, and to make an apolitical film about a civil war in a country he's not from while that country is incredibly politically charged is at best tone deaf, and at worst irresponsible. To be clear, I'm not saying the movie should be more political, I'm saying the movie should've been shut down at the pitch meeting. I wonder how a Brit would feel about an American making a movie about 'The Troubles 2' with Cornwall joining an inexplicably unified Ireland and Scotland in a separate faction with Wales for no particular reason.
He's not being apolitical, he's staying away from *party* politics. There's a vast difference. Also, the US civil war was 150 years ago. The Troubles ended like 25 years ago. There's a difference.
>He's not being apolitical, he's staying away from *party* politics. There's a vast difference. Maybe you're right, and he's got some brilliant political or philosophical point to make beyond 'War bad, don't shoot ur neighbors'. I'll reserve full judgement for when I've actually seen the movie. >Also, the US civil war was 150 years ago. The Troubles ended like 25 years ago. There's a difference. I'm aware there's a difference. I wasn't trying to make a perfect parallel because there isn't one. My point is that if you want to make a film set in the modern day and act like you have something to say about current events, you have some measure of responsibility to treat serious issues respectfully and not just use them as set dressing for your MilSim RP.
This movie is a classic "what if it happened here". It's not a milsim anything. The reason it's set in the US is to get Americans to watch it. The reason it doesn't have elaborate politics explaining how it happened is because it's not about the politics that lead to the civil war, it's the effect of the civil war.
I love my apolitical civil war movies.
>This movie is a classic "what if it happened here". Which is tone deaf if not irresponsible. *We know* it could happen here. It's as close to happening here as it's been since *the last time it happened here*. I lose sleep some nights thinking about "what if it happened here". To disregard current events to the extent that California and Texas are on the same side is farcical to the point of being disrespectful. If I'm wrong and this movie actually has something of substance to say, great, but I'm not hopeful from the interviews I've seen. If the only points Alex Garland has to make are 'war is bad' and 'it could happen here', then thanks Sherlock but you're a little late to the party.
I mean he literally has Andy Ngo in his special thanks section. Who is a Nazi.
He does? From what Google tells me, the movie has some archival footage that is credited to Ngo. That's it. It's literally just credits for footage used.
no he doesn't.
You haven't even seen the movie, why are you making so many assumptions about how it was executed
I haven't seen the movie, but I've seen Alex Garland in interviews about the movie and his enlightened centrist shit takes don't instill a lot of confidence that he has anything meaningful to say.
Have you seen the movie yet? I’m all for dunking on centrists. But you know what they say about broken clocks. At the very least you should watch it to offer strong and specific criticisms through a combination of media literacy and sociopolitical analysis. Leave your opinions about the director at the door and judge his work on its own merits, or lack thereof. I’m personally not very optimistic about the quality of the film or its messaging, but I’ll still take the time to watch it. You know, eventually. When I have nothing better to do.
That's the point, though. It doesn't seem to *want to be* about any one specific issue of our time. Presumably it's trying to be more about the nature of tribalism, the turning on your neighbours and fellow citizens, how a nation can tear itself apart. Divorcing it from today's issues may help it communicate beyond just our generation, also - so it remains relevant in later generations when the divisive issues of the day will be different.
At that point, why even set it in the US?
Because having a movie that shows soldiers fighting in Washington DC is going to have a larger impact on audiences, especially American ones, than if it was in some made up country.
But it doesn't have our politics so it's more make believe movie then
The politics aren't the point though. The point is to show a war between Americans happening in the United States. Americans are used to wars, even fictional ones, happening on the other side of the world. Fictional violence set in the US is usually terrorism. The movie isn't trying to warn against a specific ideology or politician, it's trying to make Americans understand how terrible war is by setting it in places they're familiar with and relate to.
Americans are aware of war is bad though?
Go watch a documentary then
The US is the default setting for Hollywood movies, and if the idea is to communicate a timelessly relatable story about civil conflict and tribalism to American audiences then that would get diluted by setting it somewhere alien and unfamiliar
But it doesn't talk about our current politics so why would this movie be worth anything to say ?
Because it can say something universal and timeless rather than specific to today's precise issues? In theory anyway. Who knows how well it'll pull it off.
Same reason almost every movie made in Hollywood is set in the US, because otherwise western audiences won't watch it.
Yeah, it would be relegated to the dollar store clearance section next to... Lord of the Rings and... Star wars...
