This movie was guaranteed to be bad the moment they decided they were going to try to make it apolitical, which is ironically the most political decision a creative can make.
Yeah, the thing about civil wars is they are never apolitical. The whole concept of a civil war is people are so mad about politics that they're resorting to violence.
I've heard people say that the message of the movie is "a civil war in your country would be horrifying no matter in which side you are, so the specific politics of it are irrelevant" but I think they're just proyecting their own ideas into the film because this movie does a very bad job at painting war as hell
Why was the president even in the White House Did Air Force 1 get shot down? Did the Secret Service just decide "Meh, let's do a MW2 and fight over the white house"? What is the Navy doing during any of this? Are the absurd number of nuclear weapons in the US being captured by rebel groups? Is Hawaii taking the chance to declare independence? Is Alaska being moved on by Canada or Russia? Most importantly Are we at least still getting GTA6 after all this?
No kidding lol. In a scenario like this, the president would either be at Camp David, or in an undisclosed bunker. Not to mention that the US government has a system in place where even if an entire presidential administration was wiped out, along with the predetermined predecessors to take it's place, there's a top secret group of individuals to be put into place to keep it going. Even if a president went rogue. I'd argue that maybe the Western Forces had a superior AA network around DC to keep the president from escaping, but even then, he still would've been gone long before the Western Forces even got close enough to have it there. You don't get from Texas to DC overnight. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure the White House has a nuclear bomb-proof bunker under it.
They also, from my understanding, don't really EXPLAIN how the president basically just DECIDED to take another term? Like was their a constitutional amendment? Did Congress ok that? Did the House? Was it approved of challenged by the Supreme Court? It seemed like they wanted some relatively weak 'apolitical' reasons for a president to be disliked but didn't want to have that apparently say ANYTHING BAD about the rest of government, JUST the president?
I hate to nit-pick, but at 4:36 you ask how they’ve gotten an interview with the U.S. President, but they haven’t - my understanding was that they’re traveling to D.C. to *try* and score an interview with him. They say it’s the only story worth reporting, but they don’t say they have an interview lined up: it seems they’re just aiming to show up and get one. Presumably with the situation so chaotic - it’s also mentioned at the beginning that the Western Forces are bound to take D.C. any day now - they think such an opportunity may present itself. They state that, by contrast, everyone else is heading to the front lines to report on the Western Forces taking D.C., so they feel it’s worth taking the long shot and aiming for an interview directly with President Nick. I saw this in theaters, then a second time at home (my ex rented it to help distract me from a difficult project), and that was my reading of the situation both times.
Indeed, that’s one of the reasons the journey is so dangerous. If the president wanted an interview with them, then why wouldn’t they just get a military escort the capital or even a flight? The journalist know the end is near, which is why they want to beat the rest of their competitors to DC. It’s also pretty clear later on when they are in DC that they are in a race. The two BBC journalists that are also there are focused on the limousine that left the white house as they’re convinced the president is in there despite it being a pretty obvious distraction.
@@Seabreeze843 Sammy said at one point that no one gets close to the president, they'll shoot anyone on sight. I thought for sure the ending was going to be that the president wasn't even there, that he's broadcasting from a set at an undisclosed location, rather than how it ended lol
It reads like babies first alt-history scenario, where like... the america just like half of it goes "we hate you!" and "argh! boom!" but like, these two places team up! cause they're buddies! lol
@@owenhammond1880The only problem with that idea is that the movie would need to be like 4 hours long, and even then, half of it would still need to be spent explaining the lore.
I think this is stupid because it literally misses the entire point the movie was making by having California and Texas joining forces. American political parties didn't matter. What mattered was the horrors of war inside your own borders which the film executed spectacularly.
@Thelastunicornlover HOI4 is Herats of Iron 4, a WW2 strategy game, but also has the ability to let you create alt history. Keiserich is a mod for alt history where Germany won ww1, and history gets... "Funky" after that.
"so the movie is about the US going to civil war" "o wow. sounds like a good premise. so what would the war be about?" "i don't think we should get into politics..." 😐
@@dm2060 the history of the nazi occupation of france and the battles staged by allied forces or rebels are fascinating. if we lost all other allusions to the history of world war 2 i would find the lack of context for why the battle is even happening to be frustrating. this movie is about a fictional civil war that shows no signs of happening in real life. we need an actual impetus for the story. a short answer like 'slavery' or 'communist revolution' might be enough, but it's weird to just say civil war is happening without any cause. slavery was the single driving issue for the real american civil war, after all
@@Shadozcreeping but the movie itself contains no context for the battle. You shouldn't need context to care about war. War is bad regardless of why it is happening. Let's take a more ambiguous example, in Beasts of no nation we are never given an explanation of why the protagonist's villagers were killed, why Idris Elba is a warlord, why the war is happening. The movie wants you to care about the people stuck in the war because war by itself is bad, it does not need additional context. Similarly, the point of civil war is to show how war affects ordinary people. Some die, some pick up arms, some perform genocide. or like that one village, some straight up pretend nothing is happening. It doesn't matter why the war started.
@@Shadozcreeping I think the bulk of your and Pat's issues only exist because the movie is called civil war. If they just called it war and instead of Texas and California vs 47 other states, it was Wangwang and pongpong vs 47 other federations, you'd like the movie better (but again, that is because you're introducing your own context of the previous civil war and the current state of American politics. If we do that we might as well say that a civil war is pretty much impossible given how much of the defense infrastructure the federal government controls, and the movie itself is unrealistic).
It was because the president who is clearly representing Trump, ignored the law and used his influence to run a 3rd term, causing the civil war between his crazy loyalists and the rest of America. Don't be total retard and go see it again.
it would of been great were in the scene were Kristen dunts has flashbacks taking photos, it was a flashback showing the start of the war and her at different places showing the war developing into what it is now. So we have more context to what this civil war is about and it still gives her character development
@@jimmjimms where did I say war was easy? I said Vietnam was a shit show, it was objectively and WAAAAAAAYYYY more corruption happened than Afghanistan. Try again.
@@sniperboom1202 We don't know that. Vietnam had an unprecedented number of journalists with access to the front lines. By the time of Afghanistan, the US had become a lot better at curating their image.
@@WillyShankspeare the war in Afghanistan was even more unpopular at home than Vietnam. I know this because my grandfather was a Vietnam vet. (Part of the reason I think Trump's a scumbag as he is a draft dodger.) Next, there were plenty of investigations into war crimes during the US's involvement in the Middle East from 2001 through 2020. You don't hear about it because the military is much better at keeping its professionals under wraps. And because we're an all volunteer Force now, you don't have to worry about some psychopath who feels nothing being drafted and being given command of a unit. The only problem is that, Trump would pardon war criminals AND made a deal with the Taliban that released almost 5,000 fighters and liters that led to the downed fall of the Afghan government. The Conservative news media was all over Biden for the Afghan debacle when it was Trump's deal that caused it. This wasn't the Vietnam pullout where we had negotiated a deal with the high-ranking North Vietnamese with the South Vietnamese government. Also, for the drugs in Afghanistan, plenty of it was sanctioned by the US government as Afghanistan up until 2023 provided almost 75% of the world's opium.
First criticism in the comments that I actually have to agree with 😅 i update my caveat that he may be a great dramatic actor but he is still a poor choice for president of the United States
I thought the same thing too, but at the end of the day I will always see him as Ron Swanson. I think he’s perfectly capable of being a well rounded actor but the directors gotta know that for ever and ever most people will always see him as silly libertarian barbaque man
There's a book called "Love thy Neighbor" and it's about the Split of Yugoslavia, but the book is from the perspective of the reporter, and it dont go deep into the centuries long complicated history of the balkans but rather it emphasizes on the disturbing fact that your neighbor would be willing to commit war crimes simply because you're of a different language, religion or ethnicity. The movie doesn't need a preachy political lore like the "Purge" series. It just needed to convey the message that war is about survival.
The issue I have with people who defend this movie is they don't understand that suspension of disbelief has limits. Ironically, the more grounded the movie, the less people can suspend.
what is being suspended? What is so insane to not accept in this film? That Texas and California would team up? Americans are so wild. Many other times in history have two different systems aligned to fight a greater threat. Is it really so out of the realm of possibility that this could happen in America? You guys aren't that special.
@@MistaZULE Texas and California being in an alliance is extremely unrealistic even in a fictional civil war scenario. There's no indication in reality that the conservative population of Texas would be fine with allying with California in any wartime situation
@@MistaZULEI mean, the idea that a civil war happening would turn the entire country into a zombie apocalypse despite there being plenty of areas that are perfectly functional and are basically no different than how they otherwise would be without a civil war going on. That’s pretty absurd.
@@xinf3ctdx what? Zombie apocalypse? What are you talking about? The movie is devoid of people because the whole thing takes place near the ongoing conflict. One thing everyone would do when a war breaks out near them, is try to escape. That's basic conflict avoidance and self preservation.
This movie woulda done a lot better FOR ITS CONCEPT if it was World War Z style. But the filmmakers wanted to do this contemplative road trip drama and USE THE CONCEPT to get butts in seats instead.
I find that the film "Bushwick" did a much better job at showing a future civil war than "Civil War." Although the film is from the perspective of protagonists Lucy and Stupe as they try to survive the warzone breaking out in New York City, there is plenty of sound political content throughout the film as well as brilliant character development. For example, the prisoner interrogation scene lays out a plausible scenario for why a seccesionist faction would try to invade New York City.
Literally drove me insane! The person I was watching the movie with looked at me like I was crazy because I was sitting there with my jaw on the floor. Like it’s one thing to try to save him and he dies, absolutely that’s fine and narratively the right choice. But they didn’t even try! No effort was made! Absolutely the hallmark of lazy/inept scriptwriting.
@@smaug660 Wartching the video where it is detailed what Pat said would have helped. First aid does not require a lot of training, a war correspondent that can easily get shot at during their job should probably be at least somewhat knowledgeable about that as even if you travel with a medic, they might be the one that ends up wounded or incapacitated. He also suggests emotional support or trying to find help. Like literally doing ANYTHING except just letting him die.
@@smaug660 a tourniquet? just literally putting pressure on the wound with a tshirt? they should at least be trained in basic tactical first aid from their military service
If that was the case then I'll take it all back. If it's serious, unflinching satire of Hollywood turning every conflict into a farce, then yeah. But if that was the case someone would have said so.
I saw this in theaters and was sorely disappointed. With an extra 30-40 minutes of world building it could have been good. It feels like a nothing burger
My only real issue with this movie is the director calling a civil war movie "Apolitical." The characters in the movie can be apolitical, or its leanings can be ambiguous. But the movie itself is political.
I think the meaning was more that the film isn't about our current politics, rather than having no political reading whatsoever. Part of why the Texas-California exists here (I think) is to separate the civil war from any current understanding of American politics. If this movie were set in the far-flung Middle Eastern country of Funkistan, would any of us care why the Get Down forces are trying to topple the Getuplican regime? Just as it is for the jaded war journalist protagonists, the reasons for the war aren't really important.
