Civil War is a Terrible Movie

It is an artificial look at a conflict the director does not understand

The movie Civil War opens this weekend. It will be interesting to see the reactions. I wrote a much longer piece that I posted a few days ago, but a reader just wrote me to ask me what I thought of it, so here’s a review of sorts that isn’t too long to read.

Civil War was supposedly conceived as a follow-up to Alex Garland’s previous film, Men. The only good thing about Civil War is that it’s not as bad as Men, a film about a woman attempting to survive “toxic masculinity.”

When you watch Civil War, you can see that it was almost a movie about that - an army of toxic males attempting to overthrow the government. Kirsten Dunst plays a photographer who needs to get the shot, no matter what. She is joined by a truly terrible, Jar-Jar Binks-level character played by Cailee Spaeny. They drive across a few states to interview the President.

It’s kind of like the Wizard of Oz meets The Stand by Stephen King but lacks the imagination of both. My guess is that it was a much different film, but world events and the skyrocketing budget of the movie made them tone it down somewhat. I do not know if this is true; that’s just my guess based on the end result, which doesn’t say much at all but does live out a fantasy of the Left where Trump is concerned.

In this fantasy telling of our country during Trump’s second term, the journalists are the heroes of the story. But of course, we all know what journalists have become. They’re not the good guys. They’re the ones largely responsible for the division in this country. They are 100% responsible for the mass delusion that has infected the Left like a virus where Trump is concerned. The idea that they’d make themselves the heroes is laughable.

In theory, I would agree that the most important thing to preserve in a society is a free and impartial press, but we’re a long way from there on the Left, that’s for sure. Their entire empire is collapsing, along with Hollywood and the Democratic Party. And not a moment too soon.

Batya Ungar-Sargon calls them out brilliantly here:

The President is a white guy, of course, because the only bad guys in the movie are white guys, and he references God, which no Democrat would do in a movie like this. That is one of the clues that he’s meant to be a Trump-like figure. The other clue is that he’s violating the Constitution and serving a third term.

All the crazies on The View and MSNBC, and even Bill Maher, see this as exactly what would happen if Trump won. In the movie, the #resistance rises up in Texas and California (with a flag that has only two stars) to overthrow the president and retake whatever this country will be after that.

The acting is fine. Ultimately, it’s a silly movie, and no one should be expected to see themselves as real people. Since we do not know much about the two sides fighting (except that white guys are bad and racist and stuff like that), we can’t know where any of their emotions are coming from.

Put it this way: the movie makes one thing very clear—British Alex Garland knows about as much of America as he does of Mars, that is, only what he’s read in the New York Times.

There is an extremely violent ending that I won’t spoil too much to say except that if you’ve seen Zero Dark Thirty about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, that’s not far off. And yes, if you can imagine, the Left views Trump as probably worse than Bin Laden.

To me, it is a fever dream cooked up by people who are entirely cut off from the reality of American life, so they imagine it’s full of scary monsters who want to kill all the non-white people.

The good part is that the scenes of violence are realistic. You can imagine what a Civil War today might look like. I often think about the Civil War from our past and how surreal it would have been to see so much carnage. Much of American history has been filled with bloodshed and that is the only thing about Civil War that seems even remotely realistic.

On the other hand, we live in a police state. Unless the military is divided into two armies, there won’t ever be that kind of a Civil War. Uprisings, sure, but a full blown military takeover? Doubtful.

Alex Garland, who wrote and directed the movie, tried to say that it was non-partisan and was a movie meant to bring Americans together. But um, yeah, failed at that one.

If you do go see it, let me know what you think.

I wrote a much longer piece for my website that I posted a few days ago, but it’s probably too long for anyone to read. I hoped to turn it into a podcast but I got sidetracked by a different piece. If you’re interested…