KCxTPB: Civil War

Weary. We welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. This is not just the projection booth. This is the culture Cast because I'm joined by mister Chris Tashu Man.

I really love Captain America and Iron Man. Isn't that what we're here to? Shit, that's not what we're here to talk about. Well, I guess I gotta leave. Also with us as mister father Malone.

Oh well, we watched the movie about the silverware, right about cutlery. On this special crossover episode, we are looking at the new film from alex Garland Civil War. This place is so weird Twilight Zone. I guys aware, there's like a pretty huge civil war Carnolis. Sure, look at the tops of the buildings.

We're just passing for. We're American. What kind of American? Are you? We're going to easy for anyone else?

Does that's the job? Civil War? Weird ar In Views of My Mexico twelve, the film serves Kirsten Dunce as a war photographer who travels with her frank journalist friend. I never really caught what this guy's deal was. Joel played by Wagner Mara.

After a suicide bombing in New York City, the two decide to go off to Washington, d C. Where they hope to get an interview with that dastardly president played by Nick Offerman, one of many cast members from Garlands Dev's show, including one of their traveling companions, actually both of their traveling companions, Sammy who's played by Stephen McKinley Henderson, and the young girl who wants to be a war photographer as well, Jesse played by Kaylee Spainey Kelly Spinney, and surprise, this whole movie is actually about her. What do you know? We are going to be spoiling this movie as we go along. So if you haven't seen Civil Warren don't want it ruin, just turn off the podcast and go away.

We don't want you here. But if you do want it ruined, keep on listening. We're gonna be talking about all of the ins and outs of especially the end of this movie. So, Chris, what did you think of Civil War? So I've said this to you in private or in you know, pre post, one of the recordings we've done in the last couple of weeks about how I kind of regretted my decision to agree to watch this movie only because when I finally got around to watching the trailer, it quote gave me the big ick.

And I mean, the movie, I think fails pretty hard in actually making good on the trailer's promise of engaging I wouldn't say engaging dialogue in terms of the characters, but engaging in a filmic dialogue with the audience. And I say that only because of the person who's directing and wrote the movie. At this point, we've come to expect a lot from him as a director and a writer, because he's pretty much a writer director when it comes to the movies that he's done. And I mean it's kicked off right there is that. But I will say I was pretty underwhelmed by the movie in a lot of ways.

And I get what Alex Garland may have been going for, but at the time, in the place that we live in now, even this feels pretty defanged as a movie. I mean, it's it's a it's it's making some points, I guess, but I don't. I don't necessarily agree with who the movie focuses on, because I think that once you realize what the movie's kind of game is and what it's driving at It feels like it's become quite a pedestrian movie in a lot of ways. And look, there is some pretty interesting imagery in the third act, but to what end is kind of where I come into it with all of this, Look, I saw what January sixth actually looked like, like so many other people, did you want to show me helicopters blowing up the Washington Monument and shooting rocket launchers at the Washington and the Abraham Lincoln statue of the memorial, Like, go right ahead, It's not It's not really that shocking anymore.

I mean, that's that's maybe the saddest thing about this movie is this movie's really not that shocking. That's why I say it's kind of pedestrian in a lot of ways, because this is the future only dialed up one or two degrees. And I'm not saying that to be some sort of doomsday sayer or anything, because I'm far from it. I tend to find myself to be a rather positive person. But this movie, the trailer did a lot better of a job making me feel a certain way than the movie did.

And I think that's because those short form snippets of things, once you see what it actually is in the grand scheme of the film, It's like, Okay, it really is just that in the third act. In a lot of ways, this movie may have been better as a mockumentary or even found footage. I mean it kind of is sort of found footage e. But yeah, I was thoroughly underwhelmed and felt like, oof, what was I making a big deal about with this movie before going to see it? And how about you follow them alone?

It's hard to quantify just how disappointing this movie was, to the point where I've actually become quite angry about the film, because, like you, Chris, when we agreed to do this podcast months ago, it was right after the trailer had come out. In fact, I think it was the day the trailer came out and I had watched it, and I agreed to do this with an immense amount of trepidation knowing Alex Garland and knowing what he's capable of, and knowing how thoughtful a filmmaker he is and writer, particularly that him handling the notion of an American civil war given our current political climate, was a horrifying notion to show us exactly where we can go and what can cause it and how we would deal with it, and that's what the trailer foretold.

So this entire time, I've been dreading up until it's released. Before I watched it, I thought I might even just call this off. I might just not show up for the podcast. Tell you guys, I didn't see it. And now I watched it, and it is not only a situation where this isn't the movie that the trailer promised.

It falls down like every fear that I had, and then it falls down on a bunch of other levels. Okay, I would let's not get into the nuts and bolts of it now. I guess this is just sort of our basic opinion. But like on a just a very surface level, this script needed to pass by mister John Millius because it makes no sense what's going on militarily in this movie. Any of the actions, the military actions occurring in the film were supposed to be shocked by the fact that this has taking place in America.

But if you had just told me that this is Kosovo and these people are speaking English but they're actually speaking you know, check or something like, I would have believed it because it has no bearing on America. It's this meandering road movie. When we were told it was going to be this civil war movie. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it's called Civil War.

