Civil War (film)

A civil war has erupted between an authoritarian United States government and various regional factions. The president, who is serving a third term, claims that victory is close at hand. Renowned war photographer Lee Smith saves aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen from a suicide bombing in Brooklyn.

Lee and her colleague Joel intend to travel to Washington, D.C., to interview and photograph the president before the city falls. Lee's mentor Sammy asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville, where the Western Forces ("WF") of Texas and California are assembling. Despite Lee's hesitance, she and Joel agree. Lee is not aware that Jessie convinces Joel to take her with them as well.

After departing the city, the group stops at a rural gas station protected by armed men, and buys gas with Canadian dollars, as the value of the US dollar has crashed because of the war. Jessie wanders off to a nearby car wash, where she finds two men being tortured by the owners, who claim that the men are looters. One owner follows Jessie, but Lee defuses the situation by taking a photo of the man posing with his victims. After they leave, Jessie berates herself for being too scared to take photos.

Following an overnight stop near ongoing fighting, the group documents the combat the next day as militiamen assault a building held by loyalists. Lee sees Jessie's potential as a war photographer, while Jessie photographs the militia executing captured loyalist soldiers. Continuing, the group spends the night at a refugee camp before passing through a small town where, under watchful guard, residents attempt to live in blissful ignorance. Lee and Jessie grow closer, trying on clothes at a local shop.

Later, they are pinned down in a sniper battle amid the remains of a Christmas fair. The snipers mock Joel's attempts to ascertain which party they are fighting for or against, telling Joel that they and the sniper in a nearby house are simply trying to survive. Jessie's nerve builds and her photography skills improve as she witnesses several deaths, and develops a mentorship under Lee. Jessie asks if Lee would photograph Jessie being killed, and Lee responds “What do you think?”, implying she might.

While driving, the four encounter two other reporters they know, Tony and Bohai. Tony and Jessie playfully switch vehicles, only for Bohai and Jessie to be captured by loyalist militants who are dumping civilian corpses in a mass grave. The rest of the group tries to intervene, but a xenophobic militant kills Bohai and asks where the others are from, killing Tony when he says Hong Kong. Sammy saves the group by running over two of the militants, but is shot by a third and dies as they flee.

Arriving at the WF military camp in Charlottesville, the group grieves in different ways. Lee takes a photo of Sammy's corpse but deletes it shortly after. Joel gets drunk and begins to become hysterical. Jessie explores the campsite. Two fellow reporters inform the group that the government's top generals have mostly surrendered, leaving Washington largely unprotected, and a Western invasion is imminent. They follow the WF into DC as Jessie's photography becomes increasingly risky. Meanwhile, Lee has a brief post-traumatic stress disorder episode and is unable to take pictures.

In the besieged capital, the president's limousine unsuccessfully attempts to flee the White House grounds with an escort, but when the limousine crashes, Lee intuits that the president is still in the building and leads her group inside. A WF squad follows and faces off with the remaining Secret Service, including one in the Pressroom, who unsuccessfully tries to negotiate safe passage of the President to Alaska or Greenland. When Jessie exposes herself to gunfire to get a photo of the ensuing West Wing gunfight, Lee pushes her to safety. Jessie photographs Lee as she is shot in the crossfire.

The Western soldiers capture the president in the Oval Office. Joel tells them to wait so he can get a quote. The disheveled president begs Joel for mercy, saying "Don't let them kill me,"; Joel replies, "Yeah. That'll do." Jessie takes a photo of the president's summary execution; smiling Western soldiers pose with his corpse.

