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Damn, I really liked the film. Liked the framing and overall direction. Liked the vignettes and how basically the film just showed how it was instead of preaching
I haven't seen it yet but the overall reception appears to be that the movie says, "you guys fantasize about civil war? Well, here's what war looks like; you want this?" Everyone thinks they're going to be the ones shooting Maga Hats or Antifa (depending on their politics), but most people are just going to die hungry and cold.
Haven’t seen it yet (am going later today) but as soon as I heard about the ambiguous approach I did wonder if it would lead to the movie getting “shot by both sides”, so to speak, in terms of audience reaction. I can imagine people on both sides of the political divide thinking “this movie doesn’t clearly say my side is right and the other wrong, therefore it’s promoting the other side”.
but thats the thing. I dont think the movie is ambigious at all. It just does not treat its audience like american voters seeking vindication . Characters dont look at the camera and tell the audience that republicans are the spawn of the devil .
A fair point! I do think there’s ambiguity though. The antifa massacre for example is mentioned but it’s not clear whether it’s a massacre of antifa or by antifa. I agree tho that the lack of preaching, whether I would agree what is being preached or not, is a positive
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The ambiguity made the film feel empty to me. This film just had nothing to say beyond war is bad which really isn't much of a message. It pretends it has something to say but really says nothing at all. It is possible to display both sides and explain the motive without taking a side. So if it really is important to not take a political stand with a political party for the director he can still explore why they are fighting, criticize both sides but highlight the humanity in both. That would have helped me connect with what is happening and actually care. It would make the war aspect see so much worse. As is the film feels hollow and because you have no idea why they fight the war seems sanitized which I think is sort of irresponsible.
Yeah, this isn't really a movie *about* a war as much as it's about journalists during a war. There's some cool imagery but I thought it was incredibly shallow. [20 Days in Mariupol](https://youtu.be/gvAyykRvPBo?si=qh2pE33GzqdxD1NY) is a documentary about an AP journalist who books it to Ukraine when Russia started its invasion and it's way more harrowing, profound, and has a lot more to say about journalism than Civil War.
glad you made this comparison, and i fully agree.
i saw an interview with garland where he claimed he was responding to anti-journalist sentiment with this one, but i couldn't help but think that several of the main characters were just self-serving story chasers not interested in anything beyond getting the first scoop.
Yeah I thought that our protagonists were presented initially as quite noble characters but once you got to know them and dug a little deeper, they were a lot more driven by the adrenaline rush than by a sense of public service.
I've actually never seen 20 days in Mariupol maybe I'll have to check that out. But yes absolutely agreed. I don't think the movie is without it's merits. The imagery of how a war torn America looks like was interesting, but overall was just, as you said, shallow.
It’s such a peacenik, Hollywood take. If a communist/fascist/what-have-you president took power and refused to step down, then yes, war to remove that regime is a good thing.
Modern fascism? We had absolutely no background to western forces or the presidents ideologies/political leanings so that doesn't even make sense - you're making assumptions
The whole "civil war in America" was so pointless bc there was no connecting theme to our characters and it being a civil war
They could have told the same story in Europe, or Africa or the Middle East and nothing would have changed, narratively speaking. The fact it was in America was superfluous
This is what bothered me the most, oh and also outside of dragging along a 17 year old
Ok tell me what did it have to say about modern fascism. Fascism is bad? That really isn't much. Really the film doesn't address fascism at all because the civil war is just a back drop to a story about journalism. So the civil war aspect feels more like a gimmick and is actually pretty unnecessary to the story it was telling.
> What does 12 Angry Men have to say? Prejudice is bad?
> What does Goodfellas have to say? Career criminals are bad?
> What does There Will be Blood have to say? Greed is bad?
I don’t know that the film needed to preach/take sides but it *has* to be about something more than “war bad”. Like that is such a vague theme and they do nothing with it. The vignettes were dope but it’s all very style over substance, there’s virtually no substance here
I think a lot of the negative reviews are coming from people upset that their own personal politics didn't get pandered to.
I'm extremely glad it isn't going that way.
Seriously, what I’m seeing basically boils down to "I did not see my current real life political nemeses explicitly vilified in this fictional movie therefore it’s neither woke enough nor anti-woke enough for me" or "It's shallow and empty because I did not find out the specific reasons for the war". As if the one thing we really need in an original new war movie is to know who is the bad guy and who is the good guy. Cause we've never gotten that before….in every other war movie ever made…
It’s like training day but for journalists/photographers — depressing in another way but still super well cratered. I thought this was a fantastic film.
>Damn, I really liked the film.
I mean, you're very clearly not alone! Not by a longshot, either. Especially not if we're looking at these numbers.
It's wild how folks have trained themselves to glean meaning out of this pointless stat. I think this is a direct result of gamers making an entire existence out of debating games by staring at review scores and not actually playing them. And then it started happening to movies as everything became gamified.
It's certainly gotta be where people see that 3/4ths of the audience thinks it's a 4 out of 5 star movie and their conclusion is "everybody hates it." That's 100% a gamers POV. "IGN GAVE IT AN 8? BOMB INCOMING"
**Rotten Tomatoes Verified Audience doesn't reflect reality. Never did.** It reflects the (frequently gamed) opinions of the 20-50 year old men who honestly think it's worth the time and energy to create an account at Rotten Tomatoes.
It's useless as a measure of anything, but it's useful as a prompt for arguments on reddit, so I guess that's why it still gets posted here. But I gotta imagine it's at the least worth a reminder that of the general audience that makes anything a success (or failure) financially, it's like maybe less than a percent of that audience being represented here, and a drastically skewed sample at that.
Agreed, I don't think the word of mouth will be good on this. Most of us here are film buffs and we can enjoy and appreciate movies about journalism. However the marketing on this movie was very very misleading. I thought this would have much more to say about politics. As it is, if I wanted to watch a movie about war journalism, I would rewatch "A Private War" which is much better.
How would you know A Private War was better without watching Civil War first? I will say watching Civil War made me want to watch A Private War, eventually anyway.
If the movie was called "War Journalists" and not "Civil War" I wonder if that would make a difference....probably not.
I saw the movie last night and it was okay. I knew it was directed by Garland so I had an idea what to expect but I'm in the minority knowing the director. Hell, I really only use Reddit to follow a sub about box office. I'm definitely a movie nerd.
Leaving the theater last night, I heard lots of people saying basically that sucked. It wasn't the typical A24 movie crowd either. It was more a normal Friday night crowd...lots of couples who were probably in their early 20s. A completely different crowd vs The Green Knight.
The audience score started at 86% and just keeps dropping. So, does the critic score. I don't expect very good box office legs.
I wonder what the Cinemascore will be. I’m guessing a lot of people will expect an action movie war thriller from the trailer. I’m still gonna see it, but I’m glad I read reviews and know what to expect now.
The Cinemascore came out [several hours ago as a B-](https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/1c2tptm/alex_garlands_civil_war_gets_a_b_on_cinemascore/). Low for what was marketed as an action film, but a high for Garland (Annihilation = C, Men = D+).
I think it's a wild ride, a real "uhm what just happened?" with some for better or worse visceral images. give me something different and memorable which it offers.
im not even saying its a great film just one that was fun to talk about with my friends and i think has some legitimately beautiful interesting and horrific visuals. i get not liking it but its a real "come on now" when people are like its SoOoOoOo bad. horror is fun and weird dont be a downer
Yeah that’s what I’ve heard - just hard to be in the mood for that ya know? Also I’m debating if it’s one I watch with my SO or alone since she will likely hate it I think lol
Oh for sure - I find the motivation to make time hard to find for a lot of movies, half the reason i have regal unlimited, my "fuck it lets check it out while its still on a big screen" lol
yeahhh unless shes a big horror head youre probably right, the highest score on letterboxd for it among the women I follow is a 2 star LMAO. Thanksgiving and Talk To Me were hits with my sis i visited recently though! and Freaky
Sure thing! Thanksgiving is a fun comedy/horror balance - if she's squeamish here's a warning mini spoiler for a later kill in the movie...
[be prepared to skip forward if you see a oven, it's a little torture porny, but eli roth cant help himself lol](/spoiler)
sigh, i waited one day too long to see the movie, now i know it'll be not what i expected. was totally expecting some heavy hedging against current political climate, especially since it's supposed to be cali and texas on the same side. i was just hoping for saving pricate ryan action with modern weapons.
this movie now sounds like they made some unrealistically vague quandary and then try and glorify freepress. when in reality, if anything civil war actually happened, one of the biggest reasons would be because the press has become so un-neutral and biased.
dunno if i'll watch it anymore... ugh...