If you want to see an American civil war movie, see Joe Dante's The Second Civil War. It was like showtime movie he made many years ago. I cannot believe Alex Garland made this movie. It because I like all of his movies. But what this movie did reinforce for me is that Alex Garland has a third act problem.

Across all of his films. They all fall down in the third act. They're weird enough and interesting enough that they carry you and you don't really mind it, but it's a big and it's a huge problem here. The third act of this movie, with the troops in Washington d c ought to be fucking horrifying, and it was pedestrian at best, and at worst, it made a zero sense at all, Like, just like what I was saying, tactically, militarily, the president, with the Western forces on the way, is still sitting in the White House. What the That's the level of logic going on in this movie.

And by the way, we're not supposed to think about any of it because he's gusted it up by making it confusing, like the idea that Western states like California and Texas have teamed up. Oh okay, that's the most unbelievable part of the entire movie, the basic premise alone. He puts it in there so you can say, like, well, it doesn't make sense. Well we'll ignore the politics of the movie. But it's all politics, motherfucker.

I would actually say, and I just want to get this because I don't know if you're going to say it, Mike, but I just want to mention, this is like the worst most ineffectual zombie movie I've ever seen, is really what this feels like. It feels like someone just cgied out all the zombies in a zombie movie. Because in a lot of ways, that's what this feels like. If you told me this was from the Last of Us, I would have been like, sure, yeah, it was taking place during that, like because in a lot of ways, like it's you know, you could call this movie tales from Dawn of the Dead taking place during the early days of the zombie apocalypse, right, yeah, but just no zombies at all. Zero.

I just don't run into any that's why it's the later days of the zombie apocalypse where all the zombies are dead or they've starved, or winter has cut. I was so thinking of World War Z while I was watching this, and I kept thinking, well, what's going on in other parts? And I'm talking World War Ze the book, please not the movie. Book's amazing the book with all of the Oh, here's this person in this area and they tell their story, that we go over here, they tell their story. And then I asked you guys to go back and watch this movie in Smug and Thunder, which is subtitle, I think the War of the California's and it's all done with mostly all done with still images.

It's all these paintings of what happened during the war, and that has that whole World War Ze trope where we go to this person who talks about this, We hear from this person who talks about that. I was waiting for that in this movie. But yeah, I was getting major zombie Land vibes through this, to the point where there's a part in the movie where there's a body laying across the road and there's like the Santa village and you hear these and it doesn't make any sense. What the fuck is going on. It's just like provocative images that there's like bubbles and music, Christmas Carrol's going on.

And there's this body on the road and I'm like, is that a real body? Is that just a mannequin? And I still don't know, even after they ran it over the car, I still don't know if it was a real body or a mannequin. And there are these soldiers there just hanging out, just two lone soldiers just hanging out, and they are trying to kill the sniper that's inside of this big mansion. And as soon as I saw the mansion, I leaned over to the guy who saw the movie with and I said, it's Spill Murray in there.

And that's how much I was getting zombie Land from this. I thought they were going to look for a twinkie. After a while, you mentioned the film you asked us to watch in Smog and Thunder, which for me is very much like Confederate States of America in the way that it's done. It's that Ken burnsyan thing. And like I watched that, I would have watched that three more times because I would I would rather even throw this movie out of my memory because I can't believe Alex Garland made it, because I kind of forgot to mention this in my opening salvo, as it were.

But Annihilation is one of my favorite films. It's an amazing movie. Does have a third problem act, but it's in a lot of ways. It's the least third problem acting having movie that he's done, maybe other than ex Machina, but I'm in the minority on that film. It's not one that resonated with me.

But that's probably my biggest disappointment here is that this isn't Alex Garland movie, which it's like a Jonathan Glazer film being bad. Like, he doesn't make movies very often, but when he makes his films, they are his films and his name is the written credit. So I can't if this isn't the movie he wanted to make, that there's no one he can blame but himself. It is one of those scenarios where you can blame the director because the director is also the writer. You mentioned that the sniper scene, which happens to be my favorite scene in the movie, just for one of the reasons that what doesn't work for the rest of the movie works in the scene for me where it's all confusion.

We don't know who these soldiers are if they're soldiers, and we don't know who they're shooting at and why they're being shot at, and it also has the most look. Alex Garland is kind of this like pastoral futurist. He really loves nature and he really shoots it beautifully. And in this scene in particular, there's intercutting between Kirsten Dunst and Callie Spaney as they're taking photographs of the action and the camera slowly racks focus to these like flowers that are laying in front of them and it's all slow motion. He does it twice and it's gorgeous and I loved that scene.

But what works in that scene, Like I said, the confusion if we don't know what's going on, shows a bigger problem in the movie, which is we're dealing with protagonists who are all journalists and we learn nothing about what's going on from anybody. We go to a town that has decided we're not we're neutral, we're not engaging in this, and they kind of ask them questions, but ask them in an outraged way, like how can you be blah blah blah, and but don't really get into it, don't find out anything more than that, just the SoundBite first, and then they're back on the road, meandering on this road trip movie to nowhere. That's why I fell like a zombie movie to me, is that I'm not going to explain anything.