If it was a made up war yes because it would give us an understanding of the conflict. Also the Texas and California thing is not stupid just because of current politics. Texas is a long standing red southern state, it was in the god damn Confederacy and is been a known blue state since the mid to late 60s.
The movie meta plot is that both sides are Larping so hard that they start a war with eachother. While most politics is a lot of bravado and posturing at the extremes, bullets have real consequences once the larpers feel justified in using them.
Total randomness with an incomprehensible message, which makes it illusory in both the good and bad sense. Mostly the bad, in that for whatever good it does, ultimately you feel ripped off.
The manymany butthurt people in the comments need to learn that critique is not hate. Critique is part of the art world. It should not upset you that a critic does not like what you like. And you certainly should not act like a child if they do.
Putting my opinions out on UA-cam means that people getting butthurt is inevitable haha. I was definitely surprised about the reception though, it’s not like I deliberately choose to tear media down, I was just giving my honest opinion
@@smaug660 if you are capable to recognize "a bad critique" as some of your attempts were awfully inept in attempting a valid critique. Also try a hemorrhoid donut, itmight help with the conservative perma butt hurt.
If the critique is bad or if they misunderstand the art theyre critiquing, should i accept it? It's like if someone criticized Jackson Pollack and just said, "he splashes paint, what's so great about that?" Should i take the seriously or simply ignore their opinion because they lack the context to truly understand his work?
Op: "Critique is not hate don't be butthurt if someone criticizes something you like" Very smart people: "So I'm not allowed to critique the criticism?!?1? I can't *disagree?!?* How dare you say I can't voice my opinion" 😡
The most unrealistic thing about the movie is Texas and California not instantly going to war. Also, we have absolutely no desire to take Oklahoma back. The feds took that, they can have it.
Oh I really liked it. I think the title and trailer were very much the movie equivalent of click bait, but as a movie about photojournalism, an effort to stay impartial in objectivity terrible circumstances, and then the trauma that comes from that it was really good. I thought the ending was obvs referencing a irl picture of US soldiers posing and smiling with the corpse of a terrorist leader as if it is a deer and this was a cool hunting trip. Like, I guess that was a bad guy, but eh it still feels icky and dehumanizing. The “who are the good guys/are there any good guys really” I think was the point. Bc photojournalism is supposed to be about capturing the “truth” of the situation on the ground and allowing the viewer to make up their own mind about it. Justice for Sammy, tho.
This is a movie for people who think they're smart when they say both Russia and Ukraine are at fault and that they should really sit down at the table and negotiate.
While there’s a lot I don’t like about the movie the way it tries to use a veneer of being apolitical, I do think you’re missing a big point of the Plemmons scene. The director has said he intends the movie to be generally about how bad civil wars are/how one would be, and at least for this scene I think it makes a lot of sense in that context. It’s not so much saying “racism bad”, the point is more that conflicts (especially internal) inevitably become an excuse for people to act out their worst impulses like intense xenophobia under the guise of “patriotism” for a fractured small in group of the “right kind” of American. In the chaos people play out their own personal idea of what that means.
I seem to say this a lot, but Civil War - as a text - is not concerned with the Civil War so much as it is about the conflict within Lee about if her role has any worth. Lee is cynical and believes her job is worthless, and that she has failed, while Jesse is young and optimistic and believes she can do good. Jesse represents a part of Lee which Lee is in conflict with. There are many examples - most obvious the film developing scene - which shows Jesse as a young Lee. While this film is not Fight Club, Jesse is basically young Lee walking around next to old Lee. These two forces are in conflict - the titular Civil War - and given the end of the movie it is obvious which side wins in that. It is good to be optimistic, you can make a difference. Everything else in the movie is setting for that story. It is worth talking about, but this is not a war movie. The marketing is interesting - but the movie starts at the first frame, and ends at the last. It is interesting to talk about what Texas would do in a real war, but who cares? As you say, it is just set dressing, and that is ok. The Civil War is internal, and perhaps the real Civil War is the things we learn along the way.
Alex Garland claimed he didn't want to focus on the film being left or right (despite calling it Civil War) - but paid and directly thanked in the credits a well-known far-right provocateur, a far right wing pundit, and a transphobe activist. None of which needed to be paid or thanked for the footage he used, as there were plenty of apolitical sources of the same material. So, yeah...
Small nitpick , the president did not pick them for the interview. The older character specifically states that forces guarding d.c. shoot journalist on sight. They wanted to interview him regardless and they state as much in the hotel scene
Yeah I went and rewatched that on HBO Max after I saw some of the comments. Sadly this was a detail I took the wrong notes on when I was watching it in theaters way back when. I’ve started sitting by the aisle now so the lights on the steps make it easier to take notes lol
26:00 I don't think the movie takes the side of the Western Forces. It's more of a nihilistic, centrist approach where the country was lost from the moment the civil war started. Joel photographing the president's death and "siding" with WF is a sad ending, showing that he's lost a bit of his humanity when his colleague died. It's not saying WF's victory is good, but that it's just another step on the road to doom (which ties into the nihilism).
It's been a long time since I've seen a movie that tries so hard to do so little. There literally nothing to take away from this film once the credits role.
@@kap1618 would the "why" of the war change the effect on the common folks? You know, the focus of the movie? Let's assume the war started because The President called the Texas governor's wife a pig. Did that change your experience of viewing the movie?
@@dm2060 Yes, the "why" does affect the common folk. It determines how much skin they have in the game. If the war is being fought over something ridiculous, that would make it more infuriating but also terrifying.
@@kap1618 the ordinary American soldier had absolutely no skin in the game in Vietnam, politically speaking, as far as the cause of the war was concerned. To them, it was very much a pointless war. Did that make Apocalypse Now less terrifying to you?
They set up that Jessie would get herself into the line of fire. Like three times before Lee gets shot a soldier or someone else has to move her or hold her back to keep her from getting hurt. I read it as Jessie being inexperienced and Lee sacrificing herself to save her while Jessie photographs her being shot, fulfilling the reversal of that Lee said earlier- that she would be willing to photograph Jessie being shot.
Well, yeah. That much was obvious, but everything else that happened is what made it seem stupid. They set that up pretty fine I guess, but they were also setting up the idea that they’re all basically in it for themselves and that they don’t really care about one another. And those two setups conflict with each other.
graphic violence and gore? this was pretty tame for the most part, and theres barely any actual gore. just a handful shots of standard r rated stuff that no teenager would be bothered by. that super fucked Jesse Plemons section was one of the few scenes worthy of the films title. aside from not wanting to alienate mainstream audiences with violence thats too harsh, its also a politically cowardly film. just a24s attempt at a blockbuster
I might have just been in a forgiving mood when I watched this movie, but I just assumed Kristen Dunst’s character was doing a suicide by martyrdom. Through the whole scene she’s just done, not even trying to take pictures.
I think by that point in the movie, her ark was suppose to be that she could finally acknowledge the trauma her line of work has inflicted on her and that her heart was not in it anymore. By this point, the emotional and physical price for engaging in horrific events for the sake of "getting the shot" did not seem worth it. She was disengaged by the final act. I don't think her death was a suicide but more so an act of accountability and possibly guilt for having pushed the younger photo-journalist into becoming so immersed in their dangerous line of work. Also doing so with little emotional regard. She ends up getting killed and more tragically is the fact that the younger journalist seems disconnected, aloof, and lacking compassion by the sacrafice. She is more concerned about documenting the event than she is for human life. Kirsten Dunst's sacrifice is almost pointless since the younger girl is now as indoctrinated into this lifestyle as she herself was. I was really not a fan of this movie though and felt that the dynamic between these character was the only engaging part of it.
I feel like you completely missed the point of so many aspects of this film. To begin with, the ambiguity has a purpose. The point of the ambiguity is twofold - for one, the audience has to watch the movie without knowing who to root for, and therefore every time someone gets executed unceremoniously you're forced to wonder if they really deserved it or not, and for two, no one is alienated from the film from the beginning by being told "hey your side started the civil war and you are the bad guys.". Everyone has to watch Americans killing other Americans without a trial, without mercy, and with actual weapons of war without knowing if the "good guys" are winning. That's why they have Texas and California team up. Is it unlikely? In the current political climate, sure. But if the viewer was told "oh hey California, Washington State, New York, and Delaware are all on one team, it becomes pretty obvious what side of the aisle they represent. The idea behind the movie is to show the consequences of a civil war without really examining who started it or why. A lot of the little vignettes are meant to recall images from other conflicts around the world or show different aspects of the breakdown of society. The currency is debased - sure their way of showing it was a bit clumsy, but that's a real thing that happens in war. A person has holed up in their mansion and is shooting anyone who passes by - this sounds a lot like something modern day "preppers" who build bunkers full of weapons on their property might do. Why? It doesn't matter. A racist is killing everyone he doesn't think is American enough. A group of refugees have taken shelter in a football stadium and the UN is providing aid. Whatever ideals the war is about fade into the background as a small squad fights for control of a single building the enemy have holed up in - they execute their prisoners. In the end, they storm the White House and execute the President. Of course they take a triumphant photo, but did the good guys really win? Who knows. I think you're reading of the ending as triumphant is totally wrong. It reads like every rebel group that has ever overthrown a government - it could be Saddam Hussein getting dragged out of a hole, or it could be the Khmer Rouge taking Phnom Penh. The overall message to me is crystal clear - in a civil war, YOUR SIDE MIGHT NOT WIN. Your President might be the guy getting dragged out and shot. And even if you do win, who knows what your faction is going to look like or what kind of government they're going to impose when the smoke clears. I do agree that the handling of Lee and Jessie could have been better.
All of that, however, is unrealistic and appeals to noncommittal centrists. In real life, we know who starts wars and what people are fighting for. It's not mystery. It's a child's understanding of war.
@@kap1618You're completely wrong, of course. Most of the 19 year-olds in Iraq probably thought they were there to fight terrorists or something. When they returned to America and learned that the causes they believed they fought for were actually fabrications, they became very disillusioned with the government. In WW1, the cause of the war was a complex series of political alliances and defense considerations that pulled nations into conflict one after the other to fulfill their obligations. Do you think the young men getting blown up in the trenches fully understood what exactly they were fighting for? Obviously not, they were fed nationalistic and war-glorifying propaganda until they went to the front and were traumatized by the horrific reality of modern war. In Vietnam, most soldiers probably thought they were there to protect democracy and because the Viet Cong had attacked American warships. In reality, although there was an incident, the attack never happened. The causes of war are often wrapped up in propaganda and misunderstood by most people until the aftermath is complete. Do you think most young men who would fight in a hypothetical civil war in the US tomorrow really understand the criminal cases against Trump, or the false elector plot? To say nothing of the reality for the soldiers on the ground, for whom political disagreements take a back seat to the struggle to survive and the hatred for the enemy. Modern war is hell, and it begins with a group of young friends on an adventure and ends with half of them eviscerated and dismembered and the other half with PTSD. War should be avoided at almost any cost. It is the final option when all other avenues have been explored and shouldn't be treated lightly. The costs are immense, the benefits few, and that's IF your side wins. That's how an adult understands war.