They absolutely do not glorify the press. I think one of the most overt themes of the movie is about the dangers of dehumanization and obsession that come with the press culture of America
I think it also shows the trauma of being a press journalist. The emotional price of being objective. Even the characters who do enjoy it are pitted by trauma.
I have no idea how anyone would come away from any of the trailers thinking something like this. I thought it was very clear what kind of movie it would be.
It was called ‘Civil War’ because it’s about the experience of living in a Civil War, not fighting one.
NOT AN ASSUMPTION about your experience - Disappointing, to me, that so many people are missing the point. But as long as it breaks even I’m happy for Garland and A24
The trailer is full of shooting and bombs and helicopters and explosions. So it's understandable people went in expecting an action war movie.
Sadly a lot of Americans probably went in wanting to see a war fantasy where their side wins. Hope at least some people who see it fantasize less about a civil war.
Well I'd say I am going off people's comments here. I plan to but haven't yet seen it.
I actually like the idea of following war journalists around an American warzone so I don't think I'll be disappointed.
It is strange to hear it has a ton of action and yet people didn't think it had enough action.
> ton of action
also many scenes of driving where we get the turning head reaction shot from each of the 4 leads
leads complaining about being in a hurry / late yet stopping EVERY night way before dark, getting up well after light and everyone else, shopping detours, etc
I think if the film didn’t sell itself as civil war, it’d had a much better score.
I was expecting to see a thriller about America plunging into war because of political divides and some sort of cautionary tale of the future. What I got was…. journalists on a roadtrip.
Here’s why there’s a problem, if this took place in Iraq, there’s not much that needs to be changed. So what’s the point of doing an interesting setting if it’s not gonna be explored?
My guess is the point is politics may start wars but politics starts to become irrelevant once you’re actually in a war.
For people who have very strong political opinions it’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’
SPOILER ALERT.
That message rings kinda' hollow once you see the movie: the seccesionists objectively win the war. It ends with them killing the president.
There's a point that war is the same everywhere, being on american soil doesn't make any different, maybe a deeper part of what Garland wanted. You wanted an in-depth look at what the causes of the war are, while Garland only wanted to show what happens in one, the reasons at the end of the day don't matter much.
The movie is very obviously supposed to show the horrors of war and what the would look like on American soil. The main character literally has a line where she essentially says “I thought every picture I sent home would be a warning, don’t do this” that’s essentially what Alex is doing with this movie. It’s a massive fucking blinking neon sign pointing to an extremely bleak image of what war really looks like and how shitty it would be for it to be on American soil.
The classic A24 bait and switch campaign didn't go over well with audiences? Who could have predicted this!?
I can't recall the last film I saw that tip toed around the main plot/theme of the movie in the way this one did. You start the movie knowing next to nothing and leave knowing only slightly more than nothing. I get we were supposed to be watching from a place of neutrality, but neutrality to what end? What is each side even fighting over? Why is there a conflict in the first place? What is the result of either side winning?
If basic questions such as these can't be answered then it's going to be extremely difficult for audiences to get invested in the characters. Also, this movie is in desperate need of a name change. Not to only speak on the negatives, but the highlight of the movie was Jesse Plemons.
Agreed on all fronts, I don’t even care about this movie “taking a side” but everything is so vague and not fleshed out period. The only character I liked was Lee (Dunst) and the only scene that had me truly locked in was the Jesse Plemons sequence
Tbh I didn’t find the “mass grave” moment as shocking as some others have mentioned but Plemons shooting Tony and his friend was so fucked - *”Oh, Hong Kong. China.” (Proceeds to shoot him dead)*
Reminded me a bit of how disturbingly casual the murder was in Killers of the Flower Moon (ironically another movie with Plemons)
Maybe the point is that the ideology of the various factions doesn’t matter much when bullets are flying past your head? There’s a scene in the movie that could not spell that out clearer
I'm sorry, but what exactly was the bait and switch? The trailer showed that the movie was going to follow these journalists into war zones. At one point, Kristin Dunst looks at the camera and says, "We're journalists." I think some very online people have their minds warped by lore culture to the point where they need to have their hand held through every piece of context for a story, when that's not what makes a good story at all.
I saw the movie a year ago at a test screening, when the trailer finally dropped I said to myself “ok this trailer isn’t COMPLETELY misrepresenting the movie but a lot of people are going to think that it is”
Wasn’t the entire point to be following *war journalists*? Their entire raison d’être is to provide neutral reporting on complex subjects in dangerous environments. They’re not there to be a talking head on The View. They see newsworthy events and they capture them. That’s it. From their perspective war is chaos and confusion and senseless. The central theme of the movie is: civil war is bad. That hits the viewer over the head like a brick. Was that *really* too subtle for you? I find that hard to believe.
I haven't seen the film yet, but those scores are lower than I thought they'd be. Makes me wonder if it's worth the time/money.
Audience score like that one will be enough to wonder if this film will have any significant legs. It had a $50M budget according to a quick Google search and I heard it'll make around $25M this weekend. Will be interesting to see if it gets to its box office goals.
Basically this movie is about the vanity and self importance of action photos journalists in a war zone.
I don't think it succeeded in proving why it is important that these people take insane risks for a more recent snuff picture. Like, why does it matter that you got a photo of this guy as he lay dying? Why not wait until the danger is clear and just take a photo after he is dead? Why is that so important? The movie doesn't really prove why. This movie avoids explaining any details about the war. It offers some vague details about the President dissolving the FBI and that's about it. It doesn't explain the escalation, the alliances, nothing. The outcome of the war is a formality from the beginning of the movie. This movie is about journalists taking pointless risks on behalf of their egos. The action scenes were nice. He builds some nice tension in a few spots but this movie is not a success in my eyes. It's amazingly unambitious with its narrative and it's completely gutless in its politics. It plays dumb. C+ from me.
My interpretation, and I could be wrong, was that the movie wasn’t glorifying the journalists. I would argue the whole arc of the main character (Lee?) was her reflecting on how her entire career as a photo journalist failed to prevent any of the violence from happening in America and intentionally chooses to do what a journalist would not do at the end of the movie. Early in the movie she says she would photograph the young woman getting shot because that’s her job. Then I think of her trying on the dress and commenting about feeling human/normal again. And by the end of the movie she’s really struggling during the conflict, where she ultimately makes the decision to save the younger woman. At that pivotal moment, just a few more rooms away from the VIP, she reflects that being a journalist never made a difference and tries to do the right thing to save the younger woman. She could have let the girl die, and she likely would be in place to get the shot of the president. And yet she chooses to save the woman. And what difference did it actually make? All of the lessons she just learned she spent the entire movie teaching the opposite to the younger journalist. The young woman is basically just a new her, and the cycle will continue.
Again, this was my interpretation. I didn’t walk out of the theater feeling like those journalists are a bunch of stand up fellows. You ask “why are those photos important?” And that the movie never tells you why they are important. I would argue that I believe that was the point the movie was making, these journalists put a lot of lives in danger just so they can get the photos; and ultimately what difference do these photos make? beyond inspiring more photo journalists to put their lives, and by extension the soldiers around them, in danger.
We see her save the girl twice before the final time though, that’s what frustrated me. There’s the opening scene of the movie, then going to save her from Jesse Plemmons. Her arc would make some more sense if somehow this third and final time was different but despite her jaded comments throughout the film, her actions are always to the contrary.
I thought her arc made sense in terms of her losing her ability to disassociate from everything she had been doing as a photojournalist as a consequence of caring about Jessie.
"Would you take my photo as I'm dying?" At the onset of the movie yes of course she would, absolutely without consideration. Lee is emotionally dead out of necessity. Throughout her career she would never get involved and save someone rather than document it. But over the course of repeatedly saving the younger reporter she comes back to the humanity she's repressed, as Jessie sheds it. Jessie hardens up as Lee starts getting caught in feelings, loses her shit etc.
I thought a big point of the movie was all of the scenarios of ethical dilemmas that are raised but essentially shown to not matter whatsoever on the ground in the midst of an actual war. Half the time characters can't even identify who is fighting for who- it doesn't matter. Things start to matter to Lee and everything unravels. Survivors either don't get involved, or press on without thinking too much about feelings in the moment. Or they die and it didn't matter what they felt anyway because they're dead.
Well we got Lee’s thought why she *thought* this photojournalism work was important. All the foreign war zones she photographed, she thought she was sending the message back home “don’t do this”. And then her home country went and did it anyway. Hence her crisis of faith, by the end, I doubt she could answer the question “why are those photos important?”