Wow, Like, you have a chance here, you mine as well. There's there is no benefit to not unless you're gonna set the movie as people like random everyday civilians at the beginning of the conflict, as if this were somehow like Red Dawn adjacent. If we're this far into it where the forces are knocking on the White House's door, what the fuck movie? Like, I get it, but this is not the time to not explain it, because that's an opportunity to reinforce whatever the fucking point you're trying to make is, Because best I can tell, the point is war journalists have a pension for the dangerous and then get PTSD and possibly die. No shit, Yeah, and yeah, I would have been fine if this was a film about war photographers.

And yeah, like you were saying, follow them alone. Said it in Kosovo, set it in Ukraine, set it in the guy's a strip, you know, like we've got all of these places right now that are active warfronts. It's like, okay, well go ahead, set it there. The thing that aptures your interest about this movie you're supposed to is these are Americans fighting Americans. I would like to know a little bit more.

I don't need a PowerPoint presentation. I don't need an opening scroll to tell me, you know, in the year twenty four, twenty six, blah blah blah. You know, like, how would any of that kind of like Judge dread as supposed to dread Judge dread type, you know, opening scroll type thing. I would just like a little bit more information that would be great, or just go to some other characters or have something some something here like this. All it is is basically an older photographer passing the torch to a younger forographer.

And that's the movie. That is all it is, really, And all of the interesting things aren't interesting, you know, all the things that I wanted to see just don't hold my interest. It just happens to be set in the United States, right, Like that's what think. Yeah, it doesn't even matter. There's no payoff to it, there's no reason to set it in the United States other than because it's a provocative thing to do given current situation here and speaking to what you said, Chris, that I can't believe this is Alex Garland wrote it, given the like the level of research in detail that went into a screenplay like Sunshine to then go here with this script and look, he tries to sidestep it, like I said, by just making it so obscure and weird and odd that we can't find out any facts.

We don't know anything that's going on. But the facts that we're given are so unusual and so like I cannot wrap my mind around some of them, like you know, the sort of the Texas California one being sort of the prime example, but just like other little bits of little crumbs of details that were given don't make any sense to me. And as a viewer, I'm sitting there trying instead of watching a movie about photojournalists, which is what this fucking movie is, I'm trying to suss out what on earth is causing this conflict, what is going on here? And another thing that this is another thing that really bugged me just on a plot sort of level. Kirsten Dunst and the is it Sammy?

Is he the male lead that they're going to Washington d C. Sammy is the old guy, he's the fhra the old guy. He's from Dune, from that amazing Daneville NUW film. Dude. Yes, And for some reason I thought he had passed away and that's why he wasn't in Doune too.

But apparently he's alive and well, so I apologize to you, mister Stephen McKinley Anderson. The guy who you're looking for is Joel Okay so Joel jol Escobar. Yeah. Basically, so they they they're going to the Washington DC because they want to get an interview with the president before the Western forces come in. And they're acting like it's a huge secret, like don't tell any of the other journalists what we're doing, don't add anyone, don't don't leak it to anyone.

The Western forces are approaching the White House with an intent on assassinating the president for all to see. Every journalist is going to Washington DC right now. That this should have been a movie about battling journalists on the road trying to like one up each other on the way there. Or something, because I don't know, none of the movie logistically makes any sense. Hear me out here.

What you're asking for is essentially Cannonball Run, but during a modern American Civil war. Now I would watch thousands. Yeah, well or that, But I just like the idea of Cannonball Run. A bunch of quirky characters. You've got the Klansmen in one car and the White Nationalists and the other, and they're on the way to the White House.

I mean, you know what, make it fun? At least make it that was the thing. Make this a funny movie. You could have made this a funny satirical film. It would have worked way.

It actually would have worked as a movie. But you know what, we're just gonna do nothing. It's like, it's like an hour and forty minutes of doing nothing, which is not something I would give Alex Garland a notion that he's capable of doing. Frankly, it's so strange because there's like two really tense scenes in the film, and that the film does not open with a tense scene though. The whole weird thing where you're like, you see the girl who's gonna suicide bomb, and you're just like, Oh, she's putting on a vest.

She's probably a suicide bomber. And then like ten minutes later she runs into the crowd and plowes stuff up, and I'm like, I'm a pretty savvy movie goer. I don't know if everybody else is gonna get this, but okay, but anyway, the two scenes that I felt had a lot of attention. One was at the car wash where the guys are strung up. There's no resolution to that.

We just cut to them in the car and we go, Ah, they're probably gonna shoot them anyway, so it's no better than if they shot him now. Then later on I'm like, oh, we're just aborting that scene. Okay, YadA YadA, baby Yeah. And then the other ten scene, and this one actually pays off, is the Jesse Plemont scene, and I'm just like waiting for him the entire time. He's in the one scene Ladies and Gentlemen, one scene with this guy, whereas he's all over that trailer.

That trailer. I have a lot of problems with that trailer because I feel like I've sold a bill of goods. That scene was fantastic, and I love the tension. I loved how he's just fucking with them, and you're like, okay, great, Like these are the kind of people that are out there right now, probably like three miles from my house, like protesting right now the trial of Donald Trump, And it's like, okay, more of this, please, Like this is what I want. I want this tension.