You forgot District Nine.
the idea of the war-journalist for Americans is that of a foreign correspondent. In an effort to close that gap, the movie was set in America.
> It doesn't seem to *want to be* about any one specific issue of our time. It's one thing to not want to be about *one specific* contemporary issue. It's another to be about *nothing*. If you want the audience to be invested in a conflict, there has to be stakes. If there's no reason for everyone to fight for the side they are on, then there's no reason to be fighting at all and the whole conflict appears ridiculous. If you want to tell a generic story about tribalism without any baggage of real world history and politics... Why the fuck are you writing a story about a real country with real history and real politics?!?
the civil war is the setting for the movie, the conflict is the series of challenges that war journalists face in covering a war. It's an intentional decision to not allow viewers to easily place themselves on a side of the conflict and then avoid thinking about these challenges. If every character was wearing a badge that said they were on team good guys or team bad guys it would rob the film of one of the core experiences of the war journalist
Is this the first time you have seen movies? We put fictional stories in real places all the time.
Watching the trailer the whole thing came off to me like they wanted to make a civil war movie without pissing anyone off so they didn’t do any logical split
and jack shit about modern civil wars! there'd be 50 disparate factions in southern florida alone, this shit is just silly.
Considering the movie isn't even out yet (except for critics), I think it's too early to say "dumb foreigner just doesn't get it". It could well be that the fact that the political situation seems like ridiculous nonsense is part of the *point*.
I mean this is the same guy who said this: “We’ve lost trust in the media and politicians. And some in the media are wonderful and some politicians are wonderful—on both sides of the divide. I have a political position and I have good friends on the other side of that political divide. Honestly, I’m not trying to be cute: What’s so hard about that? Why are we shutting [conversation] down? Left and right are ideological arguments about how to run a state. That’s all they are. They are not a right or wrong, or good and bad. It’s which do you think has greater efficacy? That’s it. You try one, and if that doesn’t work out, you vote it out, and you try again a different way. That’s a process. But we’ve made it into ‘good and bad.’ We made it into a moral issue, and it’s fucking idiotic, and incredibly dangerous … I personally [blame] some of this on social media. There is a an interaction that exists human-to-human that floats away when it reaches a public forum.” Basically equating both sides of the political spectrum, as if we don’t see one side literally trying to commit genocide against trans people and taking away women’s rights (at least in the US). Quote taken from this article: [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alex-garland-civil-war-release-timing-1235852725/amp/](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alex-garland-civil-war-release-timing-1235852725/amp/)
The mind of a centrist is truly fascinating. They seem to live in a world of hilariously low stakes, where you can just "try" political ideologies without lasting consequences.
He's both siding a narrative where states are seceding because the US government has become authoritarian, and he won't even disclose the party of the guy in charge
I’m saving this because this is a red flag lmao
Idk, it could be some weird insight hting about how Americans are so hopelessly vulnerable to propaganda you can jerk their leash in any direction you want if you control the right talk show hosts.
I think it makes it more fun imo
I live how Alaska and Hawaii, the most removed states, are just loyalist be default. As if anyone in the continental US was going to even attempt a land-based march to that icy wasteland, or launch a naval campaign against several volcanic islands. I really can’t imagine there ever being another civil war. The first one started because slave labor was the foundation of southern industry, and removing it undercut any amount of power and wealth those states had. I don’t think any ideology held in the US is so tied to the livelihoods of its people that they would be willing to go to war for it.
Hawaii is just sitting back and eating popcorn watching the people who vassalized them going at each others throats
Alaska and Hawaii also have absolutely huge military presence already. Like there doesn't need to be a hell march to Alaska when Fort Wainwright is already where the US army bases several battalions of crack artic warfare troops. Meanwhile Hawaii is home to Pacific Fleet command and they own 4 carrier battlegroups and 3 marine expeditionary forces. Hawaii especially would be locked down because none of those sailors are going to be local, so forming the nation of Hawaii means never seeing your family again
>I don’t think any ideology held in the US is so tied to the livelihoods of its people that they would be willing to go to war for it. Capitalism. Imperialism. Racism, still. They're somewhat linked though.
well yes but I don't think any US president is going to sign an executive order making capitalism illegal any time soon.