@@Jake-zn1qr You completely ignore how much garbage was sold to soldiers in Iraq and Vietnam. It was a mainstream propaganda campaign that other journalists had to compete against. Once people knew the truth, they were against the war because it was so bogus. Even today, we know Vietnam and Iraq were a result of incompetence and corruption on the part of the government and the media that supported them. Those wars were not apolitical. America was objectively in the wrong. But this movie doesn't do that. It's the most noncommittal centrists preaching I've ever seen. Much like the first civil war and ww2, there was an objectively good and bad side. Also, it's worth noting that journalists were not apolitical in any of this. They either told the truth or were just as corrupt as the government. War is bad, but to the people defending themselves or fighting for their rights. It's more than justified and is celebrated. Nowadays we have more news than ever before. We know who starts wars and why. And that information can easily be spread to civilians and soldiers alike. And that news is brought to us by journalists who either care about truth or want profit. There is no excuse for people to wallow in their own ignorance.
@@Jake-zn1qr You completely ignore how much garbage was sold to soldiers in Iraq and Vietnam. It was a mainstream propaganda campaign that other journalists had to compete against. Once people knew the truth, they were against the war because it was so bogus. Even today, we know Vietnam and Iraq were a result of incompetence and corruption on the part of the government and the media that supported them. Those wars were not apolitical. America was objectively in the wrong. But this movie doesn't do that. It's the most noncommittal centrists preaching I've ever seen. Much like the first civil war and ww2, there was an objectively good and bad side. Also, it's worth noting that journalists were not apolitical in any of this. They either told the truth or were just as corrupt as the government. War is bad, but to the people defending themselves or fighting for their rights. It's more than justified and is celebrated.
@Jake-zn1qr You completely ignore how much garbage was sold to people in Iraq and Vietnam wars. It was a mainstream disinfo campaign that other journalists had to compete against. Once people knew the truth, they were against the war because it was so bogus. Even today, we know Vietnam and Iraq were a result of incompetence and corruption on the part of the government and the media that supported them. Those wars were not apolitical. America was objectively in the wrong. But this movie doesn't do that. It's the most noncommittal centrists preaching I've ever seen. Much like the first civil war and ww2, we knew Who started the wars and why. Also, it's worth noting that journalists were not apolitical in any of this. They either told the truth or were just as corrupt as the government. War is bad, but to the people defending themselves or fighting for their rights. It's more than justified and is celebrated.
They weren’t picked by the President…they literally say that they’re just gonna show up and hope he lets them The movie isn’t good but you missed how it’s more dumb that they wanna just show up
I actually liked this movie quite a bit, although I agree with you on many points! The main thing is: The ending of the relationship between Lee and Jessie. When she stood smack in the middle of that hallway i wanted to shoot her my own damn self. SO STUPID. And then Jessie just replaces Lee in the long line of war journalists - gave me a gross feeling. I could not stand Jessie, she was so friggin annoying the whole time so to me, that explained part of why Lee was so rough to her. She did not want this annoying ass child tagging along and did not want the extra added responsibility of looking after someone while she was doing her own (very dangerous) work. Also like you, did not like that extraneous scene with the sexual tension. Maybe the guy was all revved up from the explosions and just wanted to fuck something but even so the scene was not necessary. To me though, the focus of the movie was on the journalists and their neutrality. The multiiple factions, confusion, not knowing any real facts or who to even side with, made me feel like I was looking at my own country like an outsider. Like how we as Americans can look at war scenes of other countries on the news. It's just chaos and it doesnt really matter who is who, people are being hurt and everything is a mess and terrifying. I feel this was further solidified by the scene where the two soldiers are laying in the grass shooting at the guy in the building. As for hackneyed tropes, I dont really watch action or war movies (bf dragged me to this one lol) and in the scheme of things, not too much live action media at all, so there may have been some cheesy things that went over my head. You're way more of an expert on this than I am lol. I guess the last thing I want to touch on was the ending with the still photographs. Made me feel uneasy in a dissatisfied way. It's like ok now what. I got the point, life moves on and the journalists just follow whatever outcome there may be, but it just left me feeling off. Anyways love your vids, just saw your newest and cant wait for the next one
I need to see movie because these comments are interesting. Either one side of this is being a bunch of uptight fanboys trying to be super smart or the review is bad.
I had pretty much the same impression after seeing the movie on an airplane with crappy airline issued earbuds. I thought I had missed something. Apparently not.
I feel like it's a valid argument to critique the films core approach to not discussing the political motivations. But I feel that because the film is purposefully designed to not be weighed down by left/right politics, half of this video seems unnecessary. If the movies intention was to keep it vague then dissecting individual scenes and saying they fail at communicating the reasons seems like you're not critiquing the film for what it's trying to do.
Lol, the dollar is so integral to the global economy there is no way every other currency outside of Russia doesn't see similar hyper inflation if inflation is what would happen.
The whole battle of DC was a pretty sick battle. Literally my only complaint about it was the gun on the Apache. It fired like a minigun rather than the canon it normally has.
a movie about a theoretical civil war that has extremely haphazard worldbuilding and zero thought put into the actual civil war it's supposed to portray. There's no explanation, even an offhand one from side characters, as to what the goals are, all we know is the Western Forces want the President dead for...reasons, and they are perfectly fine with mass slaughter as a means to get there (there's no strategic value in using an attack helicopter to shoot random city buildings when the leader of the country is your target). It advertised itself on being a war film to bait people into watching it, and then goes "acksually it's about journalism" with no indication in the marketing. It's clear to me that they wrote the story and then fleshing out this world was an afterthought. I knew this movie would be bad when I heard about the Texas/California alliance, the two states that are such diametric opposites that it could never happen even in fiction. But that's also because they tried to make a civil war apolitical, which comes across more like a uniformed middle-schooler wrote it. as for the sniper scene, it's baffling to me how neither the sniper and spotter , who are both sitting in the open in more-or-less the exact same spot, never got shot, ghillie suits don't camouflage you in the open
Personally i liked the movie , it was an unnerving experience. And i knew as it was in the synopsis , that this movie would be about what the photo journalist played by dunst was experiencing on her trip from new york to washington DC. We are seeing the movie through her eyes . So the movie would be limited by scope , nevertheless it was still intense . A24 is still a small movie studio and the budget of 50 million is the largest they have ever spent on a movie , which is clear by the decent visuals and amazing sound design. Its unfornate some people didnt like it , but at the end of the day it wasnt going to end up being a legendary studios epic war movie on a 200 million plus budget. So i went in with limited expectations and was pleasantly surprised .
Yeah felt it was a decent film, people crying because it doesn’t take a side or isn’t some big action blockbuster. It’s not trying to be, though the misleading trailer is a fair complaint
I agree with your assesment on the scripting and world building. I watched this on an aeroplane the other day and was very impressed with the imagery. The photographic and cinematic elements are excellent, which is to be expected as the protagonists are photographers themselves, but the violence is overstated because of the lack of context. I was reminded of the "Apocalypse now" while wathing. It's Sort of like a Vietnam war film set in the USA but everyone is Colonel Kurtz and there's no real resolution.
The very beginning lost me as someone from atlanta where thee protest scene was clearly filmed. I get movies film in different cities but dont put a landmark like big bethel church which Jesus saves and pass it as atlanta. It's such a historic area. We don't take the danm empire state building and say it's ours. Boo
framing the movie so neither side of the political spectrum can figure out which side in the movie represent them was the whole point. you just didnt get any of it that doesn't mean there wasnt a point
What's wrong with Nick Offerman as the president besides not liking the actor or whatever? He was amazing in The Last of Us. Hell he's the first actor to actually make me cry in like, ten years. I haven't seen the movie yet but i thought the Nick Offerman thing was weird.
nick offerman mad youo cry.. but no one else... in TEN years?? what do you ONLY watch nick offerman movies... and turn away from the screen when hes not on it? lmfao you say this like its a normal or good thing lmfaoo you havnt cried in over ten years buddy, get help.
I really wish they delved more into the Civil War itself and the lore around it. Maybe even have a a character who's in the Western Forces, and follow his story as the frontline moves to DC and eventually crosses paths with the reporters. He could've been in the squad that raided the White House with the reporters. All we know about it are the Western Forces and that the president is on his third term, which is illegal, and he's authorized some things that a president shouldn't be able to, such as domestic airstrikes. And like you said, there were factions that weren't even mentioned in the film that the teaser map had. Sammy has a point where he says "As soon as this is over, they'll turn against eachother.". I almost think they're setting up a (hopefully better) sequel. My theory is that Leigh is still alive. When Leigh gets shot at the end, you don't see any blood. She wasn't shot in the head either. And she was wearing a bullet proof vest. Taking a 5.56 to the back in a bullet proof vest is going to hurt like hell, maybe even knock you out, but there's no evidence that the bullet went through the vest. I didn't hate the movie, I can see why some people did. It had some good scenes, and the sound effects were great along with the visuals. I can see why they tried to stay away from real world politics, especially with having the impossibly formed "Western Forces" alliance, but again, there should have been more lore to it to have the audience more invested and not as confused.
To answer your question about why the reporters were in your words "upgraded" to interviewing the president, it is because this is the normal life of a reporter. It is quite typical for a reporter to be assigned to several topics at one time and I felt this film very accurately portrayed that. I have been a reporter in my community for the past five years and I can tell you there have been several occasions where one moment I am interviewing a fisherman about his catch of the day, only to find myself interviewing a high elected official on a controversial topic the next. the modern reporter is expected to be a jack of all trades, and most people would be surprised if they knew the true amount of topics a reporter is expected to have at least a base-line knowledge of, at least enough to write a cohesive story. Great vid, just felt like I could offer some context here as someone in this field. Personally, I felt this movie very accurately captured what many journalists in today's world are forced to deal with.
"Jesse does the most moronic thing and goes into the middle of the hallway." Doesn't this solidfy her character arc? Newbie War Journalist afraid of war unable to get the shot because of it. Old War Journalist Not scared to see people die. Tell the newbie very clearly if they die she's gonna photograph her corpse. Movie goes on Veteran begins to crack while the Newbie begins to lose their sense of fear. Combine with the saying of camera people that whwn they're behind a camera they feel invincible because it gives them a sense of distance and that humans aren't Klingon "always logical" creatures and you get that scene. Kind of like how Ripley in Alien said "We have to wait for the quarantine to end." But Ash broke it anyway and no one called him out on it because "OH MY GOD KAINE IS DYING TO A WEIRD ALIEN."
3:46 I mean if they REALLY wanted to make a apolitical statement they should have pulled a 'Decker' and got Joe Estevez to play a pseudo president Bartlett, everyone's 'ideal president' from the West Wing.
