Indie studio A24 is preparing an April release of its provocative film Civil War and the movie is already provoking fierce debate from all sides of the political spectrum even as details on its plot are still sparse.
The film’s trailer was released in Jan. and shows an America in chaos. Director Alex Garland imagines a situation where Texas and California team up to militarily face down the United States government — a concept that seems decidedly absurd in real life since Texas and California are diametrically opposed politically — meanwhile, another military force called the “Florida Alliance” pursues its own goals. And all the while, the U.S. president — who is in his “third term” — arrests journalists, locks down Washington D.C., and launches massive military strikes against American citizens.
It is a dystopian film that shows the American experiment coming to a bloody and violent end.
A24 describes the movie as “an adrenaline-fueled thrill ride through a near-future fractured America balanced on the razors edge.” And the film’s writer and director, Alex Garland, is the British writer of the zombie apocalypse movie 28 Days Later and the indie sci-fi dramas Sunshine and Never Let Me Go.
Many, though, on both the left and the right, are questioning the good sense of releasing a film depicting the end of the United States during what everyone is assuming will be a tendentious presidential election.
Detractors of the film, both left and right, are pointing to Garland’s fantasy flick as the perfect description of what their enemies are planning for this country. Liberals and MSNBC fans are claiming that the film depicts what “rednecks” and “MAGA voters” want to do to the country, while those on the right are insisting that the film shows fascist, anti-American leftists in their true, warmongering light.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the debate over the film is thick, with many saying that releasing it just ahead of the 2024 election is a recipe for disaster and that it may spark real-life violence as the nation prepares to go to the polls.
However, others point out that Todd Phillips’ 2019 Joker film was also panned ahead of its release and accused of stoking real-life violence. But when it was released nothing happened. The hype, though, did propel the film to a billion-dollar box office take.
Still, many are filled with foreboding over the film.
“The idea of another American civil war happening today actually keeps me up at night,” one left-wing person wrote online, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “This is a movie that I want to keep far away from. Even if it’s based on a political scenario so far removed from our own. I just do not want to entertain the notion of something so horrible.”
“A movie about a second American Civil War in an election year in which the second American Civil War is a serious concern among law-enforcement and rational people alike?” said another.
One said that there are “right-wingers” that are like “Timothy McVeigh” who think this movie is “exactly what this country needs,” and hatefully added, “The potential danger is that [right-wing] groups are not known for media literacy or nuance. And a psychotic gang of rednecks committing terrorism [in the film] to ‘own the libs’ might be obvious criticism to us, but might be interpreted as a role model to MAGA groups if not portrayed carefully.”
Another left-winger scoffed at worries that the film will spark violence, and said, “I guarantee you that the MAGA/Qanon people do not need an Alex Garland auteur piece to commit acts of violence.”
Meanwhile, folks on the right see the film as revealing the left’s plans for America.
“They’re literally projecting exactly where we’re headed. Texas protecting our Southern border will be the catalyst that sets it off. We’re entering a dark phase in our history and the current Traitor-in-Chief is absolutely at fault,” one Trump supporter wrote.
Another right-leaning commenter said that the film is the left’s effort of “predictive programming” because they want to launch a war against America and the film’s producers “are preparing the public for what’s to come.”
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