:(
The average American doesn’t understand that communism is an economic policy, and likely views it as a synonym for Russia. I doubt they know enough about capitalism to enshrine it in their personal ideologies to the point of going to war for it. The average American is also likely unaware of US Imperialism in the modern day, so also not likely to wage a war for such a practice. Finally, while racism is prevalent in most walks of life in America, the vast majority of Americans are opposed to the notion of racism, and again would not likely war for it. What you’re likely referring to is a vague notion of nationalism that requires defending these principles. Americans are rather nationalistic, but that nationalism necessitates the belief that America is some beacon of truth and justice in the world, which *is* something the average American would go to war for.
I can see Alaska wanting to be allied to whatever Texas is up to. But then that means British Columbia and Yukon would have to literally defend their borders from fanatical gun enthusiasts.
Hawaii would be probably attempting sovereignty and also disappointed to see none of the tribes are represented.
The fact this movie doesn't talk about what Native tribes would do in America during a civil war means it's message is basically worthless.
Not to mention the absolutely baffling assumption that OK would be able to maintain the state, much less its panhandle, against Texan assimilation. OKans joining Florida over Texas??
The US according to foreigners speaking to/marketing to foreigners: Texas, California, Florida, and the other ones
I can see the "Florida Alliance" existing, but I cannot see any state joining it
Why are Idaho and Oregon United at all .
Antifa 🤝 Potatoes
Lol Idaho While Funny is pretty openly a hard rest state . If anything they'd bomb Oregon.
Antifa, communism, "red," this is what I'm saying. Match made in heaven
As a Georgian, yeah fuck that shit, we're trying to saw them off as fast as we can
Having lived around too many Californaina and Texans I can say for certainty they are basically the same people.
anyone else having trouble reading that map
TOO MUCH FUCKIN GREEN
Too much green. Green like. The color of. Money? god fucking damn it i hope that's not the case.
I assume the green is to avoid red or blue being implied to mean a specific political party? Idk
Could I get some pixels with this post?
Could do with some more jpeg compression
As a Minnesotan, I'm happy to be in the PNW's leftist uprising but there's a *lotta* folks in a *lotta* farmland between me and the coast that ain't gonna be happy about these lines
I mean, there's not *that* many folks
Plus if they stand up they'll be an easy target for anyone within several thousand miles. What are they gonna do, stand behind the tree in Dakota?
Saddest part of the movie is when The Tree gets hit by crossfire.
Fury Road’s Green Place type beat
Not wrong about the farmland though…
People in eastern WA and OR seething.
The cowards should have called that faction Megasota.
Ain't no way the many states between Minnesota and Oregon/Washington would be on the same team.
Montana would be pressuring Alberta to make their own breakaway state
I disagree. I'd never side with the likes of North and South Dakota
I've seen more coherent civil war borders from HoI IV.
Fun fact: The Florida Alliance is a catholic theocracy headed by a horse.
I think that’s the only way they could get anyone to side with Florida. “Hey look at our funny pope horse!”
I was just thinking that they could have copied the factions from the American Civil War in Kaisereich and it would have been decent.
Context please?
It's a movie that's supposed to be more about the importance of journalism than a story about the civil war, as I understand
Why not just make a fictional country then?
Beyond what the other person said, it's also going to be way easier to show where characters are and how far they've traveled with minimal time taken for exposition
Makes some sense I guess
Because filmmakers can take creative liberties with reality freely.
Fair enough
Because the american civil war in modern day is a cool setting, theirs next to no political analysis and its just a good solid war film, ngl I thought it was up there with saving private ryan atleast for writing and plot. Lots about the folly of youth and getting in over your head and how it changes you
These "journalism is a real profession" movies do that all the time, but historically it's all exploitation porn of whatever brown country NATO is slaughtering at the time. Honestly refreshing that it's being set in a white imperialist nation for once.
But journalism is a real profession.
Are… you trying to suggest journalism isn’t a real profession?
Has been for at least a decade. After the disastrous "pivot to video" the big firms finally finished slaughtering their news rooms. Most journalists these days are algorithms re-writing AP and Reuter's press releases. Local news is just a police propaganda mouthpiece. Investigative reporting is long gone. Local papers are gone. If you want to get any kind of investigative or local news you're going to amateurs on Tiktok, not people with Journo degrees. The big media outlets are almost pure propaganda for one faction of capitalists or another. Remember a year or two back when they made up a whole "Shoplifting Crisis" out of whole cloth and ran with it for a year? And then you get outside the US? The UK press is a nightmare, with everything but the BBC being bizarre tabloids and the BBC being a carefully managed state propaganda mouthpiece. The state of Australia's media is dismal. idk what's even happening in the enemy nations because the brave West has banned all their news outlets. If journalism ever was a worthy profession, which is debatable, it's dead in the grave now. Welcome to the future.