Development and casting

In January 2022, Deadline reported that Alex Garland had signed on to write and direct the film for A24 with DNA Films co-producing. Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Cailee Spaeny were confirmed to star.^[15] In April, Karl Glusman was announced^{[by whom?]} as part of the cast.^[16] In a May interview with The Daily Telegraph, Garland described the film as a companion piece to his 2022 film Men, and said it is "set at an indeterminate point in the future—just far enough ahead for me to add a conceit—and serves as a sci-fi allegory for our currently polarized predicament". In the same interview, Sonoya Mizuno was revealed as part of the cast, having appeared in all of Garland's previous films.^[17]

Jesse Plemons, Dunst's husband, was quickly cast in the uncredited role at Dunst's suggestion after the originally cast actor became unavailable a few days before shooting began. Garland called Plemons' availability "a stunning bit of good luck."^[13][14]

Filming

Principal photography began in Atlanta on March 15, 2022.^[18][19] By May, production had moved to London.^[20] The production budget for Civil War was $50 million, making it A24's most expensive film.^[2] The movie was shot partially on the prosumer DJI Ronin 4D camera.^[21][22] The film's Washington D.C based finale required months of planning with Alex Garland and cinematographer Rob Hardy holding a series of roundtable discussions with production designer Caty Maxey, VFX supervisor David Simpson,^[23] military supervisor Ray Mendoza and stunt coordinator Jeff Dashnaw.^[24][25]

In a March 2024 interview with The Guardian, Garland stated that after Civil War, he intends to step back from directing and focus only on writing.^[26]

Post-production

Film editor Jake Roberts and sound editor Glenn Freemantle^[27] re-team with Alex Garland, as does VFX supervisor David Simpson with Framestore.

Civil War had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 14, 2024, with favourable reactions from the audience and to positive reviews from the critics.^[28][29]

The film was previously scheduled to be released on April 26, 2024.^[30][31] It was released on April 12, 2024, in the United States by A24 and in the United Kingdom by Entertainment Film, with engagements in IMAX and Dolby Cinema.^[32][33]

Marketing and AI controversy

On April 17, 2024, A24 promoted the film on Instagram by posting five images created by artificial intelligence (AI), each showing a different American city in postapocalyptic disarray.

The images were criticized for inaccurately depicting certain cityscapes: The AI-generated image of Chicago wrongfully depicted the Marina City apartment complex, with the buildings depicted as being separated by a non-existent island on the Chicago River. In real life, the buildings are located directly next to each other.^[34][35]

Given that the use of AI has continued to be a controversial topic in the film community, and following calls earlier in the year for a boycott of Late Night with the Devil for its use of AI-generated stills, the promotional images received online backlash.^{[citation needed]}

A source connected to the film confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that they were "AI images inspired by the movie. The entire movie is a big 'what if' and so we wanted to continue that thought on social — powerful imagery of iconic landmarks with that dystopian realism."^[36][37][38]

Box office

As of April 29, 2024^[update], Civil War has grossed $56.2 million in the United States and Canada and $16.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $72.2 million.^[4][5]

In the United States and Canada, the film was projected to gross $18–24 million from 3,838 theaters (the widest-ever R-rated release by an independent studio) in its opening weekend.^[39] The film made $10.8 million on its first day, including $2.9 million from Thursday night previews (a record for an A24 release). It went on to debut to $25.7 million, surpassing Hereditary as the biggest opening weekend in A24's history as well as the studio's first film to top the box office.^[3] The opening weekend audience skewed male at 63%, while 57% of attendees were between ages 18–34. IMAX contributed over 16% of the opening weekend gross, with the main reasons given for seeing the film being its subject matter, the action, and a general interest in indie films (each grouping made up a third of the audience, with the former narrowly higher).^[40]

In its sophomore weekend the film made $11.2 million (a 56% drop), remaining in first place, before falling to fourth place in its third weekend with $7 million.^[41][42]

Ideological composition of viewership

Regarding ideological composition of the audience in the United States, The Hollywood Reporter reported that ticket buyers were equally conservative and liberal according to exit poll data.^[40] Deadline Hollywood wrote that 41% were left-wing (22% Liberal, 19% Democrats), 17% were right-wing (6% Republicans, 6% Evangelical Christians, and 5% Conservative) and 11% were moderate.^[3] The film remained in first place the following weekend, grossing $11.1 million.^[43]