This is what I was sold when it came to this movie should have had me on the edge of my seat feeling queasy the entire time instead of board. And I mentioned that that scene is in and of itself a YadA YadA moment because the line in the trailer is what kind of American are you? Then they cut in the trailer. In the movie, he goes what kind of American are you? Central American?

South American? Like wow? What? Then you just under you undercut the entire scene by having it go in the weirdest possible direction that makes no fucking sense. The question what kind of American are you?

Should have been the central tenant of what this movie is about. That is the singular line of dialogue in this film, similar to Ladies and Gentlemen. This is your captor speaking like that gets all you need to know about under Siege two out of the way immediately, what kind of American are You should have informed anyone who's sitting down to watch this movie what they're getting themselves into, and it like you said, what a fuck? So that was a fucking lie. That's what this feels like.

I can't believe we're being bait and switched by a director who, up until this point I would have considered an awe tour. Well, this is him, it's not him cutting the trailer. It's a twenty four right he But but he cut the movie together, which is where the real problem lies. Yeah, well, no, he made a movie that did not in any way resemble the movie that that trailer promised. Because that scene, the Jesse Plemon scene, was what I was expecting from moment one in the movie.

That's just an endless brutal onslaught of that type of tension. But by the way, by that point in the movie, that was like three quarters of the way through the movie, I was bored by then and mad that this was like a fuckaroo that didn't have anything to do with an American Civil War. So that, like any tension of the scene kind of got undercut, and it also got undercut again on a basic fucking logistical level, if somebody's saying where are you from and he's shooting people who are not from America or California or Texas, you just say, ah, man, I'm from Missouri, I'm from Colorado. You know I'm from Hong Kong. Well that they are wearing badges that say press, I mean, after the war on the so called fake news, that's the first person you're gonna shoot, any person that was wearing a press badge.

Take them out, ye know. They just tell lies. All they do is tell lies about our president. Take those motherfuckers out. And they say as much in the movie, they're like, no press should be in Washington, DC.

There is they're being shot on site? Where's that? Where's it? Where again? Where are the people?

Where are the people just standing on the streets. We know that people are fucking idiots, you know, like, like you said, this is a zombie movie, this is post apocalypse. We don't see any just normal people hanging around. Even when it comes to that little town that they go to, there's the girl in the shop and there's the two guys standing on the building. Give me like another five minutes of this thing, show other people going to other stores and like what they're doing, No, none of that.

It's just they never run into anybody. This is it feels very like a zombie movie because it's just so sparsely populated. This is so so like a watered down twenty eight days Later, because in there you see like the brutality of both man against zombie but then man against man and the way that they start to turn on each other towards the end of that movie. It's like, oh wow, this really like hurts me inside to see this stuff. Where is that in this film?

Come on, Alex, you get and tamer over the years rather than more vicious. And what I don't understand is the thing that you kind of mentioned, but it bears repeating. This is an A twenty four movie that alone was getting people excited because it's a big budget A twenty four movie. I hope you're happy, because this is a very disappointing Alex Garlett movie. And it's an even more disappointing not for me personally because A twenty four they're fine, but I know that there are people who are part of the A twenty four fan club movie club that's a fig I've got to assume unless they're seeing something that we're not, this is also disappointing.

And if it's me seeing this as the first big budget A twenty four movie, not a great first showing, that's for sure. I feel like we are in the minority when it comes to this. I've seen nothing but praise on my feedback, the Facebook feed today, all the critics, all the all the people with opinions, they just seem like, oh my god, what a cutting edge film. This says not only not only critics, not only like people that I know and respect, but like, like I read a review by Paul Schrader and like Stephen King, like these people like echoing the same idea, which is this is horrifying. This is a horror movie.

You gotta see this. It'll knock your socks off. And I'm like, where when what the fuck are you guys talking about? Are you? Like they're responding to the trailer and all that Dredd I had about watching this fucking movie.

Speaking of Dred, that's his best third act, you got well. He was also removed from that project. I mean they locked him out of the editing, is what I remember. The story I was so caught up looking at the ghost Steelers graffiti that was on the bridge that right before that shot cut, I realized there were two bodies hanging from another bridge right there. I'm like, you're focusing in on the wrong things.

It's I will say, the things that I read before seeing the film were not super positive. I know that the Ringer and I think maybe ign as well. And one other place I read we're pretty like middle of the road, if not leaning the direction that we are. And I would actually be curious to read what Stephen King had to say, because yeah, I mean this for me, you know what, I would compare this movie to somehow this is the this is literally what happened to that suicide Squad movie. The shittiest trailer known to man.

Oh with a bad movie. This movie had a kind of amazing trailer with a movie that is such a diss appointment. I wonder if A twenty four screened the movie and we're like, oh no, uh oh, what we kind of have a boring movie here that doesn't really have much to say. Let's take like the best parts of the movie that are that are the nuggets, the core kernel ideas that really should have been built off of and just put them in a two minute trailer and then you know, have some good press about the movie, hopefully because of the topicality of the whole thing. I rewatched the trailer and yes, this is the biggest A twenty four opening that they've ever had.