From everything I've seen on this movie (I admittedly have not watched it, because I feel my time is more valuable than that), it seems as if they tried too hard to appeal to both sides of the actual political divide in an attempt to come off as not taking sides themselves. That's why CA and TX are on the same side and why there are multiple factions instead of just two, despite the movie only focusing on two of the factions.
The most mildly annoying thing about this movie is that whenever I look up anything related to the actual civil war, I get bombarded with shit from this movie Like, I try to look up types of Kepis or uniforms and the only results I get are Jessie Plemmons
Weed can make me paranoid af depending on a bunch of different variables. The strain, who I’m smoking with, where I’m smoking, whether it triggers my ptsd or not. At this point it’s just not really worth it for me to risk it, which is sad because I used to like to smoke a lot.
As a Missourian, the fact Jesse is from Missouri caused problems largely because it's clear Missouri is a place the British writer/director is vaguely familiar with from Wikipedia, since her father insists he can "sit the war out" in spite of the fact there isn't a way for Californian soldiers to reach DC _that doesn't involve marching through Missouri._ The film doesn't even have the basic respect for its subject matter _to look at a fucking map._
To respond to the question you pose at the end of the video the message i took away from this movie was a critique of war journalism and to an extent journalism in general. Generally speaking trying to address the ability for anyone to truly just capture events without inputing beliefs or in their own ways effecting events. We are given characters at different points in there journalistic careers and we watch as they respond to the conflict based on that level of experience and how they grow as a result. While the more seasoned journalists are clearly not effected by things like violence they attribute it to a detachment from the situation and from bias. However like you point out, they are throughout the film shown to have biases. Even what we do know about much of the circumstances revolving the conflict is given from people who could have their own biases or bad sources. To me what the movie was trying to show was that no matter how much someone may try and remove themselves from a situation human biases will always come out and the only thing that will be achieved is a detachment from ones humanity whether that be partially or entirely. That being said i dont even really like this movie and i think they could have done this a million better ways. I also however dont think its not necessary to flush out all of the specifics of the conflict because that really doesnt have any bearing if the focus is journalists and their biases. We really only need to know who they are actually biased towards and maybe some basic reasons if anything to get the point across. I also think alot of stuff you point out in this video is weirdly nitpicky if not a little insensitive. In particular framing the random murdering of civilians by military or militia groups as unrealistic or dumb as if that is not a very common occurrence in basically every conflict in history. As well as your point about the americans going about their lives ignoring the war. You frame it as the director making fun of Americans for being uniformed it seems but do you really think that every country that has a civil war it just involves everyone? Obviously most people will choose a side but even then, how many of those are literally just because they want to go about their daily lives and stay out of the politics. As an antizionist Jew myself the long list of resources recounting zionist crimes and anti zionist counter movements as well as nonzionist jewish movements who simply want to stay out of the fray comes to mind. Like i said, were these things done well, i dont think so. But imo they were still done and from this review it really seems like you had a very different take away. I also didnt see any marketing for this before i watched it so who knows i just read the little blurb under the movie that said it was about journalists in a war and assumed itd probably be trying to say something about war journalism lol.
What made you think they got permission to interview the president? They said once they enter Washington, reporters are shot on site. Why did you confuse Nick Offerman‘s president as president Ron Swanson? Did you watch the Last of Us ep3 and you couldn’t get into it because you saw Ron Swanson instead of, I don’t know, a character?
ok, the thing about weed is just weird, bro. As if smoking weed and other drugs weren't a big issue during Nam, it was literally the second most used drug besides alcohol. Weed also has a calming effect, for literally most people. Yeah, there is a joke about being paranoid, but that is usually when you over indulge. Anyway I like the video you seem to have some critiques that are based more on incredulity than fact but.. Hey to each their own.
So I theorize that the reason A24 studios decided to have specifically Texas and California work together as the western forces is because that way A24 studios seems less politically biased and people won't stop watching their movies because of it. The presidential election is coming up and if they have Texas, which some say is a very red state (despite how blue some places in the state are), and California, which is seen as very blue (again despite how politically diverse most states are), succeeding together than that allows A24 to dodge any possible claim of being biased towards either the Republicans or the Democrats.
Watched Dark Crystal recently and I gotta say, based on the title I was kinda hoping they'd give the crystal more screentime. They just spend a lot of time on these puppet characters and how they feel about things.
"It shows guys smiling over the dead president at the end and it clearly shows the western forces are the good guys!" You're really fumbling this last part because this implies that evil people can't.... Smile? "The wau Joel talks to the president implies he thinks the president deserves his fate." This implies our protagonists are... Heroes and not Humans. The Nazis smiled in a lot of their pictures i was unaware they were heroes who deserved to win the war. A picture means nothing but whatever you think it means that infamous Gitmo torturer was smiling with her Victims does that mean she was in the right?
I actually think the film is quite efffective in showing how desensitized you may gave to be as a war photographer..I think the title mislead people as this slam bam war movie when ultimately it really is all about war photographers and if anything, I was engaged enough with the movie to search up war photographers and their reaction to the movie..
If someone said this was made by a cowardly AI, I would believe them. Texas and California on the same side without explanation and no states between them on their side either is chicken shit.
Dude. Thank you for making this. I walked out of the theater furious. The movies basically just a circlejerk for privileged journalists who treat a war as their hippy field trip without consequence or true meaning. Its disgusting
I never saw the movie, but I recall the trailer implying that California and Texas were on the same side, which is ludicrous. That would NEVER happen in real life. Edit: yeah, seeing it on the made up map is just so frustrating. It doesn’t even make sense geographically!
Feels like a lot of your criticisms are predicated on expectations. I watched it without seeing an ad for it, because i don't see ads ever. Heard about it from some friends and watched it on my favorite illicit streaming site. With no expectations, the themes were both interesting and well executed. Those themes being distance, callous observership, and the role of a journalist as an amoral actor on the sidelines of serious conflicts. The movie also pretty explicitly paints the western forces as the more moral force.
So why not make the advertising seem about a civil war and instead set the right expectations? Why make the advertising seem about a civil war movie rather than a movie of journalism set in an American civil war? It’s cool that you went into it with no expectations but for those of us that saw the advertising and got served something different are right to criticize it for giving false expectations.
@@go_offurself8748 yeah i really dont care lol. Take a movie on its own terms. Did you get mad when No Country For Old Men killed off a character and switched the focus?
The theme doesn't make sense because it's not even saying something real. It's trying to say, at least from what I got out of it, is that "civil war is pointless, it's just killing, blah blah blah" but in reality, the American Civil War WASN'T pointless, and a lot of other civil wars aren't either. There is a point and a reason to most of them, but to us Americans since a lot of us don't read up on them, we see them as pointless. And so the theme just comes off as stupid and detatched from reality, and just seems fake.
@kailaelissa9926 the movie definitely was not saying or trying to say the civil war is pointless lol. Imo it paints the western forces as explicitly in the right, despite messy wartime events.
I'm sorry but the sniper scene as YOU described it seems to make perfect sense in the movie (I haven't seen it.) "They are trying to kill us. We are trting to kill them." "oh well this i meant to be a big who really fighting who from the trailer but the it actually IS some random guy." So its... Someone we don't know the side of shooting at people he doesn't know the side of..... And you simply reduce this to being a movie psycho.... I don't know it kinda sounds like that not knowing who you're really fighting bit you talked about.
The movie was about war journalism placed in something familiar to Americans. Scenes in this movie harkened to conditions I lived through in Venezuela but again, made to depict them for an American audience. The marketing was a bit weird for the theme of the movie for sure, but you missed the whole point of the movie if you were looking for politics or a full explanation on what was going on. It wasn’t about the civil war, it wasn’t about the story the journalist were writing, it was about the journalists themselves.
Then why not make a movie about Syria or something. An American doesn’t need to watch a modern day American civil war to understand war journalism. Also why did the movie advertise itself as a civil war movie rather than a movie about journalism. It’s a movie of all spectacle and no substance.
glad to see a24 breaking expectations and boundaries by proving that yes, they too can produce a dogshit movie that feels like a highschool project
That's an insult to highschool filmmakers 😆
This movie was guaranteed to be bad the moment they decided they were going to try to make it apolitical, which is ironically the most political decision a creative can make.
☝
When somebody tells you they're apolitical, they're telling you they don't care to stand up to evil.
Yeah, the thing about civil wars is they are never apolitical. The whole concept of a civil war is people are so mad about politics that they're resorting to violence.
this.
I've heard people say that the message of the movie is "a civil war in your country would be horrifying no matter in which side you are, so the specific politics of it are irrelevant" but I think they're just proyecting their own ideas into the film because this movie does a very bad job at painting war as hell
Why was the president even in the White House
Did Air Force 1 get shot down? Did the Secret Service just decide "Meh, let's do a MW2 and fight over the white house"? What is the Navy doing during any of this? Are the absurd number of nuclear weapons in the US being captured by rebel groups? Is Hawaii taking the chance to declare independence? Is Alaska being moved on by Canada or Russia?
Most importantly
Are we at least still getting GTA6 after all this?
No kidding lol. In a scenario like this, the president would either be at Camp David, or in an undisclosed bunker. Not to mention that the US government has a system in place where even if an entire presidential administration was wiped out, along with the predetermined predecessors to take it's place, there's a top secret group of individuals to be put into place to keep it going. Even if a president went rogue. I'd argue that maybe the Western Forces had a superior AA network around DC to keep the president from escaping, but even then, he still would've been gone long before the Western Forces even got close enough to have it there. You don't get from Texas to DC overnight. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure the White House has a nuclear bomb-proof bunker under it.
They also, from my understanding, don't really EXPLAIN how the president basically just DECIDED to take another term? Like was their a constitutional amendment? Did Congress ok that? Did the House? Was it approved of challenged by the Supreme Court? It seemed like they wanted some relatively weak 'apolitical' reasons for a president to be disliked but didn't want to have that apparently say ANYTHING BAD about the rest of government, JUST the president?
I hate to nit-pick, but at 4:36 you ask how they’ve gotten an interview with the U.S. President, but they haven’t - my understanding was that they’re traveling to D.C. to *try* and score an interview with him. They say it’s the only story worth reporting, but they don’t say they have an interview lined up: it seems they’re just aiming to show up and get one. Presumably with the situation so chaotic - it’s also mentioned at the beginning that the Western Forces are bound to take D.C. any day now - they think such an opportunity may present itself. They state that, by contrast, everyone else is heading to the front lines to report on the Western Forces taking D.C., so they feel it’s worth taking the long shot and aiming for an interview directly with President Nick. I saw this in theaters, then a second time at home (my ex rented it to help distract me from a difficult project), and that was my reading of the situation both times.
Indeed, that’s one of the reasons the journey is so dangerous. If the president wanted an interview with them, then why wouldn’t they just get a military escort the capital or even a flight? The journalist know the end is near, which is why they want to beat the rest of their competitors to DC.
