1,501 words
Civil War: based or cringe? That is the million-dollar question.
Your gut tells you that because it is a Hollywood film, it will be an evil MAGAs versus virtuous libtards cringefest with lots of woke anti-white messaging. Yet, part of you holds out hope that maybe it will be unintentionally based. Jews will sometimes screw up and accidentally create Right-wing anti-heroes such as Archie Bunker or Michael Douglas’ character in Falling Down. Maybe there will be some Right-wing villain who delivers nationalist monologues that are meant to come off as ominous to normies but which sounds perfectly sensible to the red-pilled viewer.
Civil War is neither based nor cringe. Before I say what Civil War is, I should explain what it is trying to be — and before I explain that, I have to explain what Civil War goes out of its way not to be.
Civil War tries as best it can to be non-ideological. In its scenario, the United States has fractured into different factions. The East Coast and the Midwest remain loyal to the federal government, but Florida and the Northwest have broken off into separate countries, while Texas and California have formed an alliance. The causus belli for this current state of affairs is never clearly defined, however. As such, you can’t tell who are the MAGAs and who are the libtards, and so you can’t tell who the good guys and the bad guys are. There is some suggestion that the President in the movie is atypically authoritarian, although what he did to get people so riled up is not articulated, so you can’t evaluate the merits of the separatist arguments (which are never presented, anyway). Moreover, in the battle scenes you can’t tell which side is fighting whom.
Note that I said that Civil War tries the best it can to be non-ideological — which is to say, imperfectly. The two most sadistic characters in the movie both happen to have Southern accents — although to be fair, those scenes take place in the South. The most talked-about scene is one where a soldier who commits war crimes asks the heroes what state they are from before deciding whether or not to execute them. Thankfully, he is the most ideologically-defined character in the entire movie, but for the most part, the filmmakers try to keep their biases closer to their vests. The city of Charlottesville — yes, that one — is a plot device, although it’s never made clear what we’re supposed to make of that.
Rather than offering social commentary on contemporary American politics, what Civil War tries to do is simply paint a picture of what a modern American civil war might look like. Star Kirsten Dunst’s character, Lee Smith, is a battle-hardened war photojournalist whose job is to do just that: show what war looks like. Civil War is also a road trip movie, as Dunst and her multiracial group of companions — one Hispanic guy, a young girl who looks Jewish but apparently isn’t, and an elderly black man who ultimately sacrifices himself to save the other three — travel across the bombed-out American wasteland on their way to interview the soon-to-be-deposed American President. En route, they document the horrors of war: the pitched battles, the summary executions, and all the rest. Smith travels using Canadian money, as American money has hyper-inflated into worthlessness.
At one point the movie seems to pat itself on the back for being so non-ideological. The heroes get pinned down by a sniper hiding inside a mansion. They take shelter next to some soldiers who are engaged in a sniper duel with the other fellow. Journalist Joel, played by Wagner Moura, asks one of the soldiers who is inside, and more specifically, what faction he represents. This leads to the following exchange:
Joel: Hey, what’s going on?
Soldier: Someone in that house. There’s stuck. We’re stuck.
Joel: Who do you think they are?
Soldier: Mmmmm. No idea.
Joel: [Shows press pass] Hey, we’re press.
Soldier: Cool. Now I understand why it’s written on the side of your vehicle.
Joel: Are you WF [Western Forces, those fighting for the California-Texas secessionist alliance]? Who’s giving you orders?
Soldier: No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone is trying to kill us. We are trying to kill them.
Joel: You don’t know what side they are fighting for.
Soldier: Oh, I get it. You’re retarded. You don’t understand a word I say. [He turns to Jessie, Kirsten Dunst’s young photojournalist protégé.] Yo, what’s over there in that house?
Jessie: Someone shooting.
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema here.
The soldier turns back to Joel with an expression showing, “Even the girl gets it.”
The message is that in a civil war, it’s kill or be killed. All politics and ideology melt away in the life-or-death struggle for survival. Much mirth was made of the ridiculous in-universe premise that California and Texas, two states which couldn’t be more different ideologically, would form a political union, but if you understand what the movie is trying to do, it does make sense. The fact that it doesn’t makes sense to us is the very point, as it makes projecting ideological presumptions on the story harder to do.
In short, this movie aspires to be like The Day After: not a political manifesto, but a visual imagining of a possible future. In the 1980s, you had Cold War hawks such as Bill Buckley arguing about how a limited nuclear was totally possible and so it was felt necessary to make a movie showing what that would actually look like. Civil War was conceived in 2020 when the idea of civil war and Balkanization started being floated around by serious people. Civil War aspires to show what that would look like. As such, I will evaluate it based on what it is trying to do.