I rewatched that trailer in so much of the footage comes from the third act, comes from the Jesse Pluman's post that scene the scenes what How is reminded of at one point, and I hope you guys have never seen this movie. This movie reminded me a little bit of Sell the Stephen King slash movie. Yeah. I read when they come to the point where it's the tent city and it's the stadium, yep. I was just like, oh, it's like, we're all the zombies, the cell phone zombies late and they're gonna blow up all the cell phone zombies and then we're gonna feel bad for the cell phone zombies for no good reason.

Yeah. That I was okay, okay with the book. But the movie, Oh my god, was that bad dreadful? Yeah. I couldn't abide that film.

Yeah, and I agree, the book was just sort of oh, okay, he's just making a B movie kind of zombie kind of thing. Okay, that's fun, I guess, but yeah, no, no, and no to that, and no to this, no across the board, to all the faux zombie movies. Look, everyone here is still worshiping the altar of Donnov's dead. They've all been making their zombie movies him, some explicitly and some less explicitly. But like, come on, give it a rest, already, find something else, Like this movie should have been in a better American Civil War.

I was dreading it and wanted it, and I wanted Alex Garland's fucking brain behind it. It's really insulting that he chose to just go, well, that doesn't matter, don't pay to any attention, right oh, in the way that they tease us with, like, oh, here's the map. You know, I keep seeing the map everywhere as far as who's a line and who's not. And the map shows up in the movie, but it's reversed out and it's a reflection on a window that she's looking out of to see all these airstrikes going on, and I'm like, okay, it never like when she's sitting there in a hotel room, which she had to climb ten ten flights to get up to. I feel like she's in any danger.

I mean, there's a few moments where she feels like she's in genuine danger, and I'd say that Jesse Plemmon's part is it. And really, even when she's in the firefight and the fucking white house, I knew, oh, well, she's going to have to die at some point, but otherwise I was like, no, she's in no danger throughout this entire film. That's how you pass the torch, baby, is you go down and you sacrifice your Yeah, it's like, I fucking well on top of everything else. Like, and we kind of really haven't mentioned it. We've talked about it a little bit.

But the characters, again, this is an audio medium, so you can't see me making air quotes here. But the characters in this movie aren't characters at all, if not, in a lot of ways. They resemble characters in it. Like we've already talked about a zombie movie. They're just fodder for someone to tear through.

I have no emotional attachment to Stephen McKinley Henderson's character or Wagner Morris's character, and they should have been the characters. We should have cared about Kirsten Dunn's character the moment where she dies, which is heavily foreshadowed very early on, when the character of Jesse asks her if she would shoot the photo of her if she gets shot, It's like, okay, so she's gonna have to do it. Oh for, Like, who's writing this? That not Alex Garland, Like, I'm sorry, I remember that. I remember watching Annihilation and then reading the book and then rewatching the movie and going what the fuck is this?

Because he was transformative with the medium, with the original source material in a way that makes that movie something worth watching separated completely from the original source material. Here, I mean, I guess you kind of fantasy booked the American Civil War. But brother, if you're gonna do that, give us. If you're gonna do that, fantasy book it in a way that that's exciting. I mean, look, I'm not saying go full rolland emeric, but if this is your attempt at making a big American Civil War movie, boy, I mean I saw Better Destruction and Independence Day and that movie came out a long time ago.

You know, Chris, that's exactly right. And we are so inured now to seeing our national monuments being destroyed by aliens and natural disasters, and on and on and on that somehow firing at the fucking Lincoln Memorial or running through the White House. I've seen the White House destroyed better and numerous occasions in the past twenty years, So who gives a shit about any of that? And also, it again just keeps making me think, how did the Western forces get across the country, get Washington, DC surrounded that they're able that this is their final push in Where there's the rest of the military. What's going on here?

Like I said, where was John Millius to rewrite the script? Just give it a polish, just a shade of possibility, like actual logic, Like how about the president is at Camp David or some other thing and that's where they're going. He would stay at the White House. That's what Hitler did. Guys, don't you get it?

Nine to eleven happens and boom, your Dick Cheney is secreted away some place. So where's the VP here? Where are you any of this stuff? I'm guessing that he is kind of this Donald Trump stand in and caused all of this stuff, is what I'm he took a third term. They say, but how did that happen?

Was there an election? Did he just say I'm not giving up power, I'm staying a third term. Like these are little nuggets that might have helped me watch the rest of the movie and go, oh, it's about photo journalists, the Antifa massacre, guys, and a lot of hand waving the Antifa massacre, and a lot like Alex Garlander, you dog whistling Antifa now too, Like, bro, what I'm the actual fuck? Did they do the masskaker? Or were they massaker?

That's my point. That's what I'm saying. All I'm saying is you say Antifa, and all of a sudden there's a whole group of people on the internet whose mouth start foaming, and then there's another group of people on the internet whose mouth start foaming as well. So you can't win, is my point. So explain it a little bit more, my friend, because hanging a lantern on it at this point ain't good enough.

You were asking which Alex Garland wrote this film, and I think it was the Alex Garland that wrote the third act of Sunshine wrote this movie, because that movie just shits the bed so hard, and this whole movie just shits the bed from beginning to end. I can't defend that third act of Sunshine, but I do love that movie. I could, and I recommend everyone go watch Sunshine instead of Civil War. But yeah, again, this doesn't fall apart in the third act. It's a meandering thing from the beginning and then completely goes nuts at the end because the action doesn't feel visceral.