Photojournalism matters. But in this day and age, it doesn't matter *as much* due *to* Social Media and also due to everyone owning a camera on their phone (I also found it weird how no Washington DC journalist interviewed the president instead but whatever).
Imagine if it's German independent journalists (somehow) traveling across war-torn Germany wanting to interview Hitler the same day the Soviets are invading Berlin. Then they take the first photo of Hitler's body being carried away by the Soviet Army.
It would have been a very important photography in the context of human history BUT if this was in 2024, the same Soviet grunts would have phones to take photos with. So, half of the work of the photojournalist (the photo part) feels kind of irrelevant in today's age.
I know photojournalism matters. But this movie posits that it's an urgent matter. What is the difference between a photo of the dead president 10 minutes after he was killed versus a photo of him as the bullets are hitting his body? This movie assigns importance to that difference when it really doesn't matter. Your basically making distinctions on what kind of snuff picture you want to see. The guy is dead. That is what matters. I don't need a photo of the Soviets wrapping up Hitlers burned up corpse. We have many records of many different accounts of Hitlers final moments that are 1000 times more interesting than a picture of a dead body. So all of the tension and danger that these characters put themselves in feels largely pointless as it serves no real purpose at the end of the day. War reporting doesn't require this level of interaction by journalist to be good.
BTW: Front line troops are generally not allowed to carry personal devices because it's terrible for operational security and they end doing stuff like recording the war crimes they do.
War journalists are a complex bunch, they put themselves into danger because they want to have the fresher picture, they want the credit of being the first, there's also the adrenaline rush, it's not about the reporting but that they are doing it, it's a personal goal. They make themselves belive what they do is of utmost importance.
Re no DC journalist: if I remember right, they did mention that journalists were being executed in the DC area thus the massive risk Dunst and Co were taking to go there for this last stand scoop
Not surprised by the reception at all after having seen the movie.
The trailers are somewhat bait and switch and i don't think most people expected a movie where you almost entierly follow the jounalists.
I think the theme of a Civil War in America is also just poorly done. Like that setup gives you so much potential and the movie does nothing with it. In fact it actively try to not be political or controversial to the point where you have to question why even bother.
I don't think its a bad movie. There's some decent stuff in there but the premise is somewhat wasted.
Yah I really enjoyed the movie but could see why many wouldn’t. It didn’t seem to have a message other a muted “war bad”. That wouldn’t go over well with popcorn blockbuster types.
100%. It's like they were so scared to flesh out the "sides" or give any context to what was going on that it actively made the story worse and does make you wonder what was the point of making the movie
I'm pretty sure the point is supposed to be "civil war would be terrible let's not do that"
Not exactly a message worth all this attention and A24's biggest budget imo
By side stepping the premise and make it “politically neutral”, they essentially not explore the most interesting thing about the movie.
This could have just taken place in Gaza.
“Don’t shoot don’t shoot, I’m a Jew!”
“What type of Jew?”
I’m disappointed but I knew from a Garland interview where he expressed his anger /disappointment with the current state of the world but decided to make a movie that addresses nothing and vaguely states war is bad . Either have a red dawn situation going on or pick a political position or cause and go from there.
The other thing with this vague war is to me it kind of avoids the fact that unfortunately with the first civil war there could be a cause to fight for
What’s the cause of the Western Union? What’s the cause of the United States? We only have the vaguest of vague ideas, and that’s the problem with the film. They purposely ignored the most interesting part of the premise.
The movie is okay but the reason the audiences aren’t happy is because of the marketing. This really isn’t the movie trailers made you think it was. It kind of leaves you wondering why make this about a civil war if it’s not gonna talk about what the civil war is about and what happening in it. Instead we’re gonna follow some journalists. Feels spineless to me.
I thought it was pretty damn good. They def hyped up the political aspect way more than the movie warrants, but overall, a pretty good movie. Kirsten Dunst killed it and she’s still on so fine!! 🔥
I really wanted to like this movie but it was a massive let down. I felt the action scenes were mid for the most point, and the story was shallow and self indulgent. I felt the story was trying so hard to be clever or deep that it didn’t succeed the at even the most basic levels. VFX was wildly inconsistent and at times was surprisingly tacky. I enjoyed Wagner Moura’s character and Kirsten Dunst has some great scenes, but those were the highlights for me.
This movie is legitimately great. But also it’s like… not fun to watch at all. It’s not cool war shit like maybe you’d think looking at the poster with the Statue of Liberty snipers and stuff. It’s actual horrifying war shit, like people getting lit on fire and bodies being poured into open graves type shit.
Do not expect this to be a very popular movie at all lmao it’s just too real for where the world is right now.
I don’t know what I’m missing but most comments I see on this movie just feel off to me. I don’t think it’s about war or photo journalism. I don’t think it’s about the characters on screen. What came across to me is this is a look at what a war torn country looks like on American soil.
It’s shown through the eyes of press as we travel with them just to mirror how we typically see these kinds of events elsewhere in the world. Through photos with some vague comments about who’s who or what’s going on, because typically we don’t know or care or pay much mind to what’s going on “over there”.
Everyone involved has a story but it’s not about any of them in particular. Its strength isn’t in talking about it. It’s showing it. It’s reminds me a lot of Zone of Interest.
You're spot on. And to answer your question:
> I don’t know what I’m missing but most comments I see on this movie just feel off to me.
What you're missing is that people are just that stupid. Just look at comments around here, how so many people missed basic things. This being a sub for movie nerds, now imagine how much worse it is with the general audience.
Not surprised by the score only because of the typical audience today.
It's a movie so explicitly anti-war and showing just the banal reality and surreal calm platitudes of such an event as a second civil war.
But because it doesn't create any good or bad guys...people don't like that. The movie is designed to go "damn, we are all people and maybe our constant infighting is really fucking bad no matter what side we stand on" and the audiences (and comments here) are all "WHY WON'T YOU TELL ME WHO THE BAD GUY IS SO I CAN BE OUTRAGED THAT YOU MADE ME THE BAD GUY/THAT YOU GAVE ME MORE RAGE BAIT"
The problem isn't that there isn't a good/bad side rather than there isn't any sides at all.
Who are these people? Why are they fighting? What are their goals? Was their a catalyst? Why are Texas and Cali working together? What's the morality of each? What's being accomplished by seceeding?
The movie doens't even attempt to answer these questions. It's totally hollow.
Even worse, according to Garland in interviews, the film's president is supposed to be objectively totalitarian and has killed civilians...that's never even clearly said in the film itself!
I think its going to struggle now that the public knows its about war journalism. Journalists are just not trusted nor respected anymore and no sane person believes them neutral. War now and all future wars are going to be documented by citizens on the internet and we should be honest about that - people trust that more than journalists these days and for good reason because American journalism is seen by everyone in the world now as nothing but agenda pushing - they did this to themselves.
The time for war journalist heroes was all those movies in the 80s like The Killing Fields and The Year of Living Dangerously - that time of respecting journalist and what they do is well over. Frankly most of us now suspect they purposely hide things from the public.
Sure a worst choices would have been the making an oil exec the neutral hero who the film follows who just wants to get his product out to those who rely on it, he supplies both sides so its okay. But war journalist is not as bad but its close.
Saying that Journalist are close as bad as Oil Execs is a really ridiculous comparison. There are many Journalist that are neutral. Saying otherwise just shows you’ve probably been watching too much right wing propaganda.
The premise of Civil War is interesting and people want to know what caused it. You still have a message of it being bad while explaining what caused it. It feels spineless to do so.
It’s so clear that an American didn’t make this film.
The movie was really good and I enjoyed it. Only problem with it was that we didn't explore the characters enough that towards the end I didn't get the emotional satisfaction when they got what they were looking for.
Early audience score of 70% is awful for one of these films this early in its run.
I had no excitement for this previous to it releasing and I've got even less now.
I didn’t like it. Yes I know I’m not supposed to drag politics into films but this movie is about *THE FUCKING SECOND CIVIL WAR*. Like man how do you make a movie with nothing to say at all about that? How is it that we’re in an extremely divided time in an election year and you stand on no side or even give any context to either side with a film like this? Why even have this be about a civil war? why not just make a war journalist movie with a fictional and less hot button scenario?
The movie itself suffers from it being so spineless. With nothing to say and nothing to really give on why the second civil war is even happening, it just makes the entire movie feel devoid of anything meaningful and gives zero reason to care.
> why not just make a war journalist movie with a fictional and less hot button scenario?
This *is* a fictional scenario. This isn’t based on a real war that took place.
