What's The Movie About?
Kirsten Dunst, a mentat from Dune, a kid, and not Pedro Pascal are a group of journalists travelling through the US during a violent conflict between an authoritarian US government and the secessionist forces of Florida, Texas, and California.
What I Like.
There's one scene where not Pedro Pascal and the kid connect that I thought was nice. And there was a cool scene where a seemingly normal town is revealed to have combatants on all of the roofs, and another one where the crew is driving through a forest fire. Also all the licensed music is good.
What I Didn't Like.
Watching Civil War, I had several questions. "Why is the President authoritarian?" "Why did all these states secede?" "Why did the kid want to be come a photojournalist?" "Why did the mentat need to get to Charlottesville?" "How is the President being authoritarian?" "Why don't the secessionist forces ever take the President's offer for a peace treaty?" "Why do the secessionist forces ally with each other?" "How did the Civil War get started?" "Why did the Civil War get started?" "Aren't all of these action scenes war crimes?" "For what reason is anyone fighting?" "Do the main characters have any politics at all?" "Does this movie have any politics at all?" "Why does the staged and fake hate crimes in the movie make me feel grosser than the real hate crime footage in Monkey Man?" "Why is there a random scene of the two female leads trying on dresses?" "Why do I hate the Courier font?" "Do I care about anything that is happening?" The answer to the final question is no. To everything else is "I don't fucking know." Everything in the movie just feels pointless or awful. It's been said, but the movie seriously never explains anything about the war, none of the politics on either side are even hinted at. The world building is nonexistent. Hell, the motivations of the main characters are nonexistent. Fuck a duck, the PERSONALITIES of the main characters are nonexistent. Kirsten is just an aloof jerk the entire movie, the mentant is a just the old guy. The kid and not Pedro Pascal are kind of fun in the beginning, but soon they get all their personalities trauma'd away. The movie is incredibly gross as well. Not in the details. I mean, a lot of guys get shot and beat and burned alive, but it mostly feels gross because there's no point to it. The last two movies I've recommended (Monkey Man and Late Night With The Devil) are much more explicit with their gore. (I mean a guy disembowels himself in Late Night.) But I think Civil War is worse because there's no point. There's nothing that the story is working towards besides "Hey, this is really disturbing, right?"
Roan, you like dumb movies. Your favorite movie of all time features kids turning into adults but still acting like kids, and your second favorite movie of all time has a giant radioactive lizard as the antagonist. True Mr. Buggnutz, but you'll reread what I actually said, you'll notice I said the movie is pointless, not dumb. Clearly the makers of the movie are pretty smart. They expertly dodge any topic that might spark a controversy, and the film craft is good. There just no reason for them to do anything that they do in the movie. But you said in Godzilla X Kong review that you liked it when Godzilla fought random monsters or no reason. Yes, but the key difference is that watching Godzilla fight other kaiju is fun. Watching grumpy people take pictures of atrocities is not. At least when there is not point to it. The point of the movie is that violence is bad! Is it? Because I feel like the ending of the movie would disagree. Circling back to some of the question I posed in the first paragraph, the President is constantly sending messages to the secessionists that he wants the US to reform and to have peace talks with them, but the secessionists just want him dead. The movie literally ends with Nick Offerman getting shot in the chest and a bunch of soldiers smiling and posing with him. The war is over! Because of violence! (By the way, this movie wastes so many good actors. Nick Offerman, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Stephen McKinley Henderson are all generally great and all this movie want to do is shoot them in the chest. Cailee Spaeny is also pretty good until they decide it's time for her to be a carbon copy of Kirsten Dunst.)
My final complaint is gonna be a quick one, but this movie way over stays it's welcome. There are several scenes which start out good or even great. And then something almost imperceptible happens and I just hate everything once again. Sometimes it's just because a scene becomes too cloying. Sometimes a dramatic shift happens in a scene that makes it really stupid. Other times it's because the movie is being quiet and then suddenly wants to to get really really loud. I got several headaches and wanted to scream in ever scene.
Final Summation.
Holy shit this movie sucks. I don't know if I've come out of a movie colder than Civil War. The movie offers you nothing. It's like a teenage nihilist, all it does is point out how everything is either pointless, or horrible, and it is extremely proud of itself for showing you that. The only thing left is the final question, 'HOW THE FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN?'.
Seriously. Alex Garland makes good movies. Good movies that are about things. Civil War is about nothing. It shows you nothing but misery for no reason. There's no statement it makes besides a half-hearted "Violence is bad" that not even it's own narrative can stick with. As I was walking home from the theater, I thought to myself, "Would I like this movie more if the message was something I despised? Like if the movie was all about how war is awesome and the only way to stop the evil people was to shoot them all dead, would I recommend it?" The answer is obviously no. But I do think I would be kinder to the movie. There is some impressive staging and some cool ideas of framework. It's similar to Zone of Interest now that I think about it. There could have been something here but the decision was made early one to avoid every single interesting prospect. I think Zone of Interest is worse than Civil War, because at least Civil War made me feel angry while watching Zone of Interest made me want to take a nap. But both movies begrudgingly exist. And I hate them.
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