It feels like action movie nonsense. At the end. It doesn't feel like I don't care when any character dies in this movie, not once, and I wasn't scared for any of them. And I didn't give a shit because they don't give a shit, and they never seemed in danger. Like you said, Mike, it just felt like it was shot on a sound stage, that whole third act.

Yeah, just once they pull out from there, I'm just like, Okay, yep, these are a couple city streets. This basically is the end of the first suicide Squad. Yeah, this is them. I wouldn't have been surprised if Nick Offerman was just dancing and a big blue light behind them, you know, would have made as much sense. White House is down, baby, that's a more full, Like, if you're gonna make this movie, why not do something like Paul verhovenes, Because Paul verhoven has done, on two accounts, two films that lampoon specifically American consumerism and American nationalism.

Maybe not just specifically American nationalism with Starship Troopers, but definitely American consumerism with RoboCop. Why not do something here, give them a reason that is ridiculous to be at war with one another, because I'd like to point out, if there actually was an American civil war at this point, it would be because of something fucking ridiculous at this point. It would have to be because at this point, frankly, everything else has already happened that would have and should have led to a civil war, one would think, including people storming our nation's fucking capital. But my point being is when those real things have happened. And Alex Garland said as much, He's like, I was writing this before twenty twenty, before January sixth of twenty twenty one happened, and it's like, okay, So once January sixth of twenty twenty one happened, what did you do then?

Oh? You just kept writing the same movie. Why, Like, now you have seen a thing that can inform something a lot more clearly than what have before. You know what, if anything, this movie is a poor attempt to try and open the discussion to the January sixth stuff and like what happened? Because again, like, if they're trying to have any message in this movie, it's about that, I guess, but again like maybe not, Like I don't even think this movie has a message.

Frankly, if it's attempting to have one, that's probably the starting point. But it doesn't go any further than just you know, the first couple of lines on Wikipedia and then you go, I read it, Okay, I read. I read the headline and the byline. I don't need to know anything else. Like that's this movie in a nutshell, you know, pretty much a lot of the way people consume news.

Now, I think I'm gonna keep harping on Dred like that is a better representation of America than yeah, and his understanding of American politics. If this is it, because in Dread and like you know what, just write Dred too, man. You can make any political point you want there. You've removed yourself a little bit of comedy, Like I kept thinking about Doctor Strange Love when I was watching this movie, Like how fucking horrifying would it have been in nineteen sixty two or something to like be in the midst of the possible end of the world by nuclear viihilation And here's Stanley Kuper cackling about it, Like I would probably be scared to go see that movie. But that movie is so skillfully done without ducking under or beside the central message, which is the possible you know, eradication of humankind.

Then I don't know, Like it just makes me so mad that he did not engage in any way with anything as far as the reality of the situation, and we were supposed to care. Yeah, I just felt numb the whole time. Like I recently watched a documentary called God and Country, which looks at the events or looks at some of the things that have been going on in our country first decades that led up to January sixth, the whole idea of Christian nationalism and just how the platform was formed and how it has infected politics. And because you saw those guys with the Christian nationalist symbols and flags and things at January sixth, So it's like, let's look at that that was horrified to me, just to to hear about and learn more about that stuff.

To see the January sixth footage is horrifying still. And this just didn't give me anything, didn't give me any feelings whatsoever. And they're always very you know, like just bathed and pathos moments of like we're out in front of the J. C. Penny and you can see a movie theater in the back, and there's a crashed helicopter and they're taking photos.

Again, it's just a crashed helicopter. We don't see what made a crash. We didn't see any of that stuff. Again, I was waiting for there to be people on top of the shopping mall that they're in front of and booking down and signaling their friend across the way. That's more interesting, you know.

Even the Zach Sneider Gone to the Dead is way more interesting than this thing. So it just didn't do what it was supposed to. I feel like that meme of like the character with the stick poking at it, it's like, do something civil war, do something to be entertaining in any way, upset me, make me mad, other than making me mad by not performing any sort of anything to make me feel like I just experience something. I you mentioned Zack Snyder's hilarious, because I'm sitting here thinking to myself, like, who's another director who cares more about the creation of imagery and less a sort of execution on anything behind it? And Zack Snyder is that director in so many ways.

And Alex Garland is not someone that I ever would have thought I would be comparing to Zack Snyder. But given that this movie is effectively a lot of slow motion, provocative in quotations imagery for some people, but no substance behind it, that reminds me of a lot of my complaints with Zack Snyder's stuff. You know, in this it's provocative imagery. In his stuff, it's the use of slow motion to be provocative. Here, it's just, oh, can you imagine Americans in a football stadium?

Like, yeah, I can, because I've seen this in other post apocalyptic and quotations media. I mean, if this is post apocalyptic, it's not even oh, it's not even that. I mean, I am legend was more post apocalyptic than this movie. Speaking of another movie that I feel like somehow did the post apocalyptic thing. The first what is it?

Five minutes of I Am legend you'll remember that movie at the beginning where it's them we trying to leave New York City. That was better than this entire movie in terms of trying to capture the feeling of a big event happening. I mean, this is a found footage movie, but somehow it's just the boring aspects of a found footage movie. Like this would have been better as a found footage movie because at least then they would have had an excuse for not explaining things here. It's like, you don't have an excuse, you just chose not to because you're not taking a stand.