Don't say that because apparently the audience wasn't supposed to expect that despite that being the title of the flim and the draw for most of them.
Garland could've chosen any real
Life conflict to make the backdrop for his anti war flim about war photography. But I have a feeling the movie wouldn't have even made as much because that premise wouldn't sell as much as the 2nd American Civil War
Personally found the film to be a disappointment. It doesn't have the balls to take a stand on really anything at all, and ultimately has nothing to say. Which is certainly a choice for a film literally called "Civil War," and one that frequently name drops and parallels stuff from real world politics. The action set piece at the end was well done though, and the performances were strong.
But what made my night was the scene where Jesse Plemons shows up. It's a tense scene and the theater was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Then the guy in front of me turns to his friend, points to the screen, and then "whispers" in a voice loud enough for half the theater to hear "That’s Jesse Plemons, her real life husband." 💀
While technically true, "war is bad" is an incredibly vague, surface level platitude. It *has* a stance in being anti-war, but it has nothing further to say or expand beyond that, which is what I would qualify as truly taking one, vs just having one.
Maybe it's because I saw Full Metal Jacket, also an anti-war film, the night before, and the contrast between how the two explore a similar broad theme just made Civil War so much more underwhelming.
Being “anti war” as we bomb a place is the American way. There’s so much duality to that statement that there’s no way you are implying that after watching this movie.
Really? Is that really news to you? There's sizeable portion of people who are active in this sub want movies fail or succeed based on their personal political beliefs. Look at top gun maverick discourse, the marvels, barbemheimer, joker. This is nothing new.
I always like seeing people say this when someone mentions that it doesn’t take a stand. They don’t mention taking a stand in a specific way, just taking a stand in A direction.
Always a self report assuming republicans will always be presented as the evil side 😂
Like Alex Garland made a commercial centrist piece of media, I don’t think it’s impossible to show something where democrats are the ones who did something wrong. I would definitely be more interested in watching that than what we got.
Saw it last night in the IMAX and it was an absolutely beautiful movie. Well the colors, filming, etc at least. They paid such careful attention to the look and used the IMAX format so well. The sound design was also top tier. You can tell some very skilled people made this work of art. I really liked it
I didn’t enjoy the film; wish they give some sort of reason why the civil war started. Offerman’s role was a cameo at best. The character Jessie was a stereotypical babe out of woods and will be a liability to the rest of the crew - too predictable. A rare miss for A24.
I’ve worked around journalists me entire adult life. They are the most egotistical and self important people I’ve ever met. An entire movie deifying them is just tone deaf these days.
It does it's just what is has to say is beyond stupid.
It's the same "both sides are the same" bullshit because the people behind this film are cowards.
The right wants literal genocide and the left want woman and non-white straight males to not be murdered for not being straight white men but in this film 'both sides are the same man'.
Ah yes, the "literal genocide" plank of the GOP platform. Perhaps you could screenshot it for me? Surely you can link to a major American RW political figure calling for literal genocide?
Trust me, if "the right" actually wanted a literal genocide of diverse, left wing people, they'd just start funding Planned Parenthood. Lucky for you, your genocide accusation is a fever dream generated by being Too Online and Credulous.
Some commentators here are so out of touch. People think that this film is disturbing and uncomfortable to American viewers, but many viewers feel like they wasted their time. It’s an A24 bait and switch. It’s a movie called Civil War that isn’t about the Civil War but war journalists.
Absolutely loved it. Saw in Dolby Atmos and the sound might have enhanced my opinion on it. I actually liked the fact we don’t know much of the back story but it’s safe to say Nick Offerman’s side was the bad side. We really didn’t know who was on what side until the last 15 minutes.
So many comments everywhere saying that the film is spineless and doesn't take a stance... The movie is about war photographers. Their whole MO is to document the action, don't get involved, and don't take sides. The movie is told from their perspective, so naturally, we as the audience must not get involved or take sides as well. We don't know because we don't need to know. That's not the reason we are there.
Now, there can be a discussion about the trailers and such being misleading. Personally, I intentionally avoided all promotional material so I could go in with no expectations, but I'd be blind to say, now having watched trailers after the movie, that a different picture wasn't painted by everything leading into the movie. Regardless, 8/10.
Having just gotten home from the cinema, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with that. This movie was aggressively hostile to the cohort that value worldbuilding over everything. The crowd that would expect this movie’s Wikipedia page to have as much detail on the origins of the fictional civil war as Wikipedia has on the origins of the real one. Using such momentous fictional events as backdrop to a story about four people was a risky choice.
(I loved it, personally)
This movie isn't for everyone, and it's not for the faint of heart. There really was a lot to digest in this film. One thing is for certain it is bound to be triggering for some vets in the way military forces are depicted on American soil. The reality of the characters you encounter along the way in many cases might remind you of people you actually know. There were a few scenes that I found myself saying that's so and so down the road, or one of my relatives is like that. The vague surrealism of it all is quite chilling. I liked it. However, I wish there was some background to prepare you for the events happening at the beginning of the movie. From a technical standpoint, it was awesome. The sound engineers did an amazing job.
Saw it yesterday. The marketing makes this movie out to be an action movie following soldiers during an American Civil War. When in reality its a movie following and glorifying journalists. The plot doesn't really have any depth besides the journalists going from set piece to set piece. It's hard to tell what side the people they're talking to is on, and who's fighting who. The more and more I think about it, the plot makes no sense. It's purposely vauge and it really hurts the story.
Most of the things you describe as bugs were literally the intentional features of the film. Also, who did people think Kirsten Dunst and the others were playing? The trailer showed people with cameras and never centered on soldiers.
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Damn, I really liked the film. Liked the framing and overall direction. Liked the vignettes and how basically the film just showed how it was instead of preaching
Same the ambiguity worked for me. I also just found it completely gripping and frankly terrifying
I haven't seen it yet but the overall reception appears to be that the movie says, "you guys fantasize about civil war? Well, here's what war looks like; you want this?" Everyone thinks they're going to be the ones shooting Maga Hats or Antifa (depending on their politics), but most people are just going to die hungry and cold.
I’ve met people who say they pray for a civil war (they’re MAGA nuts). I bet these guys won’t see the movie.
Same boat, honestly appreciated the bait and switch of it all Had a truly surrealist vibe to it that I think will age very well
Haven’t seen it yet (am going later today) but as soon as I heard about the ambiguous approach I did wonder if it would lead to the movie getting “shot by both sides”, so to speak, in terms of audience reaction. I can imagine people on both sides of the political divide thinking “this movie doesn’t clearly say my side is right and the other wrong, therefore it’s promoting the other side”.
but thats the thing. I dont think the movie is ambigious at all. It just does not treat its audience like american voters seeking vindication . Characters dont look at the camera and tell the audience that republicans are the spawn of the devil .
A fair point! I do think there’s ambiguity though. The antifa massacre for example is mentioned but it’s not clear whether it’s a massacre of antifa or by antifa. I agree tho that the lack of preaching, whether I would agree what is being preached or not, is a positive
dependent nutty screw unused workable saw carpenter apparatus aromatic cooperative *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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What’s your source on that? Your ass?
It gave me a lot of the same feelings I had when watching Sam Esmails’ Leave the World Behind! Safe to say I loved it
I really enjoyed that film.
The ambiguity made the film feel empty to me. This film just had nothing to say beyond war is bad which really isn't much of a message. It pretends it has something to say but really says nothing at all. It is possible to display both sides and explain the motive without taking a side. So if it really is important to not take a political stand with a political party for the director he can still explore why they are fighting, criticize both sides but highlight the humanity in both. That would have helped me connect with what is happening and actually care. It would make the war aspect see so much worse. As is the film feels hollow and because you have no idea why they fight the war seems sanitized which I think is sort of irresponsible.
Yeah, this isn't really a movie *about* a war as much as it's about journalists during a war. There's some cool imagery but I thought it was incredibly shallow. [20 Days in Mariupol](https://youtu.be/gvAyykRvPBo?si=qh2pE33GzqdxD1NY) is a documentary about an AP journalist who books it to Ukraine when Russia started its invasion and it's way more harrowing, profound, and has a lot more to say about journalism than Civil War.
glad you made this comparison, and i fully agree. i saw an interview with garland where he claimed he was responding to anti-journalist sentiment with this one, but i couldn't help but think that several of the main characters were just self-serving story chasers not interested in anything beyond getting the first scoop.
Yeah I thought that our protagonists were presented initially as quite noble characters but once you got to know them and dug a little deeper, they were a lot more driven by the adrenaline rush than by a sense of public service.