It’s also pretty clear later on when they are in DC that they are in a race. The two BBC journalists that are also there are focused on the limousine that left the white house as they’re convinced the president is in there despite it being a pretty obvious distraction.
This was my understanding of the interview situation as well
Except... why isn't DC crawling with its own journalists? Why would these people traveling 800 miles from NYC be the first to get a scoop
@@Seabreeze843 Sammy said at one point that no one gets close to the president, they'll shoot anyone on sight. I thought for sure the ending was going to be that the president wasn't even there, that he's broadcasting from a set at an undisclosed location, rather than how it ended lol
@Seabreeze843 The President only allows state media
It reads like babies first alt-history scenario, where like... the america just like half of it goes "we hate you!" and "argh! boom!" but like, these two places team up! cause they're buddies! lol
Honestly man I'd rather have a show based on Hoi4 Kaisereich America. Atleat thatd probably make more sense.
@@owenhammond1880The only problem with that idea is that the movie would need to be like 4 hours long, and even then, half of it would still need to be spent explaining the lore.
@@owenhammond1880What’s Hoi4 Kaisereich America?
I think this is stupid because it literally misses the entire point the movie was making by having California and Texas joining forces. American political parties didn't matter. What mattered was the horrors of war inside your own borders which the film executed spectacularly.
@Thelastunicornlover HOI4 is Herats of Iron 4, a WW2 strategy game, but also has the ability to let you create alt history.
Keiserich is a mod for alt history where Germany won ww1, and history gets... "Funky" after that.
"so the movie is about the US going to civil war"
"o wow. sounds like a good premise. so what would the war be about?"
"i don't think we should get into politics..."
😐
The cause of the war isn't the point. The effect of the war is the point.
Bet you didn't like Dunkirk also eh?
@@dm2060 the history of the nazi occupation of france and the battles staged by allied forces or rebels are fascinating. if we lost all other allusions to the history of world war 2 i would find the lack of context for why the battle is even happening to be frustrating. this movie is about a fictional civil war that shows no signs of happening in real life. we need an actual impetus for the story. a short answer like 'slavery' or 'communist revolution' might be enough, but it's weird to just say civil war is happening without any cause. slavery was the single driving issue for the real american civil war, after all
@@Shadozcreeping but the movie itself contains no context for the battle. You shouldn't need context to care about war. War is bad regardless of why it is happening.
Let's take a more ambiguous example, in Beasts of no nation we are never given an explanation of why the protagonist's villagers were killed, why Idris Elba is a warlord, why the war is happening. The movie wants you to care about the people stuck in the war because war by itself is bad, it does not need additional context.
Similarly, the point of civil war is to show how war affects ordinary people. Some die, some pick up arms, some perform genocide. or like that one village, some straight up pretend nothing is happening. It doesn't matter why the war started.
@@Shadozcreeping I think the bulk of your and Pat's issues only exist because the movie is called civil war. If they just called it war and instead of Texas and California vs 47 other states, it was Wangwang and pongpong vs 47 other federations, you'd like the movie better (but again, that is because you're introducing your own context of the previous civil war and the current state of American politics. If we do that we might as well say that a civil war is pretty much impossible given how much of the defense infrastructure the federal government controls, and the movie itself is unrealistic).
It was because the president who is clearly representing Trump, ignored the law and used his influence to run a 3rd term, causing the civil war between his crazy loyalists and the rest of America. Don't be total retard and go see it again.
it would of been great were in the scene were Kristen dunts has flashbacks taking photos, it was a flashback showing the start of the war and her at different places showing the war developing into what it is now. So we have more context to what this civil war is about and it still gives her character development
It's giving World War Z (the Book).... and I love that
That would be cool
My guy, they smoked weed in Vietnam like it was going out of style.
Weed, acid, shrooms. Vietnam was a shit show that makes Afghanistan look like a picnic in comparison.
...no one would say that unless they have had zero experience of war. no war is a walk in the park.
@@jimmjimms where did I say war was easy? I said Vietnam was a shit show, it was objectively and WAAAAAAAYYYY more corruption happened than Afghanistan. Try again.
@@sniperboom1202 We don't know that. Vietnam had an unprecedented number of journalists with access to the front lines. By the time of Afghanistan, the US had become a lot better at curating their image.
@@WillyShankspeare the war in Afghanistan was even more unpopular at home than Vietnam. I know this because my grandfather was a Vietnam vet. (Part of the reason I think Trump's a scumbag as he is a draft dodger.) Next, there were plenty of investigations into war crimes during the US's involvement in the Middle East from 2001 through 2020. You don't hear about it because the military is much better at keeping its professionals under wraps. And because we're an all volunteer Force now, you don't have to worry about some psychopath who feels nothing being drafted and being given command of a unit. The only problem is that, Trump would pardon war criminals AND made a deal with the Taliban that released almost 5,000 fighters and liters that led to the downed fall of the Afghan government. The Conservative news media was all over Biden for the Afghan debacle when it was Trump's deal that caused it. This wasn't the Vietnam pullout where we had negotiated a deal with the high-ranking North Vietnamese with the South Vietnamese government. Also, for the drugs in Afghanistan, plenty of it was sanctioned by the US government as Afghanistan up until 2023 provided almost 75% of the world's opium.
maybe this is me being an irreverent/media illiterate zoomer, but this movie just felt like the later "phone bad" episodes of black mirror.
1000%. I wish I could give you more than one like.
@@myfriendscallmepat You have the power to pin this comment, although it's definitely going to be the territory of its own "civil war" lol
😂❤
how?
@@MistaZULE vibes.
You clearly haven’t seen Offerman in TLOU or Devs. The man is a terribly capable dramatic actor
First criticism in the comments that I actually have to agree with 😅 i update my caveat that he may be a great dramatic actor but he is still a poor choice for president of the United States
I thought the same thing too, but at the end of the day I will always see him as Ron Swanson. I think he’s perfectly capable of being a well rounded actor but the directors gotta know that for ever and ever most people will always see him as silly libertarian barbaque man
@@myfriendscallmepat and why exactly? What makes him a poor choice?
@@smaug660because you don’t nitpick, right???
@@patrickt101 do I? When and where?
There's a book called "Love thy Neighbor" and it's about the Split of Yugoslavia, but the book is from the perspective of the reporter, and it dont go deep into the centuries long complicated history of the balkans but rather it emphasizes on the disturbing fact that your neighbor would be willing to commit war crimes simply because you're of a different language, religion or ethnicity.
The movie doesn't need a preachy political lore like the "Purge" series. It just needed to convey the message that war is about survival.
The issue I have with people who defend this movie is they don't understand that suspension of disbelief has limits. Ironically, the more grounded the movie, the less people can suspend.
Well said
what is being suspended? What is so insane to not accept in this film? That Texas and California would team up?
Americans are so wild. Many other times in history have two different systems aligned to fight a greater threat. Is it really so out of the realm of possibility that this could happen in America?
You guys aren't that special.
@@MistaZULE Texas and California being in an alliance is extremely unrealistic even in a fictional civil war scenario. There's no indication in reality that the conservative population of Texas would be fine with allying with California in any wartime situation
@@MistaZULEI mean, the idea that a civil war happening would turn the entire country into a zombie apocalypse despite there being plenty of areas that are perfectly functional and are basically no different than how they otherwise would be without a civil war going on. That’s pretty absurd.
@@xinf3ctdx what? Zombie apocalypse? What are you talking about?
The movie is devoid of people because the whole thing takes place near the ongoing conflict.
One thing everyone would do when a war breaks out near them, is try to escape. That's basic conflict avoidance and self preservation.
This movie woulda done a lot better FOR ITS CONCEPT if it was World War Z style.
But the filmmakers wanted to do this contemplative road trip drama and USE THE CONCEPT to get butts in seats instead.
I absolutely hated Gardland’s last film for all the same reasons you’re clowning on Civil War. Good to know he hasn’t learned subtly yet
I find that the film "Bushwick" did a much better job at showing a future civil war than "Civil War." Although the film is from the perspective of protagonists Lucy and Stupe as they try to survive the warzone breaking out in New York City, there is plenty of sound political content throughout the film as well as brilliant character development. For example, the prisoner interrogation scene lays out a plausible scenario for why a seccesionist faction would try to invade New York City.
This movie makes that look like an underrated masterpiece.
Sounds like an interesting movie❤️
WHY’D THEY JUST LET THE BLACK GUY BLEED OUT AND DIE IN THE CAR INSTEAD OF HELPING HIM, i am genuinely asking this question
Literally drove me insane! The person I was watching the movie with looked at me like I was crazy because I was sitting there with my jaw on the floor. Like it’s one thing to try to save him and he dies, absolutely that’s fine and narratively the right choice. But they didn’t even try! No effort was made! Absolutely the hallmark of lazy/inept scriptwriting.
@@myfriendscallmepat And what exactly did you suppose they do? Without medical knowledge or equipment? What kind of nitpicky bs critique is that?
it's conservative thinking. As in they cannot imagine caring about another human being enough to save them.
@@smaug660 Wartching the video where it is detailed what Pat said would have helped.
First aid does not require a lot of training, a war correspondent that can easily get shot at during their job should probably be at least somewhat knowledgeable about that as even if you travel with a medic, they might be the one that ends up wounded or incapacitated.
He also suggests emotional support or trying to find help. Like literally doing ANYTHING except just letting him die.
@@smaug660 a tourniquet? just literally putting pressure on the wound with a tshirt? they should at least be trained in basic tactical first aid from their military service
Was this movie made specifically to show Americans how people from other countries feel when their wars are depicted by Hollywood?
If that was the case then I'll take it all back. If it's serious, unflinching satire of Hollywood turning every conflict into a farce, then yeah.
But if that was the case someone would have said so.
I saw this in theaters and was sorely disappointed. With an extra 30-40 minutes of world building it could have been good. It feels like a nothing burger
No no, part of thedystopian horror is that theAmericsn dollar is worth so little that Canadian money is worth more.
😂😂😂
My only real issue with this movie is the director calling a civil war movie "Apolitical." The characters in the movie can be apolitical, or its leanings can be ambiguous. But the movie itself is political.
I think the meaning was more that the film isn't about our current politics, rather than having no political reading whatsoever.
Part of why the Texas-California exists here (I think) is to separate the civil war from any current understanding of American politics.
If this movie were set in the far-flung Middle Eastern country of Funkistan, would any of us care why the Get Down forces are trying to topple the Getuplican regime? Just as it is for the jaded war journalist protagonists, the reasons for the war aren't really important.
If it was a made up war yes because it would give us an understanding of the conflict.
Also the Texas and California thing is not stupid just because of current politics. Texas is a long standing red southern state, it was in the god damn Confederacy and is been a known blue state since the mid to late 60s.
The movie meta plot is that both sides are Larping so hard that they start a war with eachother. While most politics is a lot of bravado and posturing at the extremes, bullets have real consequences once the larpers feel justified in using them.