The problem is that I don’t think you can make a realistic movie about a theoretical civil war that is non-ideological, as I can’t imagine an actual civil war not being extremely politically incorrect. 90% of blacks would be on one side, there would be gender imbalances, and one side would be noticeably whiter than the other. And yet, Civil War presents a world where all sides have the same basic racial composition and all skew disproportionately white. Sure, Civil War leaves it up to your imagination as to what might have happened to have triggered a national breakdown, but even with my vast creative powers, I struggle come up with a scenario where you have two different Burger King Kid’s Clubs warring with each other.
Thankfully, there are no evil white racists acting beastly toward blacks. Interestingly, there is a montage near the beginning where we see two blacks being executed by other blacks. Now, this I could believe. I can imagine that, in the anarchy of war, blacks would use the chaos to settle scores and weed out Uncle Toms.
Some have suggested that perhaps peoples of color would perceive an American civil war as essentially white-on-white infighting and just check out of the conflict, which would explain both sides being disproportionately white. Indeed, there are scenes showing refugee camps where the inhabitants are majority non-white. I don’t know the rationale, and it’s not worth spending too much time thinking about.
Civil War is a movie that it is best not to overthink. Watch it the same way you might watch a dystopian cyberpunk movie that you don’t expect to make sense. If you just sit back and try to enjoy the ride, you might find a thing or two worth enjoying in it. The movie looks good and the battle scenes are well done, including a final shootout in the White House.
There’s one scene that stuck out for me: a battered and bloody white man hanging from the roof of a bridge. The blond guard beneath tells the heroes that the man was a looter and then makes small talk about how he used to go to high school with the guy, before he proceeds to execute him. The ties of kinship that had existed have thus been completely annulled. This give me pause for thought. Would I be prepared to execute shitlib whites? Drop me off in a race war and I could fight it like a sociopath, but could I blow the brains out of a white social justice warrior? Some say that during the Second World War, SS men refused to execute “Reich Jews.” They could execute Slavic Jews all day long and then sleep like babies, but when presented with Jews that looked and talked like them, it was a different story. Thus, I’ll give the movie credit for giving me one scene that caused me to think a bit.
If Civil War is trying to say anything, that is its message: Whatever the politics behind it, war is hell, and it is particularly tragic when it is brother against brother. This isn’t the most original message, but again, the movie’s purpose is to show and not tell.
14 comments
Thank you for the review.
Texifornia? Does this picture answer the question of whether Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex can be successfully merged?
One thing is certain: any financial failure of this motion picture will be attributed to the Goad Effect.
The year 2124. Archeologists have discovered fragmenets of old “on-line” texts which appear to be about one hundred years old.
The author’s name has been lost but this section survives:
The two most sadistic characters in the movie both happen to have Southern accents — although to be fair, those scenes take place in the South.
Literary investigators have determined that because of the use of the phrase “to be fair,” he was clearly a White man.
The causus belli for this current state of affairs is never clearly defined
If I correctly remember what little Latin I managed to absorb, that should be CASUS belli. Jes’ trying to be helpful etc.
I will see this movie, just because I do like bingeing on movies one day per month. But from this review and the one in the WSJ, this movie sounds like a completely wasted opportunity. A movie like this could be equal parts thought-provoking and action-entertainment. Ditto for a movie called Riot.
Alas, such films won’t get made with the necessary budgets.
I finally saw this film at the last showing before it left my local multiplex. It was a total waste of time. There was no real drama because the group of main characters was implausible; their ‘mission’ was stupid; the real-world ideological lines were blurred; but above all, it did not look like a real civil war situation at all. All throughout the picture, basic life-support systems, even in war zones, seemed operative. That’s ridiculous.
What a waste of an obviously good premise. There are a hundred approaches that a Civil War 2 movie could take. This one failed because its core concept was flawed from the outset (and even though the acting and direction were both well done).
I had assumed from the trailer that it was going to be another woke lecture, but Kirsten Dunst just gave an interview echoing your take that the film is intended to be politically neutral.
On that trailer: There’s a scene where a woman running a boutique is asked by our bemused heroes if she’s aware “there’s like a pretty huge civil war going on”. She nonchalantly replies: “We just try to stay out. With what we see on the news, seems like it’s for the best.” I now wanna see the movie to learn if she gets her comeuppance.
Civil war sounds like another “failure to communicate” , or as usual to compromise. Perhaps a greater example of the age old failure to establish proper governing systems. I think Michael Douglas in “Falling down” has never gotten the credit it should have. As for Hollywood, I have seen few honest or factual depictions of history and I like the way Warren Beatty called it out in the movie “Bullworth”.
I remember, that in the novel VICTORIA by William Lind good conservative Americans make a rebellion against tolerastic and political correct federal government, and brave Russians come to help them with T34 tanks, produced in 1940’s. I would say such cure is worse than the illness.
Maybe it should be noted, that in Russian translation the film is called not CIVIL WAR, but THE FALL OF EMPIRE (Падение империи).
I saw some clear lines drawn in it.
Journalists portrayed as noble which is still a left wing sentiment.