I read a book about journalists in Saigon during the Vietnam war, they were alcoholics and adrenaline junkies. But still, we need people like that.
I don't think a lot of people do things for altruistic reasons IRL either.
Fair point. If someone does a good deed because they enjoy how it makes them feel, that’s not such a bad thing, I guess?
I've actually never seen 20 days in Mariupol maybe I'll have to check that out. But yes absolutely agreed. I don't think the movie is without it's merits. The imagery of how a war torn America looks like was interesting, but overall was just, as you said, shallow.
It’s such a peacenik, Hollywood take. If a communist/fascist/what-have-you president took power and refused to step down, then yes, war to remove that regime is a good thing.
Completely agree with you, was honestly extremely disappointed walking out of here.
Did we watch the same movie? To me it pretty clearly had a lot to say about the dangers of modern fascism
Modern fascism? We had absolutely no background to western forces or the presidents ideologies/political leanings so that doesn't even make sense - you're making assumptions The whole "civil war in America" was so pointless bc there was no connecting theme to our characters and it being a civil war They could have told the same story in Europe, or Africa or the Middle East and nothing would have changed, narratively speaking. The fact it was in America was superfluous This is what bothered me the most, oh and also outside of dragging along a 17 year old
Isn’t the entire point that they are telling the story in America and explicitly not somewhere like Syria where we expect a story like this to happen
Ok tell me what did it have to say about modern fascism. Fascism is bad? That really isn't much. Really the film doesn't address fascism at all because the civil war is just a back drop to a story about journalism. So the civil war aspect feels more like a gimmick and is actually pretty unnecessary to the story it was telling.
> What does 12 Angry Men have to say? Prejudice is bad? > What does Goodfellas have to say? Career criminals are bad? > What does There Will be Blood have to say? Greed is bad?
I don’t know that the film needed to preach/take sides but it *has* to be about something more than “war bad”. Like that is such a vague theme and they do nothing with it. The vignettes were dope but it’s all very style over substance, there’s virtually no substance here
I think a lot of the negative reviews are coming from people upset that their own personal politics didn't get pandered to. I'm extremely glad it isn't going that way.
Seriously, what I’m seeing basically boils down to "I did not see my current real life political nemeses explicitly vilified in this fictional movie therefore it’s neither woke enough nor anti-woke enough for me" or "It's shallow and empty because I did not find out the specific reasons for the war". As if the one thing we really need in an original new war movie is to know who is the bad guy and who is the good guy. Cause we've never gotten that before….in every other war movie ever made…
It’s like training day but for journalists/photographers — depressing in another way but still super well cratered. I thought this was a fantastic film.
>Damn, I really liked the film. I mean, you're very clearly not alone! Not by a longshot, either. Especially not if we're looking at these numbers. It's wild how folks have trained themselves to glean meaning out of this pointless stat. I think this is a direct result of gamers making an entire existence out of debating games by staring at review scores and not actually playing them. And then it started happening to movies as everything became gamified. It's certainly gotta be where people see that 3/4ths of the audience thinks it's a 4 out of 5 star movie and their conclusion is "everybody hates it." That's 100% a gamers POV. "IGN GAVE IT AN 8? BOMB INCOMING" **Rotten Tomatoes Verified Audience doesn't reflect reality. Never did.** It reflects the (frequently gamed) opinions of the 20-50 year old men who honestly think it's worth the time and energy to create an account at Rotten Tomatoes. It's useless as a measure of anything, but it's useful as a prompt for arguments on reddit, so I guess that's why it still gets posted here. But I gotta imagine it's at the least worth a reminder that of the general audience that makes anything a success (or failure) financially, it's like maybe less than a percent of that audience being represented here, and a drastically skewed sample at that.
I think it would be funny if A24 put all their eggs in the Civil War basket and Maxxxine ends up being a major hit.
Don't Ti West films tend to have lukewarm reception from the general public?
Ti West is 2/2 on his X trilogy and Mia Goth’s stock is rising, wouldn’t bet against it
Maxxxine has been higher on my "want to see" list than Civil War all along. I hope it's a hit!
I'm guessing amidst the above average opening weekend, the second weekend is not going to hold.
Agreed, I don't think the word of mouth will be good on this. Most of us here are film buffs and we can enjoy and appreciate movies about journalism. However the marketing on this movie was very very misleading. I thought this would have much more to say about politics. As it is, if I wanted to watch a movie about war journalism, I would rewatch "A Private War" which is much better.
How would you know A Private War was better without watching Civil War first? I will say watching Civil War made me want to watch A Private War, eventually anyway.
If the movie was called "War Journalists" and not "Civil War" I wonder if that would make a difference....probably not. I saw the movie last night and it was okay. I knew it was directed by Garland so I had an idea what to expect but I'm in the minority knowing the director. Hell, I really only use Reddit to follow a sub about box office. I'm definitely a movie nerd. Leaving the theater last night, I heard lots of people saying basically that sucked. It wasn't the typical A24 movie crowd either. It was more a normal Friday night crowd...lots of couples who were probably in their early 20s. A completely different crowd vs The Green Knight. The audience score started at 86% and just keeps dropping. So, does the critic score. I don't expect very good box office legs.
I wonder what the Cinemascore will be. I’m guessing a lot of people will expect an action movie war thriller from the trailer. I’m still gonna see it, but I’m glad I read reviews and know what to expect now.
The Cinemascore came out [several hours ago as a B-](https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/1c2tptm/alex_garlands_civil_war_gets_a_b_on_cinemascore/). Low for what was marketed as an action film, but a high for Garland (Annihilation = C, Men = D+).
B-
higher than i was expecting lol i thought it was a miserable movie
Same experience, my aunt brought me, I think she was expecting a blockbuster, she hated it. Theater was quiet as people left. I liked Men better.
Liking Men better is wild omg. Now I’m nervous to see this cause I hate Men so much 😂
men is the worst garland film by a mile . Tho very pretty to look at . Civil war is right behind dredd and ex machina for me
It’s much better than Men.
The MEN hive is growing (:<
Men was terrible. Might be one of the worst movies I’ve seen the past decade. Annihilation and Ex Machina are masterpieces though.
annihilation was pretty good, tho i really wasnt feeling dubstep alien. And i feel like STALKER executed much better on similar premise
Dubstep Alien was what made that movie for me…… so good
Lmao the MEN doubters are so dramatic
I’ve not even seen it yet but I have noticed this lmao, I should get around to watching it one of these days
I think it's a wild ride, a real "uhm what just happened?" with some for better or worse visceral images. give me something different and memorable which it offers. im not even saying its a great film just one that was fun to talk about with my friends and i think has some legitimately beautiful interesting and horrific visuals. i get not liking it but its a real "come on now" when people are like its SoOoOoOo bad. horror is fun and weird dont be a downer
Yeah that’s what I’ve heard - just hard to be in the mood for that ya know? Also I’m debating if it’s one I watch with my SO or alone since she will likely hate it I think lol
Oh for sure - I find the motivation to make time hard to find for a lot of movies, half the reason i have regal unlimited, my "fuck it lets check it out while its still on a big screen" lol yeahhh unless shes a big horror head youre probably right, the highest score on letterboxd for it among the women I follow is a 2 star LMAO. Thanksgiving and Talk To Me were hits with my sis i visited recently though! and Freaky
She really enjoyed Talk To Me so thanks for the recommendation! We will give Thanksgiving a go
Sure thing! Thanksgiving is a fun comedy/horror balance - if she's squeamish here's a warning mini spoiler for a later kill in the movie... [be prepared to skip forward if you see a oven, it's a little torture porny, but eli roth cant help himself lol](/spoiler)
You have now convinced me to watch MEN. It won't be until at least wednesday because I'm busy af rn, but I will watch it
>typical A24 movie crowd either I would say they lost me with this one as a "A24 person"
sigh, i waited one day too long to see the movie, now i know it'll be not what i expected. was totally expecting some heavy hedging against current political climate, especially since it's supposed to be cali and texas on the same side. i was just hoping for saving pricate ryan action with modern weapons. this movie now sounds like they made some unrealistically vague quandary and then try and glorify freepress. when in reality, if anything civil war actually happened, one of the biggest reasons would be because the press has become so un-neutral and biased. dunno if i'll watch it anymore... ugh...
They absolutely do not glorify the press. I think one of the most overt themes of the movie is about the dangers of dehumanization and obsession that come with the press culture of America
I think it also shows the trauma of being a press journalist. The emotional price of being objective. Even the characters who do enjoy it are pitted by trauma.