Total randomness with an incomprehensible message, which makes it illusory in both the good and bad sense. Mostly the bad, in that for whatever good it does, ultimately you feel ripped off.
The manymany butthurt people in the comments need to learn that critique is not hate. Critique is part of the art world. It should not upset you that a critic does not like what you like. And you certainly should not act like a child if they do.
Putting my opinions out on UA-cam means that people getting butthurt is inevitable haha. I was definitely surprised about the reception though, it’s not like I deliberately choose to tear media down, I was just giving my honest opinion
@@manderly33 but am I allowed to critique a critique If it's a bad critique? You understand that logic also works the other way around...
@@smaug660 if you are capable to recognize "a bad critique" as some of your attempts were awfully inept in attempting a valid critique.
Also try a hemorrhoid donut, itmight help with the conservative perma butt hurt.
If the critique is bad or if they misunderstand the art theyre critiquing, should i accept it?
It's like if someone criticized Jackson Pollack and just said, "he splashes paint, what's so great about that?" Should i take the seriously or simply ignore their opinion because they lack the context to truly understand his work?
Op: "Critique is not hate don't be butthurt if someone criticizes something you like"
Very smart people: "So I'm not allowed to critique the criticism?!?1? I can't *disagree?!?* How dare you say I can't voice my opinion" 😡
The most unrealistic thing about the movie is Texas and California not instantly going to war. Also, we have absolutely no desire to take Oklahoma back. The feds took that, they can have it.
Oh I really liked it. I think the title and trailer were very much the movie equivalent of click bait, but as a movie about photojournalism, an effort to stay impartial in objectivity terrible circumstances, and then the trauma that comes from that it was really good.
I thought the ending was obvs referencing a irl picture of US soldiers posing and smiling with the corpse of a terrorist leader as if it is a deer and this was a cool hunting trip. Like, I guess that was a bad guy, but eh it still feels icky and dehumanizing. The “who are the good guys/are there any good guys really” I think was the point. Bc photojournalism is supposed to be about capturing the “truth” of the situation on the ground and allowing the viewer to make up their own mind about it. Justice for Sammy, tho.
This is a movie for people who think they're smart when they say both Russia and Ukraine are at fault and that they should really sit down at the table and negotiate.
Enlightened centrist the movie.
While there’s a lot I don’t like about the movie the way it tries to use a veneer of being apolitical, I do think you’re missing a big point of the Plemmons scene. The director has said he intends the movie to be generally about how bad civil wars are/how one would be, and at least for this scene I think it makes a lot of sense in that context. It’s not so much saying “racism bad”, the point is more that conflicts (especially internal) inevitably become an excuse for people to act out their worst impulses like intense xenophobia under the guise of “patriotism” for a fractured small in group of the “right kind” of American. In the chaos people play out their own personal idea of what that means.
This movie is like The Purge for pretentious film students
🤣
I seem to say this a lot, but Civil War - as a text - is not concerned with the Civil War so much as it is about the conflict within Lee about if her role has any worth. Lee is cynical and believes her job is worthless, and that she has failed, while Jesse is young and optimistic and believes she can do good.
Jesse represents a part of Lee which Lee is in conflict with. There are many examples - most obvious the film developing scene - which shows Jesse as a young Lee. While this film is not Fight Club, Jesse is basically young Lee walking around next to old Lee.
These two forces are in conflict - the titular Civil War - and given the end of the movie it is obvious which side wins in that. It is good to be optimistic, you can make a difference.
Everything else in the movie is setting for that story. It is worth talking about, but this is not a war movie. The marketing is interesting - but the movie starts at the first frame, and ends at the last. It is interesting to talk about what Texas would do in a real war, but who cares? As you say, it is just set dressing, and that is ok.
The Civil War is internal, and perhaps the real Civil War is the things we learn along the way.
Alex Garland claimed he didn't want to focus on the film being left or right (despite calling it Civil War) - but paid and directly thanked in the credits a well-known far-right provocateur, a far right wing pundit, and a transphobe activist. None of which needed to be paid or thanked for the footage he used, as there were plenty of apolitical sources of the same material. So, yeah...
Small nitpick , the president did not pick them for the interview. The older character specifically states that forces guarding d.c. shoot journalist on sight. They wanted to interview him regardless and they state as much in the hotel scene
Yeah I went and rewatched that on HBO Max after I saw some of the comments. Sadly this was a detail I took the wrong notes on when I was watching it in theaters way back when. I’ve started sitting by the aisle now so the lights on the steps make it easier to take notes lol
26:00 I don't think the movie takes the side of the Western Forces. It's more of a nihilistic, centrist approach where the country was lost from the moment the civil war started. Joel photographing the president's death and "siding" with WF is a sad ending, showing that he's lost a bit of his humanity when his colleague died. It's not saying WF's victory is good, but that it's just another step on the road to doom (which ties into the nihilism).
It's been a long time since I've seen a movie that tries so hard to do so little. There literally nothing to take away from this film once the credits role.
"Both Sides: The Movie"
Why exactly are you expecting the movie to pick a side? The movie isn't about the politics of the war, it's only about the effect of war.
@@dm2060I get that but to see that you need to understand what the sides are fighting about.
@@kap1618 would the "why" of the war change the effect on the common folks? You know, the focus of the movie? Let's assume the war started because The President called the Texas governor's wife a pig. Did that change your experience of viewing the movie?
@@dm2060 Yes, the "why" does affect the common folk. It determines how much skin they have in the game. If the war is being fought over something ridiculous, that would make it more infuriating but also terrifying.
@@kap1618 the ordinary American soldier had absolutely no skin in the game in Vietnam, politically speaking, as far as the cause of the war was concerned. To them, it was very much a pointless war. Did that make Apocalypse Now less terrifying to you?
They set up that Jessie would get herself into the line of fire. Like three times before Lee gets shot a soldier or someone else has to move her or hold her back to keep her from getting hurt. I read it as Jessie being inexperienced and Lee sacrificing herself to save her while Jessie photographs her being shot, fulfilling the reversal of that Lee said earlier- that she would be willing to photograph Jessie being shot.
Well, yeah. That much was obvious, but everything else that happened is what made it seem stupid. They set that up pretty fine I guess, but they were also setting up the idea that they’re all basically in it for themselves and that they don’t really care about one another. And those two setups conflict with each other.
graphic violence and gore? this was pretty tame for the most part, and theres barely any actual gore. just a handful shots of standard r rated stuff that no teenager would be bothered by. that super fucked Jesse Plemons section was one of the few scenes worthy of the films title.
aside from not wanting to alienate mainstream audiences with violence thats too harsh, its also a politically cowardly film. just a24s attempt at a blockbuster
I might have just been in a forgiving mood when I watched this movie, but I just assumed Kristen Dunst’s character was doing a suicide by martyrdom. Through the whole scene she’s just done, not even trying to take pictures.
I think by that point in the movie, her ark was suppose to be that she could finally acknowledge the trauma her line of work has inflicted on her and that her heart was not in it anymore. By this point, the emotional and physical price for engaging in horrific events for the sake of "getting the shot" did not seem worth it. She was disengaged by the final act. I don't think her death was a suicide but more so an act of accountability and possibly guilt for having pushed the younger photo-journalist into becoming so immersed in their dangerous line of work. Also doing so with little emotional regard. She ends up getting killed and more tragically is the fact that the younger journalist seems disconnected, aloof, and lacking compassion by the sacrafice. She is more concerned about documenting the event than she is for human life. Kirsten Dunst's sacrifice is almost pointless since the younger girl is now as indoctrinated into this lifestyle as she herself was.
I was really not a fan of this movie though and felt that the dynamic between these character was the only engaging part of it.
I feel like you completely missed the point of so many aspects of this film. To begin with, the ambiguity has a purpose. The point of the ambiguity is twofold - for one, the audience has to watch the movie without knowing who to root for, and therefore every time someone gets executed unceremoniously you're forced to wonder if they really deserved it or not, and for two, no one is alienated from the film from the beginning by being told "hey your side started the civil war and you are the bad guys.". Everyone has to watch Americans killing other Americans without a trial, without mercy, and with actual weapons of war without knowing if the "good guys" are winning.
That's why they have Texas and California team up. Is it unlikely? In the current political climate, sure. But if the viewer was told "oh hey California, Washington State, New York, and Delaware are all on one team, it becomes pretty obvious what side of the aisle they represent.
The idea behind the movie is to show the consequences of a civil war without really examining who started it or why. A lot of the little vignettes are meant to recall images from other conflicts around the world or show different aspects of the breakdown of society. The currency is debased - sure their way of showing it was a bit clumsy, but that's a real thing that happens in war. A person has holed up in their mansion and is shooting anyone who passes by - this sounds a lot like something modern day "preppers" who build bunkers full of weapons on their property might do. Why? It doesn't matter.
A racist is killing everyone he doesn't think is American enough. A group of refugees have taken shelter in a football stadium and the UN is providing aid. Whatever ideals the war is about fade into the background as a small squad fights for control of a single building the enemy have holed up in - they execute their prisoners. In the end, they storm the White House and execute the President. Of course they take a triumphant photo, but did the good guys really win? Who knows. I think you're reading of the ending as triumphant is totally wrong. It reads like every rebel group that has ever overthrown a government - it could be Saddam Hussein getting dragged out of a hole, or it could be the Khmer Rouge taking Phnom Penh.
The overall message to me is crystal clear - in a civil war, YOUR SIDE MIGHT NOT WIN. Your President might be the guy getting dragged out and shot. And even if you do win, who knows what your faction is going to look like or what kind of government they're going to impose when the smoke clears.
I do agree that the handling of Lee and Jessie could have been better.
All of that, however, is unrealistic and appeals to noncommittal centrists. In real life, we know who starts wars and what people are fighting for. It's not mystery. It's a child's understanding of war.
@@kap1618You're completely wrong, of course. Most of the 19 year-olds in Iraq probably thought they were there to fight terrorists or something. When they returned to America and learned that the causes they believed they fought for were actually fabrications, they became very disillusioned with the government.
In WW1, the cause of the war was a complex series of political alliances and defense considerations that pulled nations into conflict one after the other to fulfill their obligations. Do you think the young men getting blown up in the trenches fully understood what exactly they were fighting for? Obviously not, they were fed nationalistic and war-glorifying propaganda until they went to the front and were traumatized by the horrific reality of modern war.
In Vietnam, most soldiers probably thought they were there to protect democracy and because the Viet Cong had attacked American warships. In reality, although there was an incident, the attack never happened.
The causes of war are often wrapped up in propaganda and misunderstood by most people until the aftermath is complete. Do you think most young men who would fight in a hypothetical civil war in the US tomorrow really understand the criminal cases against Trump, or the false elector plot?