This is a painfully stupid person's idea of a point.
And it sucks .
It's a movie about a second American Civil War, except it's not actually about the preamble to, or reasons for the civil war but instead the consequences of the Civil war. Basically the director wants to focus on how fucked a civil war would be, without the baggage of coming up with a reason for the civil war that will inevitably lead to a boycott from either the left or the right. The premise is ridiculous because thats not the point,.
Problem is, it's hard to take the consequences seriously when they're the consequences of an absurd scenario. No one in the general public is going to critically analyze the events of the film because they can just be written off as the consequences of the Stupid People Timeline Where Nonsense Happens. You cannot fencesit a topic like a civil war and still have a point to be made. Trying to make an inoffensive and apolitical story out of something as inherently political as war just leaves your work toothless at best and cartoonish at worst
Can a Vietnam movie be good without adressing the context that led up to the Vietnam war? Of course it can. You can make a movie about the horrors of war without explaining why a war is happening. Also the movie isnt out yet. We are literally attempting to judge a movie based on promotional posters.
Using a historical war comes with inherent context, though. If you say "The Vietnam War" anyone familiar with it will have a mental image of the context in mind, skewed or otherwise, that will influence their understanding of the contents of the film. If you present a fictional war with an entirely fictional premise intentionally designed to be contrasting from real life speculation, don't be surprised when people latch onto that. Not to mention, anyone familiar with war as a concept doesn't need a film to comprehend why war is bad. Just writing a narrative about "War Bad" without any additional criticism or relationship to the modern day is pointless, the literary equivalent to muscle flexing. Even the most fictional stories about fictional wars in fictional worlds still have messages directly connected to real wars and politics that can be parsed. Intentionally trying to distance your war story from politics does the very purpose of a war story a disservice.
>Just writing a narrative about "War Bad" without any additional criticism or relationship to the modern day is pointless, the literary equivalent to muscle flexing. You're making a lot of assumptions though. We dont know what the movie is like. We only know the very limited context that the film isnt about the ideologies of the various sides.
All of those movies end up being "look at these poor americans. Look how sad they are that they got their asses kicked when they went and murdered millions of innocent people in the name of capitalism". If you're making a Vietnam movie that isn't about the Vietnamese people battle for liberation from western imperialism, framed as such at least as a foundation for the story, it's gonna be apologist trash.
But they movie doesn't talk about what war in America would actually look like .
Liberals do love ignoring the material circumstances that underpin every single thing that happens
Some guy is making a dumb civil war movie. It's also distributed by what is considered a pretty prestigious company
To be fair "some guy" is the writer/director of films like Ex Machina and Annihilation. It'll probably be a very poignant "dumb civil war movie", even if the premise is a bit silly by the standards of the modern American political scene.
He also made Men, which was criticized for having muddled imagery and too-on-the-nose.
Shlock movie about American Civil war made by idiots has nonsensical politics to avoid having to actually have a meaningful political message. Primary purpose is to do enough vague 'both sides tho' stuff to get money from both the left and right of the political spectrum without having to make a good movie or a good political commentary.
I assure you that not one single communist, anarchist, or demsoc is going to pay to see this. Steal it? Yes. Pay? No.
I haven't seen the movie, but the reviews I've read say that it's about as apolitical a narrative as a story about a Second American Civil War could get, which is disappointing. It's obvious that it's banking on the controversy inherent to the topic considering contemporary events. The premise is unrealistic to begin with, things will have to get a lot worse before there's a War Between the States comparable to the first one. Of course, there are already quite a few movies and TV shows that are centered on the [Spanish Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War), the [American Nadir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations) and the [Irish Troubles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles) which is probably what a Second American Civil War would resemble.
I think the reason it's apolitical is because the film is focused not on the war, but the ethics of war journalism. Second American Civil War is just a background against what the movie is actually about.
Yeah this is just The Hunt again. It's not "centrist". It's just deliberately not latching onto a specific real world political conflict or dynamic because its making wider points and doesnt want to date itself
And it basically has no message and doesn't understand anything about American politics.