The opening five minutes of Starship Troopers is more affecting than this movie and more panic inducing, Like this movie never least achieved level of panic. No, no, no, I mean even I mentioned World War Z before the opening of that movie. When they're caught in traffic and you get the motorcycle that goes by and hits the mirror on the car, and it just like shocks you out of what you were listening, out of the family conversation, and then it's like, what the fuck is going on here? There's none of that. I mean, like, did he start this movie six months too late?

Should this have been the origins of the Civil War? I think that would have been a lot more interesting and sid we're getting the end of the Civil War, and really it just ends that easy. It feels like they had like, oh, okay, we've got two tanks and there's like five guys over here, six guys over there, a couple of people in the White House, don't worry about it, and that's it. It's it was so in what's going on? It would be a bloodbath, like to earn the ending of running into the White House and seeing the president execute it.

This movie should have started with these reporters embedded with Western forces or the National for two stories going on, like, yes, this is supposed to be a war movie and instead it's a road movie. Yeah. I mean, what's hilarious is and realistically, again breaking this down into the way the movie is projecting its logic onto the situation. If they're willing to just kill the president, why wouldn't they just take those tanks and shoot at the White House and we're done. We don't have to go into the building.

If we're just gonna kill everybody inside anyways, the easiest thing to do is just surround it and blow it up. Just have one of those helicopters shoot at it. Again. I fail to understand how this movie's lot. Like you've mentioned so many times, father th al On, the logic of the movie is lacking on all fronts, to the point where it's like, speaking of memes, it's like that other meme, are we a fucking joke to you?

Like? Do you think we're stupid? I'm just saying, like, generally, as filmgoers, is this what constitutes being provocative entertainment in twenty twenty four? Because my god, that documentary and Smagan Thunder from two thousand and three, which was essentially only made to highlight those pieces of art that had already been made, is better than this. Confederate States of America is better than this.

A movie made in like two thousand and five, ready done, is better than this, mister Shohn, millions. That movie, it sketches out for you exactly what happened very quickly. These two teamed up and now we're fucked. And you know what, I didn't need more than that. Give me that much and will fucking follow you for the rest of your Civil War man.

Yeah, it's I kind of am bummed out. I made such a big deal about going to see this movie because it didn't deserve it at all. Yeah, it makes me sad that Alex Garland's last movie he made before this was a movie I really enjoyed too, because I found Men to be very interesting. It's third act kind of is just to say dreadfully the word I would use. It's a better movie than Civil War because it's weirder and you can kind of go like, well, that was weird at the end, but that's for sure, But it's a third act to bummer I and you know, I think, yeah, I would say that, you know, speaking of people that don't know how to end their things.

Stephen King commenting on Civil War is rather ironic. One might say the Tweed was seventeen hundred characters. Oh great, I don't know this is. This had all the trappings of something a lot more exciting and interesting than it ended up being. But for me, the impact that this movie had before it came out is more than after it came out.

It's like Ghostbusters twenty sixteen. Remember how angry everybody got before that movie came out. I remember that movie came out and everybody found out the movie just wasn't funny anyways. Had nothing to do with the fact that it was recast as women. That's the same thing here.

This movie has nothing. And you know the fact that it's about the Civil War is not the reason this movie's bad. It's just bad because it is not doing anything with the time that it's been given and the budget that it's been given, and the people who spent their time making the film. The trailer bamboozled us, And you're right, Chris. The central line in that trailer, the line that they cut in half, that they made into another question entirely, was the one that was haunting me the entire time.

What would you do in that situation where a man with a gun is standing there deciding what is and is not American and your life hangs in that balance, how do you answer? What kind of an American? Are you? No? He just means are you?

Were you barn here? Because if you weren't born here, I'm just gonna shoot you. Hey. I tried to do the no Country for Old Men scene with Anton Sugar and I ended up coming up short because instead of a real nickel, this was a wooden nickel. Like, there's no the tension there is immediately sucked out of the scene the moment you realize what the actual line is and where that scene is going.

Oh, gentlemen, let's pull the plug on this discussion because this is now an interview with Alex Garland. I wish, I wish, man. I don't know, like we've already talked about so many other things that are worth checking out in place of this. I feel like that, ultimately, if you've stuck with us through this overwhelmingly negative episode, is our duty to point you in a better direction. Confederate States of America in smog and thunder, anything else that comes to mind that you guys would suggest, so we can at least, you know, compliment sandwich this thing dread go see your head.

Yeah that too, your red still holds up. Man. I watched that movie very off. I mean, it is still so good. I had to watch it as a palette cleans after watching this one.

I don't blame you, yeah, or you know what, Children of Men. Children of Men is the movie that this movie wants to be so bad go watch that movie. Like they cop a lot of moments from Children of Men in this movie in a way that's like devoid of any value in this movie's execution. Oh check out Salvador. Yes, yeah, the James Woods movie Oliver Stone flick if you want to see about photo jarnalist and have actual harrowing moments where you are concerned your lead character might perish.