Snipers have painted fingernails symbolizing possible LGBTQ connection and facing off with a homeowner who are typically family men hence the home and over the symbols of tradition in the holiday lawn decorations.
President disbanded the FBI making him a tyrant in the eyes of enough parts of country to disband it. Something mostly right wing politicians and libertarians want to do as far as disbanding alphabet agencies.
Of course single white woman risking life on hero’s journey is liberal trope.
Strong independent young tomboy as her second in command.
No white males in group. We get a non-white Hispanic male.
Wise and sacrificial negro savior as mentor of group almost.
President hiding under desk and being dragged out and executed is a fantasy of the left when it came to Trump’s first term.
Western Forces being led by strong black woman at end if I am not mistaken.
They either just didn’t care or like you said mixed around alliances to obfuscate but they also might have been saying in this future Texas finally went purple and blue and does have reasons to ally with California as new two largest liberal economies replacing collapsed heartland and beltway which were are symbolic of traditional WASP America.
Probably too dumb to know or care that Northwest isn’t entirely like Portland and Seattle and didn’t factor in right wing groups up there not wanting to ally with the autonomous zone liberal types from the cities.
Definitely a poke at conservative Florida’s influence over other southern governors. Questions is there a Desantis there or a Trump and where did all the Jews, gays, and people of color in Miami go to after the secession?
The most evil character in all the promotion for the film is obviously a right wing white stand in for our types. Look at him. Light skin, reddish hair, red glasses.
It’s not entirely apolitical it is just trying to be clever and they are trying to be clever in their propaganda now while drumming up their base.
This came out during an election year. It’s a dog whistle to them to freak out when or if Trump gets elected again.
It’s to normalize the idea that the elites will along with possible military generals take up California or somewhere and say that they are now Zelensky types fighting against a Putin dictator whose taken over the country and they need to retake Washington while leaving a wake of destruction across the rest of the country in the name of their precious democracy.
Forgot to mention the “Antifa massacre.” okay we know what they are saying there. They are saying that either some right wing group of citizens or the proud boys or the national guard took things into their own hands and slaughtered “peaceful protestors” and were called “good” by the President which is a smear they used against Trump after Charlottesville.
The president was clearly a Trumpian figure. He was boasting about the “greatest military operation in history” as a not-so-subtle reference to Trump’s braggadocio. There’s also references to the government considering journalists “enemies of the state” and of course Trump’s refusing to leave power. That being said, the ideological lines are not clearly outlined as Northeast Blue States stay with him, and the South and Texas secede.
Also there’s the scene of the firefight with what appear to be Boogaloo Boys who were a cultural phenomenon in 2020: they were wearing Hawaiian shirts. They were multiracial which is accurate to reality. I haven’t seen anybody mention it yet so I had to throw that in.
I don’t think it’s so one-sided: he walled off the white house, like Biden, he’s an arrogant career politician, a really greasy guy, not like Biden, who is maybe more cultivated, but certainly a bureaucrat archetype, a well-crafted object of hate with so few lines, a coward who can’t breathe when facing death, his last words “don’t let them kill me”, what an inspiring leader, like Trump – as for journalists, the worship of journalists, I think these are moot points, when we consider what the establishment think of real journalists. And the storming of the white house was great, they make it look easy
Normally this propaganda is subtle – even subconcious – par for the course that nothing was said about race, and I don’t think the female leads were forced either, again, par for the course with anything from this millenium, we have to look past it if we want to give a fair review
if you want to get ready, mentally, psychologically, for what’s coming, next on your list is threads
re:Jim
Wise and sacrificial negro savior as mentor of group almost.
I don’t think he intended to sacrifice himself at all, he watched two of the group of five get shot before he did anything, and he took a few bullets by bad luck
President hiding under desk and being dragged out and executed is a fantasy of the left when it came to Trump’s first term.
It’s our fantasy now, and it has been for some time, we cannot feel that this government – the uniparty, the Pentagon, the Beltway – is anything other than an occupying power
The most evil character in all the promotion for the film is obviously a right wing white stand in for our types. Look at him. Light skin, reddish hair, red glasses.
Casting an Aryan as the antagonist may as well be required by federal mandate, the scene was a convenient way to terminate two characters who went as quickly as they came
It’s not entirely apolitical it is just trying to be clever and they are trying to be clever in their propaganda now while drumming up their base.
Yes, because some people cannot hold images in their minds, because they cannot consider the examples of the past few decades and consider what can come about here (and there are of course many possibilities, many styles of modern warfare) they will have to see this to get a feeling for war, and to understand that it can happen here – wow! People suffer in war, things are destroyed, there is chaos, injustice, death … Le war – le bad ?!
Of course, we don’t want war. What can we do to avoid war? We can refrain from committing acts of aggression. What is an act of aggression, in the context of secession and national divorce, having in view the accepted principle of national self-determination?
The imposition of a government on those who oppose it, the imposition of unity on those who wish for separation.
We don’t want war, but war is preferable to slavery and extinction.
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