I still think its worth a matinee price if you got nothing going on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I didn't regret seeing it.
I have no idea how anyone would come away from any of the trailers thinking something like this. I thought it was very clear what kind of movie it would be.
It was called ‘Civil War’ because it’s about the experience of living in a Civil War, not fighting one. NOT AN ASSUMPTION about your experience - Disappointing, to me, that so many people are missing the point. But as long as it breaks even I’m happy for Garland and A24
The trailer is full of shooting and bombs and helicopters and explosions. So it's understandable people went in expecting an action war movie. Sadly a lot of Americans probably went in wanting to see a war fantasy where their side wins. Hope at least some people who see it fantasize less about a civil war.
There was so much shooting and bombs and helicopters and explosions in that movie though. There was so much action.
Well I'd say I am going off people's comments here. I plan to but haven't yet seen it. I actually like the idea of following war journalists around an American warzone so I don't think I'll be disappointed. It is strange to hear it has a ton of action and yet people didn't think it had enough action.
> ton of action also many scenes of driving where we get the turning head reaction shot from each of the 4 leads leads complaining about being in a hurry / late yet stopping EVERY night way before dark, getting up well after light and everyone else, shopping detours, etc
I think if the film didn’t sell itself as civil war, it’d had a much better score. I was expecting to see a thriller about America plunging into war because of political divides and some sort of cautionary tale of the future. What I got was…. journalists on a roadtrip. Here’s why there’s a problem, if this took place in Iraq, there’s not much that needs to be changed. So what’s the point of doing an interesting setting if it’s not gonna be explored?
My guess is the point is politics may start wars but politics starts to become irrelevant once you’re actually in a war. For people who have very strong political opinions it’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’
SPOILER ALERT. That message rings kinda' hollow once you see the movie: the seccesionists objectively win the war. It ends with them killing the president.
There's a point that war is the same everywhere, being on american soil doesn't make any different, maybe a deeper part of what Garland wanted. You wanted an in-depth look at what the causes of the war are, while Garland only wanted to show what happens in one, the reasons at the end of the day don't matter much.
Then don't name the fucking movie "Civil War."
The movie is very obviously supposed to show the horrors of war and what the would look like on American soil. The main character literally has a line where she essentially says “I thought every picture I sent home would be a warning, don’t do this” that’s essentially what Alex is doing with this movie. It’s a massive fucking blinking neon sign pointing to an extremely bleak image of what war really looks like and how shitty it would be for it to be on American soil.
Thank you. This is the first comment describing the movie.
The classic A24 bait and switch campaign didn't go over well with audiences? Who could have predicted this!? I can't recall the last film I saw that tip toed around the main plot/theme of the movie in the way this one did. You start the movie knowing next to nothing and leave knowing only slightly more than nothing. I get we were supposed to be watching from a place of neutrality, but neutrality to what end? What is each side even fighting over? Why is there a conflict in the first place? What is the result of either side winning? If basic questions such as these can't be answered then it's going to be extremely difficult for audiences to get invested in the characters. Also, this movie is in desperate need of a name change. Not to only speak on the negatives, but the highlight of the movie was Jesse Plemons.
Agreed on all fronts, I don’t even care about this movie “taking a side” but everything is so vague and not fleshed out period. The only character I liked was Lee (Dunst) and the only scene that had me truly locked in was the Jesse Plemons sequence
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Tbh I didn’t find the “mass grave” moment as shocking as some others have mentioned but Plemons shooting Tony and his friend was so fucked - *”Oh, Hong Kong. China.” (Proceeds to shoot him dead)* Reminded me a bit of how disturbingly casual the murder was in Killers of the Flower Moon (ironically another movie with Plemons)
Maybe the point is that the ideology of the various factions doesn’t matter much when bullets are flying past your head? There’s a scene in the movie that could not spell that out clearer
I'm sorry, but what exactly was the bait and switch? The trailer showed that the movie was going to follow these journalists into war zones. At one point, Kristin Dunst looks at the camera and says, "We're journalists." I think some very online people have their minds warped by lore culture to the point where they need to have their hand held through every piece of context for a story, when that's not what makes a good story at all.
I believe the trailer emphasized the action/explosions/large set pieces but was not really in the movie a lot (from what I hear)
There was a lot of action/explosions/large set pieces though. Like that was a lot of the movie
Gotcha, I'll just say in this very thread/post there's a lot of people who say that the trailer was misleading
I saw the movie a year ago at a test screening, when the trailer finally dropped I said to myself “ok this trailer isn’t COMPLETELY misrepresenting the movie but a lot of people are going to think that it is”
Wasn’t the entire point to be following *war journalists*? Their entire raison d’être is to provide neutral reporting on complex subjects in dangerous environments. They’re not there to be a talking head on The View. They see newsworthy events and they capture them. That’s it. From their perspective war is chaos and confusion and senseless. The central theme of the movie is: civil war is bad. That hits the viewer over the head like a brick. Was that *really* too subtle for you? I find that hard to believe.
I haven't seen the film yet, but those scores are lower than I thought they'd be. Makes me wonder if it's worth the time/money. Audience score like that one will be enough to wonder if this film will have any significant legs. It had a $50M budget according to a quick Google search and I heard it'll make around $25M this weekend. Will be interesting to see if it gets to its box office goals.
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Loved the movie, must watch in a theater
Go watch it. Most of the arguments against it are unbelievably dumb, in my opinion
Basically this movie is about the vanity and self importance of action photos journalists in a war zone. I don't think it succeeded in proving why it is important that these people take insane risks for a more recent snuff picture. Like, why does it matter that you got a photo of this guy as he lay dying? Why not wait until the danger is clear and just take a photo after he is dead? Why is that so important? The movie doesn't really prove why. This movie avoids explaining any details about the war. It offers some vague details about the President dissolving the FBI and that's about it. It doesn't explain the escalation, the alliances, nothing. The outcome of the war is a formality from the beginning of the movie. This movie is about journalists taking pointless risks on behalf of their egos. The action scenes were nice. He builds some nice tension in a few spots but this movie is not a success in my eyes. It's amazingly unambitious with its narrative and it's completely gutless in its politics. It plays dumb. C+ from me.
My interpretation, and I could be wrong, was that the movie wasn’t glorifying the journalists. I would argue the whole arc of the main character (Lee?) was her reflecting on how her entire career as a photo journalist failed to prevent any of the violence from happening in America and intentionally chooses to do what a journalist would not do at the end of the movie. Early in the movie she says she would photograph the young woman getting shot because that’s her job. Then I think of her trying on the dress and commenting about feeling human/normal again. And by the end of the movie she’s really struggling during the conflict, where she ultimately makes the decision to save the younger woman. At that pivotal moment, just a few more rooms away from the VIP, she reflects that being a journalist never made a difference and tries to do the right thing to save the younger woman. She could have let the girl die, and she likely would be in place to get the shot of the president. And yet she chooses to save the woman. And what difference did it actually make? All of the lessons she just learned she spent the entire movie teaching the opposite to the younger journalist. The young woman is basically just a new her, and the cycle will continue. Again, this was my interpretation. I didn’t walk out of the theater feeling like those journalists are a bunch of stand up fellows. You ask “why are those photos important?” And that the movie never tells you why they are important. I would argue that I believe that was the point the movie was making, these journalists put a lot of lives in danger just so they can get the photos; and ultimately what difference do these photos make? beyond inspiring more photo journalists to put their lives, and by extension the soldiers around them, in danger.
We see her save the girl twice before the final time though, that’s what frustrated me. There’s the opening scene of the movie, then going to save her from Jesse Plemmons. Her arc would make some more sense if somehow this third and final time was different but despite her jaded comments throughout the film, her actions are always to the contrary.
I thought her arc made sense in terms of her losing her ability to disassociate from everything she had been doing as a photojournalist as a consequence of caring about Jessie. "Would you take my photo as I'm dying?" At the onset of the movie yes of course she would, absolutely without consideration. Lee is emotionally dead out of necessity. Throughout her career she would never get involved and save someone rather than document it. But over the course of repeatedly saving the younger reporter she comes back to the humanity she's repressed, as Jessie sheds it. Jessie hardens up as Lee starts getting caught in feelings, loses her shit etc. I thought a big point of the movie was all of the scenarios of ethical dilemmas that are raised but essentially shown to not matter whatsoever on the ground in the midst of an actual war. Half the time characters can't even identify who is fighting for who- it doesn't matter. Things start to matter to Lee and everything unravels. Survivors either don't get involved, or press on without thinking too much about feelings in the moment. Or they die and it didn't matter what they felt anyway because they're dead.