Performance outside North America

Commentators noted that, despite the film's inherently U.S.-centric subject matter, Civil War performed well in several markets outside the United States. This includes the United Kingdom, where it grossed $4.8 million as of April 23, as well as the Netherlands, where it reached ticket sales of $750,000. The film additionally opened in first place at the box office in Brazil, Spain, Belgium, Finland, and Portugal.^[44]

Critical response

Following the SXSW premiere, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes noted that critics called the film "a gorgeously shot cautionary tale full of big ideas and a fantastic performance by Kirsten Dunst, but it may surprise some viewers". Critics praised the "beauty and intensity of the dystopian drama", while noting its "potential for controversy and disappointment" due to the effectiveness of its messages.^[45] On the site, 81% of 338 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Tough and unsettling by design, Civil War is a gripping close-up look at the violent uncertainty of life in a nation in crisis."^[46] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 63 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[47] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it a 76% overall positive score, with 53% saying they would definitely recommend it.^[3]

In a positive review, Peter Debruge of Variety wrote: "Garland's the last person to suggest a group hug. As statements go, his powerful vision leaves us shaken, effectively repeating the question that quelled the L.A. riots: Can we all get along?"^[48] Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for RogerEbert.com, compared Civil War to films about "Western journalists covering the collapse of foreign countries", such as The Year of Living Dangerously and Welcome to Sarajevo, ultimately praising the film as "furiously convincing and disturbing".^[49]

Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter also gave the film a positive review, writing: "With the precision and length of its violent battle sequences, it's clear Civil War operates as a clarion call. Garland wrote the film in 2020 as he watched cogs on America's self-mythologizing exceptionalist machine turn, propelling the nation into a nightmare. With this latest film, he sounds the alarm, wondering less about how a country walks blindly into its own destruction and more about what happens when it does."^[50] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times echoed the sentiment, writing "rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor's face that, like Dunst's, expressed a nation's soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray."^[51]

Some critics had mixed reactions. The Washington Post's Amy Nicholson described the film as "coldly, deliberately incurious about the combatants and the victims", but also said "the film feels poetically, deeply true, even when it’s suggesting that humans are more apt to tear one another apart for petty grievances than over a sincere defense of some kind of principles."^[52][53]

Valerie Complex of Deadline Hollywood offered negative comments, saying: "The script's utilization of characters of color as conduits for brutality needed to be explored further. ... Ultimately, Civil War feels like a missed opportunity. The director's vision of a fractured America, embroiled in conflict, holds the potential for introspection on our current societal divisions. However, the film's execution, hampered by thin characterization, a lackluster narrative and an overreliance on spectacle over substance, left me disengaged."^[54]

Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post observed: "Civil War's shtick is that it's not specifically political. For instance, as the US devolves into enemy groups of secessionist states, Texas and California have banded together to form the Western Forces. That such an alliance could ever occur is about as likely as [a] Sweetgreen/Kentucky Fried Chicken combo restaurant."^[55] Eisa Nefertari Ulen, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, also found that the film, despite being "otherwise solid," was partially missing its point, stating, "Casablanca endures because it spoke to a moment as 'crazy and mixed-up' as this one, and nudged the country away from its isolationist inaction. Civil War does not resonate like that classic, because it does not explicitly address this moment. We as a people cannot fix a problem we cannot name."^[56]

Stephanie Zacharek of Time observed: "Civil War has the vibe of your standard desolate zombie movie with a modern American backdrop, but it's far less effective than your average George A. Romero project: sometimes a B movie with a sense of humor about itself says more about a nation's despair than an overserious, breast-beating one. ... Do we really need a movie to invent, and rub our noses in, the possibility of a bleaker future?"^[57]

• Official website
• Civil War at IMDb