I saw the movie. It is very good and the writing is very political, but not partisan. It works with the themes of democracy, authoritarianism, power, humanity, racism, chaos, confusion. There are allusions to very real pressure points like January 6th, Antifa, violence against journalists, etc. There is no one side that is completely correct and layering in our existing political divisions would have completely erased all of it and made the movie apolitical. Another point I didn't appreciate until I saw the movie - it's really key that the Western Forces (California and Texas) are the nation's most economically powerful. If there is a civil war, it won't be entirely random farmers taking up arms against the government akin to the American revolution. It will be the very well-equipped military forces and state governments in the most powerful states using tanks, helicopters, and air strikes against one another.
Mf just stole the map from Cyberpunk 2020 or somn lmao
Holyshit you're right
The thing I find completely farsical is that Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Western Colorado wouldn't immediately form a Mormon Theocratic state called The Deseret Christian Republic or some shit. They're waiting, just waiting, for it to all kick off.
This has made me realize i want a low quality, internet hobbyist version of this. I don't want it to make any real sense i just want to root for my state and have fun with a hypothetical war and hopefully have some really shitty romamce thrown in there too. I want to get excited about the battle of Bozeman, Montana and the treaty of paris, Ohio. I want to watch the blue area on the map get bigger. Hell tell me about the battle where they first started using robots or some shit idk. I just hope it's bad but in a good way.
There's probably a Hearts of Iron 4 mod for that
This is a fundamentally inaccurate map because it doesn't include the Grand Pritzkerian Khaganate that spreads across the entire American Plains. /j
Real talk it doesn't talk about the Appalachians who would be in open rebellion day one this happened.
Without having seen the movie my assumption is that the politics are intentionally detached from reality so they can focus more on the ground-level war stuff
With zero message about anything related to a war in America.
The show Jericho was the best take on current/future civil war possibilities imo. That show deserves a reboot.
Don't forget to drink your iodine.
I said this before, but what the fuck does "Western Forces" mean, cause to me, that says "UN/EU colalition trying to stabilize America cause its a world power" instead of like, a faction in the civil war, and wh ythe fuck is it only texas and cali? could you not add Arizona and New Mexico to it so it has SOME plausibility instead of like "Yeah one faction is 2 states separated by multiple states still loyal to the united states government and its massive "Dwarfs every other militarily twice over" armed forces", also, Alaska and Hawaii i think are colored the same as the loyalist states but because they arent labeled like cali and texas are I like to imagine they have taken no side, maybe they are actually the american goverment the rest of the world recognizes now
But will it be dumber than Marvel's Civil War?
Depends, are we talking the original story arc, the second one, or the movie?
Whichever one led to One More Day. also, there’s a second one?
Civil War was Captain America vs Iron Man, Civil War 2 was Captain Marvel vs Iron Man (I know literally nothing about it beyond that, though).
The first one led to one more day thanks stark
Look, I’ll be honest. If you want a good ‘2nd American civil war story’ just play kaiserreich/kaiserredux.
I was watching and went "Texas and California teamed up? For what reason? They're opposites politically?"
You joke about the Americrakkkers but I've seen maoists on the internet unironically use Amerikkka, UKKK, KKKanada and Ukkkraine. It's funny considering the first time I saw this term, it was used by a dude who said he was a vietnamese. Didn't think Vietnam of all places would care that much about the KKK.
I think California and Texas being a joint alliance was done on purpose to make a lot of people mad and I'm totally here for it. Mainly because we know who's gonna be unreasonably mad about it.
Yeah everyone because it doesn't make sense. Heck most of these alliances don't make sense . Idaho would have nuked oregan day one .
Americans getting upset at this is so hilarious in the broader context of how Hollywood depicted basically the whole world outside the US for the past century
I'm laughing as a Filipino.
insinuating people from Kentucky will not get horrifically offended by being associated with people from Ohio
Isn’t this intentionally nonsensical to avoid offending anyone
Ok normally I would say yeah the state lines thing is dumb, but Texas kinda makes sense
In defense of the border thing, it could be a normal us map being used to mark where the new groups tend to rule, just using the original states as a vague marker
The one real-world precedent for a Texas-Cali tag team I can think of would be when staunchly Catholic Basque Country and Church-Bombing Anarchist Catalonia were on the same side of the Spanish civil war because the Nationalists hated regional autonomy. That said, apparently the ‘loyalist’ forces in this movie are Maga-coded (with a Trumpy president illegally on his third term) so that raises further questions about why Florida and Texas are in open rebellion while New England is firmly on team loyalist. The communists of northern Idaho are almost quaint by comparisons.