To say nothing of the reality for the soldiers on the ground, for whom political disagreements take a back seat to the struggle to survive and the hatred for the enemy. Modern war is hell, and it begins with a group of young friends on an adventure and ends with half of them eviscerated and dismembered and the other half with PTSD.
War should be avoided at almost any cost. It is the final option when all other avenues have been explored and shouldn't be treated lightly. The costs are immense, the benefits few, and that's IF your side wins.
That's how an adult understands war.
@@Jake-zn1qr You completely ignore how much garbage was sold to soldiers in Iraq and Vietnam. It was a mainstream propaganda campaign that other journalists had to compete against. Once people knew the truth, they were against the war because it was so bogus. Even today, we know Vietnam and Iraq were a result of incompetence and corruption on the part of the government and the media that supported them.
Those wars were not apolitical. America was objectively in the wrong. But this movie doesn't do that. It's the most noncommittal centrists preaching I've ever seen. Much like the first civil war and ww2, there was an objectively good and bad side.
Also, it's worth noting that journalists were not apolitical in any of this. They either told the truth or were just as corrupt as the government. War is bad, but to the people defending themselves or fighting for their rights. It's more than justified and is celebrated.
Nowadays we have more news than ever before. We know who starts wars and why. And that information can easily be spread to civilians and soldiers alike. And that news is brought to us by journalists who either care about truth or want profit. There is no excuse for people to wallow in their own ignorance.
@@Jake-zn1qr You completely ignore how much garbage was sold to soldiers in Iraq and Vietnam. It was a mainstream propaganda campaign that other journalists had to compete against. Once people knew the truth, they were against the war because it was so bogus. Even today, we know Vietnam and Iraq were a result of incompetence and corruption on the part of the government and the media that supported them.
Those wars were not apolitical. America was objectively in the wrong. But this movie doesn't do that. It's the most noncommittal centrists preaching I've ever seen. Much like the first civil war and ww2, there was an objectively good and bad side.
Also, it's worth noting that journalists were not apolitical in any of this. They either told the truth or were just as corrupt as the government. War is bad, but to the people defending themselves or fighting for their rights. It's more than justified and is celebrated.
@Jake-zn1qr You completely ignore how much garbage was sold to people in Iraq and Vietnam wars. It was a mainstream disinfo campaign that other journalists had to compete against. Once people knew the truth, they were against the war because it was so bogus. Even today, we know Vietnam and Iraq were a result of incompetence and corruption on the part of the government and the media that supported them.
Those wars were not apolitical. America was objectively in the wrong. But this movie doesn't do that. It's the most noncommittal centrists preaching I've ever seen. Much like the first civil war and ww2, we knew Who started the wars and why.
Also, it's worth noting that journalists were not apolitical in any of this. They either told the truth or were just as corrupt as the government. War is bad, but to the people defending themselves or fighting for their rights. It's more than justified and is celebrated.
They weren’t picked by the President…they literally say that they’re just gonna show up and hope he lets them
The movie isn’t good but you missed how it’s more dumb that they wanna just show up
I actually liked this movie quite a bit, although I agree with you on many points! The main thing is: The ending of the relationship between Lee and Jessie. When she stood smack in the middle of that hallway i wanted to shoot her my own damn self. SO STUPID. And then Jessie just replaces Lee in the long line of war journalists - gave me a gross feeling. I could not stand Jessie, she was so friggin annoying the whole time so to me, that explained part of why Lee was so rough to her. She did not want this annoying ass child tagging along and did not want the extra added responsibility of looking after someone while she was doing her own (very dangerous) work. Also like you, did not like that extraneous scene with the sexual tension. Maybe the guy was all revved up from the explosions and just wanted to fuck something but even so the scene was not necessary. To me though, the focus of the movie was on the journalists and their neutrality. The multiiple factions, confusion, not knowing any real facts or who to even side with, made me feel like I was looking at my own country like an outsider. Like how we as Americans can look at war scenes of other countries on the news. It's just chaos and it doesnt really matter who is who, people are being hurt and everything is a mess and terrifying. I feel this was further solidified by the scene where the two soldiers are laying in the grass shooting at the guy in the building. As for hackneyed tropes, I dont really watch action or war movies (bf dragged me to this one lol) and in the scheme of things, not too much live action media at all, so there may have been some cheesy things that went over my head. You're way more of an expert on this than I am lol. I guess the last thing I want to touch on was the ending with the still photographs. Made me feel uneasy in a dissatisfied way. It's like ok now what. I got the point, life moves on and the journalists just follow whatever outcome there may be, but it just left me feeling off. Anyways love your vids, just saw your newest and cant wait for the next one
I need to see movie because these comments are interesting. Either one side of this is being a bunch of uptight fanboys trying to be super smart or the review is bad.
It's the latter
Did you end up watching it?
I had pretty much the same impression after seeing the movie on an airplane with crappy airline issued earbuds. I thought I had missed something. Apparently not.
I feel like it's a valid argument to critique the films core approach to not discussing the political motivations. But I feel that because the film is purposefully designed to not be weighed down by left/right politics, half of this video seems unnecessary. If the movies intention was to keep it vague then dissecting individual scenes and saying they fail at communicating the reasons seems like you're not critiquing the film for what it's trying to do.
Alex Garland has such an amazing filmography and then he shits something like this
How does a war, especially a civil war, work without politics?
Lol, the dollar is so integral to the global economy there is no way every other currency outside of Russia doesn't see similar hyper inflation if inflation is what would happen.
The whole battle of DC was a pretty sick battle. Literally my only complaint about it was the gun on the Apache. It fired like a minigun rather than the canon it normally has.
Wait, what kind of american are you wasn't a joke...it was an actual movie ad?
a movie about a theoretical civil war that has extremely haphazard worldbuilding and zero thought put into the actual civil war it's supposed to portray. There's no explanation, even an offhand one from side characters, as to what the goals are, all we know is the Western Forces want the President dead for...reasons, and they are perfectly fine with mass slaughter as a means to get there (there's no strategic value in using an attack helicopter to shoot random city buildings when the leader of the country is your target). It advertised itself on being a war film to bait people into watching it, and then goes "acksually it's about journalism" with no indication in the marketing. It's clear to me that they wrote the story and then fleshing out this world was an afterthought. I knew this movie would be bad when I heard about the Texas/California alliance, the two states that are such diametric opposites that it could never happen even in fiction. But that's also because they tried to make a civil war apolitical, which comes across more like a uniformed middle-schooler wrote it.
as for the sniper scene, it's baffling to me how neither the sniper and spotter , who are both sitting in the open in more-or-less the exact same spot, never got shot, ghillie suits don't camouflage you in the open
Personally i liked the movie , it was an unnerving experience. And i knew as it was in the synopsis , that this movie would be about what the photo journalist played by dunst was experiencing on her trip from new york to washington DC. We are seeing the movie through her eyes . So the movie would be limited by scope , nevertheless it was still intense . A24 is still a small movie studio and the budget of 50 million is the largest they have ever spent on a movie , which is clear by the decent visuals and amazing sound design. Its unfornate some people didnt like it , but at the end of the day it wasnt going to end up being a legendary studios epic war movie on a 200 million plus budget. So i went in with limited expectations and was pleasantly surprised .
It's ok this kids is as dumb as fk. He was waiting for marvel characters.
A24 is also renowned for pulling uncomfortable, more message oriented movies than blockbusters iirc
Yeah felt it was a decent film, people crying because it doesn’t take a side or isn’t some big action blockbuster. It’s not trying to be, though the misleading trailer is a fair complaint
I agree with your assesment on the scripting and world building. I watched this on an aeroplane the other day and was very impressed with the imagery. The photographic and cinematic elements are excellent, which is to be expected as the protagonists are photographers themselves, but the violence is overstated because of the lack of context.
I was reminded of the "Apocalypse now" while wathing. It's Sort of like a Vietnam war film set in the USA but everyone is Colonel Kurtz and there's no real resolution.
The very beginning lost me as someone from atlanta where thee protest scene was clearly filmed. I get movies film in different cities but dont put a landmark like big bethel church which Jesus saves and pass it as atlanta. It's such a historic area. We don't take the danm empire state building and say it's ours. Boo
framing the movie so neither side of the political spectrum can figure out which side in the movie represent them was the whole point.
you just didnt get any of it that doesn't mean there wasnt a point
But that's unrealistic. We know who fights for what in real wars. Journalists cover that all the time.
What's wrong with Nick Offerman as the president besides not liking the actor or whatever? He was amazing in The Last of Us. Hell he's the first actor to actually make me cry in like, ten years.
I haven't seen the movie yet but i thought the Nick Offerman thing was weird.
Oh man, the last of us episode was strong. I knew he was in parcs and recs but i had no idea he eas that good
nick offerman mad youo cry.. but no one else... in TEN years??
what do you ONLY watch nick offerman movies... and turn away from the screen when hes not on it?
lmfao you say this like its a normal or good thing lmfaoo you havnt cried in over ten years buddy, get help.
I really wish they delved more into the Civil War itself and the lore around it. Maybe even have a a character who's in the Western Forces, and follow his story as the frontline moves to DC and eventually crosses paths with the reporters. He could've been in the squad that raided the White House with the reporters. All we know about it are the Western Forces and that the president is on his third term, which is illegal, and he's authorized some things that a president shouldn't be able to, such as domestic airstrikes. And like you said, there were factions that weren't even mentioned in the film that the teaser map had. Sammy has a point where he says "As soon as this is over, they'll turn against eachother.". I almost think they're setting up a (hopefully better) sequel. My theory is that Leigh is still alive. When Leigh gets shot at the end, you don't see any blood. She wasn't shot in the head either. And she was wearing a bullet proof vest. Taking a 5.56 to the back in a bullet proof vest is going to hurt like hell, maybe even knock you out, but there's no evidence that the bullet went through the vest. I didn't hate the movie, I can see why some people did. It had some good scenes, and the sound effects were great along with the visuals. I can see why they tried to stay away from real world politics, especially with having the impossibly formed "Western Forces" alliance, but again, there should have been more lore to it to have the audience more invested and not as confused.
To answer your question about why the reporters were in your words "upgraded" to interviewing the president, it is because this is the normal life of a reporter. It is quite typical for a reporter to be assigned to several topics at one time and I felt this film very accurately portrayed that. I have been a reporter in my community for the past five years and I can tell you there have been several occasions where one moment I am interviewing a fisherman about his catch of the day, only to find myself interviewing a high elected official on a controversial topic the next. the modern reporter is expected to be a jack of all trades, and most people would be surprised if they knew the true amount of topics a reporter is expected to have at least a base-line knowledge of, at least enough to write a cohesive story. Great vid, just felt like I could offer some context here as someone in this field. Personally, I felt this movie very accurately captured what many journalists in today's world are forced to deal with.
Florida Alliance lmao
Is the sniper scene shot at the same place as Station 11 was?