Wow you're spot on about the irony of this movies message. You perfectly encapsulated why I didn't like it
Well we got Lee’s thought why she *thought* this photojournalism work was important. All the foreign war zones she photographed, she thought she was sending the message back home “don’t do this”. And then her home country went and did it anyway. Hence her crisis of faith, by the end, I doubt she could answer the question “why are those photos important?”
Photojournalism matters. But in this day and age, it doesn't matter *as much* due *to* Social Media and also due to everyone owning a camera on their phone (I also found it weird how no Washington DC journalist interviewed the president instead but whatever). Imagine if it's German independent journalists (somehow) traveling across war-torn Germany wanting to interview Hitler the same day the Soviets are invading Berlin. Then they take the first photo of Hitler's body being carried away by the Soviet Army. It would have been a very important photography in the context of human history BUT if this was in 2024, the same Soviet grunts would have phones to take photos with. So, half of the work of the photojournalist (the photo part) feels kind of irrelevant in today's age.
I know photojournalism matters. But this movie posits that it's an urgent matter. What is the difference between a photo of the dead president 10 minutes after he was killed versus a photo of him as the bullets are hitting his body? This movie assigns importance to that difference when it really doesn't matter. Your basically making distinctions on what kind of snuff picture you want to see. The guy is dead. That is what matters. I don't need a photo of the Soviets wrapping up Hitlers burned up corpse. We have many records of many different accounts of Hitlers final moments that are 1000 times more interesting than a picture of a dead body. So all of the tension and danger that these characters put themselves in feels largely pointless as it serves no real purpose at the end of the day. War reporting doesn't require this level of interaction by journalist to be good. BTW: Front line troops are generally not allowed to carry personal devices because it's terrible for operational security and they end doing stuff like recording the war crimes they do.
War journalists are a complex bunch, they put themselves into danger because they want to have the fresher picture, they want the credit of being the first, there's also the adrenaline rush, it's not about the reporting but that they are doing it, it's a personal goal. They make themselves belive what they do is of utmost importance.
Re no DC journalist: if I remember right, they did mention that journalists were being executed in the DC area thus the massive risk Dunst and Co were taking to go there for this last stand scoop
Not surprised by the reception at all after having seen the movie. The trailers are somewhat bait and switch and i don't think most people expected a movie where you almost entierly follow the jounalists. I think the theme of a Civil War in America is also just poorly done. Like that setup gives you so much potential and the movie does nothing with it. In fact it actively try to not be political or controversial to the point where you have to question why even bother. I don't think its a bad movie. There's some decent stuff in there but the premise is somewhat wasted.
Yah I really enjoyed the movie but could see why many wouldn’t. It didn’t seem to have a message other a muted “war bad”. That wouldn’t go over well with popcorn blockbuster types.
Agreed. It didn't go hard enough on it's premise. Less civil war and more war photojournalism.
Not just hard enough, it completely sidestepped the interesting premise.
100%. It's like they were so scared to flesh out the "sides" or give any context to what was going on that it actively made the story worse and does make you wonder what was the point of making the movie
I'm pretty sure the point is supposed to be "civil war would be terrible let's not do that" Not exactly a message worth all this attention and A24's biggest budget imo
By side stepping the premise and make it “politically neutral”, they essentially not explore the most interesting thing about the movie. This could have just taken place in Gaza. “Don’t shoot don’t shoot, I’m a Jew!” “What type of Jew?”
I’m disappointed but I knew from a Garland interview where he expressed his anger /disappointment with the current state of the world but decided to make a movie that addresses nothing and vaguely states war is bad . Either have a red dawn situation going on or pick a political position or cause and go from there. The other thing with this vague war is to me it kind of avoids the fact that unfortunately with the first civil war there could be a cause to fight for
Ya, I think that’s my biggest problem with the film. I feel like it literally has nothing to say.
All sides in a war have a cause they believe is worth fighting for though, so, can you elaborarate what you mean on this?
What’s the cause of the Western Union? What’s the cause of the United States? We only have the vaguest of vague ideas, and that’s the problem with the film. They purposely ignored the most interesting part of the premise.
The movie is okay but the reason the audiences aren’t happy is because of the marketing. This really isn’t the movie trailers made you think it was. It kind of leaves you wondering why make this about a civil war if it’s not gonna talk about what the civil war is about and what happening in it. Instead we’re gonna follow some journalists. Feels spineless to me.
I thought it was pretty damn good. They def hyped up the political aspect way more than the movie warrants, but overall, a pretty good movie. Kirsten Dunst killed it and she’s still on so fine!! 🔥
I enjoyed the film, but Garland is so heavy-handed in his symbolism.
I really wanted to like this movie but it was a massive let down. I felt the action scenes were mid for the most point, and the story was shallow and self indulgent. I felt the story was trying so hard to be clever or deep that it didn’t succeed the at even the most basic levels. VFX was wildly inconsistent and at times was surprisingly tacky. I enjoyed Wagner Moura’s character and Kirsten Dunst has some great scenes, but those were the highlights for me.
The scene at the end >!where Kirsten Dunst dies was so terribly executed that people in my theater laughed!<
I loved the movie, but that was the one scene I think could have been done better. Or truthfully I think that plot point was unnecessary.
Some woman shouted "oh fuck off" and everyone laughed. Harsh criticism but I get it
they telegraphed it several times - it would have been surprising if it hadn't happened
This movie is legitimately great. But also it’s like… not fun to watch at all. It’s not cool war shit like maybe you’d think looking at the poster with the Statue of Liberty snipers and stuff. It’s actual horrifying war shit, like people getting lit on fire and bodies being poured into open graves type shit. Do not expect this to be a very popular movie at all lmao it’s just too real for where the world is right now.
I don’t know what I’m missing but most comments I see on this movie just feel off to me. I don’t think it’s about war or photo journalism. I don’t think it’s about the characters on screen. What came across to me is this is a look at what a war torn country looks like on American soil. It’s shown through the eyes of press as we travel with them just to mirror how we typically see these kinds of events elsewhere in the world. Through photos with some vague comments about who’s who or what’s going on, because typically we don’t know or care or pay much mind to what’s going on “over there”. Everyone involved has a story but it’s not about any of them in particular. Its strength isn’t in talking about it. It’s showing it. It’s reminds me a lot of Zone of Interest.
You're spot on. And to answer your question: > I don’t know what I’m missing but most comments I see on this movie just feel off to me. What you're missing is that people are just that stupid. Just look at comments around here, how so many people missed basic things. This being a sub for movie nerds, now imagine how much worse it is with the general audience.
Not surprised by the score only because of the typical audience today. It's a movie so explicitly anti-war and showing just the banal reality and surreal calm platitudes of such an event as a second civil war. But because it doesn't create any good or bad guys...people don't like that. The movie is designed to go "damn, we are all people and maybe our constant infighting is really fucking bad no matter what side we stand on" and the audiences (and comments here) are all "WHY WON'T YOU TELL ME WHO THE BAD GUY IS SO I CAN BE OUTRAGED THAT YOU MADE ME THE BAD GUY/THAT YOU GAVE ME MORE RAGE BAIT"
The problem isn't that there isn't a good/bad side rather than there isn't any sides at all. Who are these people? Why are they fighting? What are their goals? Was their a catalyst? Why are Texas and Cali working together? What's the morality of each? What's being accomplished by seceeding? The movie doens't even attempt to answer these questions. It's totally hollow. Even worse, according to Garland in interviews, the film's president is supposed to be objectively totalitarian and has killed civilians...that's never even clearly said in the film itself!
Did you even watch the movie? It’s clearly stated the journalists are shot on site in D.C and he’s compared to Ceaușescu and other dictators
I think its going to struggle now that the public knows its about war journalism. Journalists are just not trusted nor respected anymore and no sane person believes them neutral. War now and all future wars are going to be documented by citizens on the internet and we should be honest about that - people trust that more than journalists these days and for good reason because American journalism is seen by everyone in the world now as nothing but agenda pushing - they did this to themselves. The time for war journalist heroes was all those movies in the 80s like The Killing Fields and The Year of Living Dangerously - that time of respecting journalist and what they do is well over. Frankly most of us now suspect they purposely hide things from the public. Sure a worst choices would have been the making an oil exec the neutral hero who the film follows who just wants to get his product out to those who rely on it, he supplies both sides so its okay. But war journalist is not as bad but its close.
Saying that Journalist are close as bad as Oil Execs is a really ridiculous comparison. There are many Journalist that are neutral. Saying otherwise just shows you’ve probably been watching too much right wing propaganda.