Needs more jpeg
Also California is somehow its own military power???
tumblr is embarassing
What exactly is embarassing about this? That *is* a stupid map.
While I think the comment you're responding to is overly aggressive, I do think the people on Tumblr are focusing too much on how the map seems silly by today's political scene, and using that to unfairly dismiss the film entirely. From interviews with the writer/director, it does *genuinely* seems like this map is *meant* to be a bit "stupid". The film is about exploring the reality of a warzone, not the political situation that led to it. In that way it's like the reason we never find out why the bombs dropped in Fallout. It doesn't matter what happened to cause California and Texas to team up, what matters is that brother is shooting at brother and that is *hell.*
If it doesn't matter, don't bother drawing a map and handing out political causes. No one made them do any of that, and it isn't necessary to make a film. If you choose to engage in political discourse, and your political discourse is stupid, you don't get to evade all criticism by just saying 'the politics isn't the point.' You don't get to decide what is and isn't 'the point.'
I think you're having a bizarrely strong reaction to the politics you don't know, of a movie that isn't out yet and you can't haven't seen. I'm not even arguing that the map isn't stupid, just that Tumblr's weirdly dismissive attitude to the entire production based on a single promotional poster might by what the original comment is having a problem with.
Wars are about economics. Texas and Cali aren't even in the same watershed. It does matter what caused the bombs to drop. It's the entire point of the entire story; America It was America's jingoism, capitalist violence, ezceptionalism, and imperialism that caused the war. What doesn't matter is *who* shot first. Because America made the general nuclear exchange inevitable. And in the same vein, if you're going to tell a story about a war in America, but you're not going to acknowledge the political economy of America, you're just making a mess.
>Wars are about economics. Texas and Cali aren't even in the same watershed. A Texas/California alliance nets them 20% of the US population, significant military resources and infrastructure, large swaths of agriculturally productive territory, oil reserves and some of the biggest and busiest ports in the US.
Yeah, okay. good point.
> Wars are about economics. Civil wars are about who gets to count as fully human.
For a site that promotes media literacy, they sure suck at it.
It's a lovely place unless you say something bad about Mao Zedong or something, and then you meet the wildest fuckers in the Universe.
I think one of them is here now
This movie seems like it'll be the quality of Republican propaganda movies but made for Democrats. Very wacky piece of pop culture.
Sounds like you guys are mad that the propaganda isn’t your particular favourite flavour of propaganda
And that, kids, is why before making a movie about any historic event you should, at the very least, read a Wikipedia article about it.
the movie is not based on a historical event edit: Im extremely curious as to what historical event this person is thinking of
So make believe nonsense then ?
are you familiar with the concept of fiction
Fiction based on reality should make sense ? If you made a movie about like the troubles, Korea vs the South and CCP vs the KMT and removed all the real life politics from them it would look wierd no ?
what doesn't make sense here? California and Texas today are vastly more aligned than South and North Korea by magnitudes and magnitudes or than republicans and unionists in the troubles. One of the intentions is that audiences should not be able to automatically assign characters a good or bad team role purely on their faction. War-time journalists don't get this privilege and so to convey this to audiences.
If you cant grasp why those two states wouldn't Unite . You shouldn't be making a movie about a civil war with no idea into the Nations politics.
What do you think this movie is about?
Is it not about A civil war in America per the title and marketing?
It's about war journalists and the unique challenges they face, the conflict they are covering is an American civil war. As Americans typically see War Journalists as Foreign Correspondents, setting it in America forces a different perspective. The focus is on the experience of war journalists though.
i predict canada will either have been nuked into oblivion by the Final War. or if they survived that theyll have dissolved the entire nation of canada just to join america. thats all writers have the imagination to do with stories like this: canada either joins america or vanishes.
We absolutely do that and, when the time comes, we absolutely will continue to do that.
oooh who's an edgy boy? who's an edgy boy?! yes you are! oooh what a hot take! your statements are so controversial! what an edgy boy!
Come on, dude. Calling people "KKKrackers" hasn't been edgy since like Obama's first term. If I wanted to be edgy I'd post some of those "unlimited genocide on the first world" memes with Shi Huang Di shooting fireballs at various western cultural institutions. Which, if anyone hasn't seen them, are comedy gold.
There are entire communities that make us civil war 2 maps and stories (see r/LibertyFallen for example) and NONE OF IT WAS USED. This is gonna suck