"Jesse does the most moronic thing and goes into the middle of the hallway." Doesn't this solidfy her character arc? Newbie War Journalist afraid of war unable to get the shot because of it. Old War Journalist Not scared to see people die. Tell the newbie very clearly if they die she's gonna photograph her corpse. Movie goes on Veteran begins to crack while the Newbie begins to lose their sense of fear. Combine with the saying of camera people that whwn they're behind a camera they feel invincible because it gives them a sense of distance and that humans aren't Klingon "always logical" creatures and you get that scene. Kind of like how Ripley in Alien said "We have to wait for the quarantine to end." But Ash broke it anyway and no one called him out on it because "OH MY GOD KAINE IS DYING TO A WEIRD ALIEN."
3:46 I mean if they REALLY wanted to make a apolitical statement they should have pulled a 'Decker' and got Joe Estevez to play a pseudo president Bartlett, everyone's 'ideal president' from the West Wing.
From everything I've seen on this movie (I admittedly have not watched it, because I feel my time is more valuable than that), it seems as if they tried too hard to appeal to both sides of the actual political divide in an attempt to come off as not taking sides themselves. That's why CA and TX are on the same side and why there are multiple factions instead of just two, despite the movie only focusing on two of the factions.
The main guy in this movie is the MOST "cop"-looking guy ever.
stopped at 24 seconds when you didn't commit to the bit of wearing the stupid hat
I stopped at 25 seconds to come say this lol
@@chrisrosenthal1210 I too stopped at 25 seconds. he ain't no real Rebel.. lol.
The most mildly annoying thing about this movie is that whenever I look up anything related to the actual civil war, I get bombarded with shit from this movie
Like, I try to look up types of Kepis or uniforms and the only results I get are Jessie Plemmons
I love this movie for playing with our watching habits. Don't let negative reviews stop you from watching it!
"Kristin (sic) Dunst of Spiderman fame" is so disrespectful holy shit 😂
nah I thought it was fun. This is just clickbait because you know overtly negative videos get clicks.
This movie is written by people on acid
i can tell u don't smoke weed, "paranoid lettuce" is a new one fs
"May I have one drug please" ahhh person
fr honestly it makes the most sense for somebody to wanna smoke and chill out during WAR 😭
@@ceezer.mp4 They did in Vietnam, Iraq, and others.
For some people, weed can be "paranoid lettuce" (who calls it that lmao). Not me though, its a relaxing experience. Mileage varies.
Weed can make me paranoid af depending on a bunch of different variables. The strain, who I’m smoking with, where I’m smoking, whether it triggers my ptsd or not. At this point it’s just not really worth it for me to risk it, which is sad because I used to like to smoke a lot.
_Civil War Dress-Up Day_ is such a bizarre concept - couldn't imagine any other place but the US to have something like this.
to be fair i think buying prerolled cigarettes might be hard if the gov has collapsed in on itself
As a Missourian, the fact Jesse is from Missouri caused problems largely because it's clear Missouri is a place the British writer/director is vaguely familiar with from Wikipedia, since her father insists he can "sit the war out" in spite of the fact there isn't a way for Californian soldiers to reach DC _that doesn't involve marching through Missouri._ The film doesn't even have the basic respect for its subject matter _to look at a fucking map._
To respond to the question you pose at the end of the video the message i took away from this movie was a critique of war journalism and to an extent journalism in general. Generally speaking trying to address the ability for anyone to truly just capture events without inputing beliefs or in their own ways effecting events. We are given characters at different points in there journalistic careers and we watch as they respond to the conflict based on that level of experience and how they grow as a result. While the more seasoned journalists are clearly not effected by things like violence they attribute it to a detachment from the situation and from bias. However like you point out, they are throughout the film shown to have biases. Even what we do know about much of the circumstances revolving the conflict is given from people who could have their own biases or bad sources. To me what the movie was trying to show was that no matter how much someone may try and remove themselves from a situation human biases will always come out and the only thing that will be achieved is a detachment from ones humanity whether that be partially or entirely. That being said i dont even really like this movie and i think they could have done this a million better ways. I also however dont think its not necessary to flush out all of the specifics of the conflict because that really doesnt have any bearing if the focus is journalists and their biases. We really only need to know who they are actually biased towards and maybe some basic reasons if anything to get the point across. I also think alot of stuff you point out in this video is weirdly nitpicky if not a little insensitive. In particular framing the random murdering of civilians by military or militia groups as unrealistic or dumb as if that is not a very common occurrence in basically every conflict in history. As well as your point about the americans going about their lives ignoring the war. You frame it as the director making fun of Americans for being uniformed it seems but do you really think that every country that has a civil war it just involves everyone? Obviously most people will choose a side but even then, how many of those are literally just because they want to go about their daily lives and stay out of the politics. As an antizionist Jew myself the long list of resources recounting zionist crimes and anti zionist counter movements as well as nonzionist jewish movements who simply want to stay out of the fray comes to mind. Like i said, were these things done well, i dont think so. But imo they were still done and from this review it really seems like you had a very different take away. I also didnt see any marketing for this before i watched it so who knows i just read the little blurb under the movie that said it was about journalists in a war and assumed itd probably be trying to say something about war journalism lol.
What made you think they got permission to interview the president? They said once they enter Washington, reporters are shot on site.
Why did you confuse Nick Offerman‘s president as president Ron Swanson? Did you watch the Last of Us ep3 and you couldn’t get into it because you saw Ron Swanson instead of, I don’t know, a character?
ok, the thing about weed is just weird, bro. As if smoking weed and other drugs weren't a big issue during Nam, it was literally the second most used drug besides alcohol. Weed also has a calming effect, for literally most people. Yeah, there is a joke about being paranoid, but that is usually when you over indulge. Anyway I like the video you seem to have some critiques that are based more on incredulity than fact but.. Hey to each their own.
20:29 amazing editing
The Purge is a more believable civil war movie.
How does the hat from 4th grade still fit your head?
Minute 5:16 & I've already seen daisies in actor hair twice
good oblique editing eye
So I theorize that the reason A24 studios decided to have specifically Texas and California work together as the western forces is because that way A24 studios seems less politically biased and people won't stop watching their movies because of it.
The presidential election is coming up and if they have Texas, which some say is a very red state (despite how blue some places in the state are), and California, which is seen as very blue (again despite how politically diverse most states are), succeeding together than that allows A24 to dodge any possible claim of being biased towards either the Republicans or the Democrats.
Watched Dark Crystal recently and I gotta say, based on the title I was kinda hoping they'd give the crystal more screentime. They just spend a lot of time on these puppet characters and how they feel about things.
Ever hear of a little thing called the Vietnam war? Lotta weed smoking in that.
It's so crazy how last year was so good for movies and this year it's just flop central
this movie feels like half the movie is missing
"It shows guys smiling over the dead president at the end and it clearly shows the western forces are the good guys!" You're really fumbling this last part because this implies that evil people can't.... Smile? "The wau Joel talks to the president implies he thinks the president deserves his fate." This implies our protagonists are... Heroes and not Humans. The Nazis smiled in a lot of their pictures i was unaware they were heroes who deserved to win the war. A picture means nothing but whatever you think it means that infamous Gitmo torturer was smiling with her Victims does that mean she was in the right?
Yeah it was just OK. Nothing to write home about. I won't watch it again
I actually think the film is quite efffective in showing how desensitized you may gave to be as a war photographer..I think the title mislead people as this slam bam war movie when ultimately it really is all about war photographers and if anything, I was engaged enough with the movie to search up war photographers and their reaction to the movie..
If someone said this was made by a cowardly AI, I would believe them. Texas and California on the same side without explanation and no states between them on their side either is chicken shit.
Dude. Thank you for making this. I walked out of the theater furious. The movies basically just a circlejerk for privileged journalists who treat a war as their hippy field trip without consequence or true meaning. Its disgusting
Thanks a lot for helping me steer clear of something I thought was just “okay” to begin with!
I hated this movie. It's just shocking moments with almost zero rational.
Also, this movie completely forgets that the police exist.
I never saw the movie, but I recall the trailer implying that California and Texas were on the same side, which is ludicrous. That would NEVER happen in real life.
Edit: yeah, seeing it on the made up map is just so frustrating. It doesn’t even make sense geographically!
I haven’t seen this movie but based on your description it sounds a lot like a Christian production analogous to the “left behind” movies
People who see Nick Offerman and think comedian have not seen Devs
Feels like a lot of your criticisms are predicated on expectations. I watched it without seeing an ad for it, because i don't see ads ever. Heard about it from some friends and watched it on my favorite illicit streaming site. With no expectations, the themes were both interesting and well executed. Those themes being distance, callous observership, and the role of a journalist as an amoral actor on the sidelines of serious conflicts. The movie also pretty explicitly paints the western forces as the more moral force.
So why not make the advertising seem about a civil war and instead set the right expectations? Why make the advertising seem about a civil war movie rather than a movie of journalism set in an American civil war? It’s cool that you went into it with no expectations but for those of us that saw the advertising and got served something different are right to criticize it for giving false expectations.
@@go_offurself8748 yeah i really dont care lol. Take a movie on its own terms. Did you get mad when No Country For Old Men killed off a character and switched the focus?
The theme doesn't make sense because it's not even saying something real. It's trying to say, at least from what I got out of it, is that "civil war is pointless, it's just killing, blah blah blah" but in reality, the American Civil War WASN'T pointless, and a lot of other civil wars aren't either. There is a point and a reason to most of them, but to us Americans since a lot of us don't read up on them, we see them as pointless. And so the theme just comes off as stupid and detatched from reality, and just seems fake.
@kailaelissa9926 the movie definitely was not saying or trying to say the civil war is pointless lol. Imo it paints the western forces as explicitly in the right, despite messy wartime events.
Texas and California together? Director doesn't know US politics at all.
I'm sorry but the sniper scene as YOU described it seems to make perfect sense in the movie (I haven't seen it.) "They are trying to kill us. We are trting to kill them." "oh well this i meant to be a big who really fighting who from the trailer but the it actually IS some random guy." So its... Someone we don't know the side of shooting at people he doesn't know the side of..... And you simply reduce this to being a movie psycho.... I don't know it kinda sounds like that not knowing who you're really fighting bit you talked about.
The movie was about war journalism placed in something familiar to Americans. Scenes in this movie harkened to conditions I lived through in Venezuela but again, made to depict them for an American audience. The marketing was a bit weird for the theme of the movie for sure, but you missed the whole point of the movie if you were looking for politics or a full explanation on what was going on. It wasn’t about the civil war, it wasn’t about the story the journalist were writing, it was about the journalists themselves.
And that’s why simply calling it “Civil War” was a mistake and horribly misleading
Then why not make a movie about Syria or something. An American doesn’t need to watch a modern day American civil war to understand war journalism. Also why did the movie advertise itself as a civil war movie rather than a movie about journalism. It’s a movie of all spectacle and no substance.
Its ironic bc the history were given on the first civil war is just as shallow lolololo
Bafflingly bad creative decision making all throughout this film. The action sequences were well done tho, and some decent performances.