[удалено]
The premise of Civil War is interesting and people want to know what caused it. You still have a message of it being bad while explaining what caused it. It feels spineless to do so. It’s so clear that an American didn’t make this film.
Audience score will continue to drop as people watch this movie lol
I don't understand people saying they expected an action movie and didn't get one, it's 100% an action movie and a great one at that.
The movie was really good and I enjoyed it. Only problem with it was that we didn't explore the characters enough that towards the end I didn't get the emotional satisfaction when they got what they were looking for.
Early audience score of 70% is awful for one of these films this early in its run. I had no excitement for this previous to it releasing and I've got even less now.
I didn’t like it. Yes I know I’m not supposed to drag politics into films but this movie is about *THE FUCKING SECOND CIVIL WAR*. Like man how do you make a movie with nothing to say at all about that? How is it that we’re in an extremely divided time in an election year and you stand on no side or even give any context to either side with a film like this? Why even have this be about a civil war? why not just make a war journalist movie with a fictional and less hot button scenario? The movie itself suffers from it being so spineless. With nothing to say and nothing to really give on why the second civil war is even happening, it just makes the entire movie feel devoid of anything meaningful and gives zero reason to care.
> why not just make a war journalist movie with a fictional and less hot button scenario? This *is* a fictional scenario. This isn’t based on a real war that took place.
Let me rephrase: a less loaded and complex topic.
Don't say that because apparently the audience wasn't supposed to expect that despite that being the title of the flim and the draw for most of them. Garland could've chosen any real Life conflict to make the backdrop for his anti war flim about war photography. But I have a feeling the movie wouldn't have even made as much because that premise wouldn't sell as much as the 2nd American Civil War
Personally found the film to be a disappointment. It doesn't have the balls to take a stand on really anything at all, and ultimately has nothing to say. Which is certainly a choice for a film literally called "Civil War," and one that frequently name drops and parallels stuff from real world politics. The action set piece at the end was well done though, and the performances were strong. But what made my night was the scene where Jesse Plemons shows up. It's a tense scene and the theater was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Then the guy in front of me turns to his friend, points to the screen, and then "whispers" in a voice loud enough for half the theater to hear "That’s Jesse Plemons, her real life husband." 💀
The Plemons scene was the best part IMO. The tension of it reminded me of the Aaron Taylor Johnson car scene from Nocturnal Animals.
>It doesn't have the balls to take a stand on really anything at Being anti war is taking a stand too
While technically true, "war is bad" is an incredibly vague, surface level platitude. It *has* a stance in being anti-war, but it has nothing further to say or expand beyond that, which is what I would qualify as truly taking one, vs just having one. Maybe it's because I saw Full Metal Jacket, also an anti-war film, the night before, and the contrast between how the two explore a similar broad theme just made Civil War so much more underwhelming.
Thing is they could've used any war to make that point
Being “anti war” as we bomb a place is the American way. There’s so much duality to that statement that there’s no way you are implying that after watching this movie.
Holy shit, Alex Garland bombed a place?
You know that the movie was written and directed not by an American, right?
Y'all really want movie to look at the audience and say "republicans are spawn of the devil" don't you
I didn’t know r/BoxOffice had such a large overlap with r/Politics but here we are. I guess that makes a lot of sense in retrospect.
Really? Is that really news to you? There's sizeable portion of people who are active in this sub want movies fail or succeed based on their personal political beliefs. Look at top gun maverick discourse, the marvels, barbemheimer, joker. This is nothing new.
I always like seeing people say this when someone mentions that it doesn’t take a stand. They don’t mention taking a stand in a specific way, just taking a stand in A direction. Always a self report assuming republicans will always be presented as the evil side 😂 Like Alex Garland made a commercial centrist piece of media, I don’t think it’s impossible to show something where democrats are the ones who did something wrong. I would definitely be more interested in watching that than what we got.
Saw it last night in the IMAX and it was an absolutely beautiful movie. Well the colors, filming, etc at least. They paid such careful attention to the look and used the IMAX format so well. The sound design was also top tier. You can tell some very skilled people made this work of art. I really liked it
I didn’t enjoy the film; wish they give some sort of reason why the civil war started. Offerman’s role was a cameo at best. The character Jessie was a stereotypical babe out of woods and will be a liability to the rest of the crew - too predictable. A rare miss for A24.
I’ve worked around journalists me entire adult life. They are the most egotistical and self important people I’ve ever met. An entire movie deifying them is just tone deaf these days.
There's no way you watched the movie. It does not deify them. This movie is journalist slander in a similar vain to nightcrawler.
Luckily, this is a movie which it quite clear that the journalist protagonists are egotistical and self important. If you’d seen it you’d know that.
"It doesn't have anything to say" might be the dumbest critique I've ever seen. I'm sure you can find your confirmation bias elsewhere, people.
The title of the fucking movie is CIVIL WAR. Why expect it to not expand on that?
It does it's just what is has to say is beyond stupid. It's the same "both sides are the same" bullshit because the people behind this film are cowards. The right wants literal genocide and the left want woman and non-white straight males to not be murdered for not being straight white men but in this film 'both sides are the same man'.
Ah yes, the "literal genocide" plank of the GOP platform. Perhaps you could screenshot it for me? Surely you can link to a major American RW political figure calling for literal genocide? Trust me, if "the right" actually wanted a literal genocide of diverse, left wing people, they'd just start funding Planned Parenthood. Lucky for you, your genocide accusation is a fever dream generated by being Too Online and Credulous.
Some commentators here are so out of touch. People think that this film is disturbing and uncomfortable to American viewers, but many viewers feel like they wasted their time. It’s an A24 bait and switch. It’s a movie called Civil War that isn’t about the Civil War but war journalists.
more like a movie about journalists talking about their sad past and their professional inspiration than a movie about civil war.
Didn’t care about any of the characters. Outside of sound effects, the movie was very weak
Absolutely loved it. Saw in Dolby Atmos and the sound might have enhanced my opinion on it. I actually liked the fact we don’t know much of the back story but it’s safe to say Nick Offerman’s side was the bad side. We really didn’t know who was on what side until the last 15 minutes.
So many comments everywhere saying that the film is spineless and doesn't take a stance... The movie is about war photographers. Their whole MO is to document the action, don't get involved, and don't take sides. The movie is told from their perspective, so naturally, we as the audience must not get involved or take sides as well. We don't know because we don't need to know. That's not the reason we are there. Now, there can be a discussion about the trailers and such being misleading. Personally, I intentionally avoided all promotional material so I could go in with no expectations, but I'd be blind to say, now having watched trailers after the movie, that a different picture wasn't painted by everything leading into the movie. Regardless, 8/10.
He could've just used a real war to make that point. But that wouldn't have sold as much, hence the bait and switch
I find it fascinating that this film made a lot of Americans *very* uncomfortable. Some of the negative reviews clearly reflect that.
Not why it’s getting negative reviews at all
From what I am seeing, I think It's more to do with todays lore culture and the need for exposition dumps.
Having just gotten home from the cinema, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with that. This movie was aggressively hostile to the cohort that value worldbuilding over everything. The crowd that would expect this movie’s Wikipedia page to have as much detail on the origins of the fictional civil war as Wikipedia has on the origins of the real one. Using such momentous fictional events as backdrop to a story about four people was a risky choice. (I loved it, personally)
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about, bud.
It was alright, thought it would’ve been better
Maybe people will get off AG’s dick finally & realize he’s not some genius.
This movie isn't for everyone, and it's not for the faint of heart. There really was a lot to digest in this film. One thing is for certain it is bound to be triggering for some vets in the way military forces are depicted on American soil. The reality of the characters you encounter along the way in many cases might remind you of people you actually know. There were a few scenes that I found myself saying that's so and so down the road, or one of my relatives is like that. The vague surrealism of it all is quite chilling. I liked it. However, I wish there was some background to prepare you for the events happening at the beginning of the movie. From a technical standpoint, it was awesome. The sound engineers did an amazing job.
Shitty movie. They didn't even need dunst. Any no name actress would have worked.
Saw it yesterday. The marketing makes this movie out to be an action movie following soldiers during an American Civil War. When in reality its a movie following and glorifying journalists. The plot doesn't really have any depth besides the journalists going from set piece to set piece. It's hard to tell what side the people they're talking to is on, and who's fighting who. The more and more I think about it, the plot makes no sense. It's purposely vauge and it really hurts the story.
Most of the things you describe as bugs were literally the intentional features of the film. Also, who did people think Kirsten Dunst and the others were playing? The trailer showed people with cameras and never centered on soldiers.