Oh yeah, Yeah, And to see the former the older photographer who has been around and he's got that three thousand yard stare and you're just like, this guy's seen some shit, man. And I got that with Dunst sometimes, but at the some times it was at the same time I was like, I don't really care so performance, no fault of her for that. I thought that she did a great job. So there's my compliment. I thought Kristen Dunst did a wonderful job with this, as she does all the time.

Yeah, the actors are actually like I guess I probably aborted my point earlier, But to your point, Mike, everybody in this movie is fantastic and everything else I've seen them in it's clearly none of their faults that they're not given much to work with. Because Kirsten Dunst is still in my favorite Spider Man movie. Wagner Mora was the lead of Narco's for a reason. I mean, and again Nick Offerman being in this movie as the president, I thought it could have been an interesting It could have been an interesting choice. But again, with nothing to go off of, it just kind of doesn't go anywhere.

He doesn't even have a conversation, he practices a speech, and then he gets shot. I mean, you know what, if I was one of those soldiers, I wouldn't have just ganked him right there in the Oval office. I probably would have pulled him out onto the White House lot and hung him up by his heel and shot him that way. Really made a spectacle of it, right, like, you know, be provocative. This is what we do to traders, right, be provocative.

Yeah, yeah, he's not. Just the shooting of the president was provocative enough. And that's the thing. He's somehow, in his bid to omfuscate the actual conflict here, he's also obfuscated how bloodthirsty this goddamn conflict would actually be exactly the horrible bloodbath that would be an American Civil war. So, you know, fail, fail, fail on all levels of this movie.

When a PBS documentary on YouTube that is free to watch is more provocative than this, we have problems when they're saying this is how this would happen, and we're going to talk about it in ways that are upsetting. That's those are those ideas that needed to just be projected out from that not concocted whole cloth, because we couldn't just do the thing like I guess it's because we don't really want to have the difficult conversation that the movie is the way that it is. I guess that's what it is. That's what it ultimately feels like, like nobody is an adult enough to have the conversation that needs to be had, which is, like you said, Father Malone, if the sport to happen, it would be an actual fucking nightmare for every single fucking one of us.

And I don't think there be any way that anybody could sit in their house and be like, I'm gonna ignore that the country is literally now tearing itself apart. I find that to be kind of an affront to anyone's logic at this point, given where we are, and this movie doesn't exist without us being in the state that we're in, right, or that you know what, that town could exist, but that would be its own movie, Like how does this town exist amidst all of the bloodshed? Right? Right, Well, there's tons and tons of promise in this movie, all preparation, no agent. You just mentioned zone of interest essentially by the way, right right, yeah, right, I mean yeah, even it feels a little bit like the barter town that med Max goes to in the third movie, where it's absolutely okay, there is no violence in this town because we take all of your weapons and we have this like regimented world where we've got everything it needs to be the way that it is.

It's you know, it's almost like the logic of the the Wastelands or something like it should have been something like that. We're like, okay, you check your guns when you come to this checkpoint, and that's it for this town and something something. If you're going to make a zombie movie, make the zombie movie, make the communities, make it the wild West again, because that's what it actually takes. You can't just say I'm making a photo journalist road movie and against a mythical backdrop about a civil war in America where nothing really actually happens and nobody's really mean to each other. You know what, Father alone, that town that they came to that should have been the same town that Don Johnson went to and was supposed to pregnate all those women.

And A Boy and miss Dog. Oh yes, speaking of better apocalyptic movies, go check out A Boy and His Dog, everybody, What a fucking good one that is. Just go watch Fallout on Prime video. It's so much fun. And you know what, if the apocalypse happened, I would hope that Walton Goggins was a gool cowboy shooting people and who fucking cares?

You know what. At this point, as as much as I want to say thanks for the reality of this movie, Alex Carland, if the world is gonna end, I'd rather there be all sorts of fucked up shit on the other side of it to be entertaining for somebody, because the likelihood of me being around if something like that happened is essentially zero. But you know, giant rats and cockroaches being killed with guns and swords and shit, I'm on board. Give me a hundred episodes of that and not an hour more of something like this. You know what, not only that, not only the crazy cool action and all the fucking you know, beautiful sets and visual effects, but like they're dealing with America on an actual political, realistic manner in the most sort of out their way possible and actually commenting on our situation as opposed to this movie which is supposed to be about it.

Well, gosh, it's like you and I were talking a little bit about the boys before we started recording. That's all about the corporate greed and sponsorships and all these you know, the guys who get away with that. You know, they're supposed to be the hero to everybody that's actually a vicious murderer, but somehow they get the ratings back, they win over the people. Like that's interesting stuff. You know what would have been going on, Like I agree, we're like five seconds away from having like mass murder for across the country kind of thing.

As far as like if this were to happen, people would just be like, oh, okay, this is great and just strap on all the guns, do whatever they want to become mass murderers, you know, because that's fun. Where's the things like gladiatorial games like I'm surprised it didn't come to a town and it's they get captured and have to fight somebody, you know, like they're fighting a bear from the local zoo. Like, what's the actual infrastructure of the war, Yeah, pay no attention to that. This is about photo journalism. It's about photojournalists.

I guess all the grocery stores don't work. Electricity works too, apparently, and sure that. Yeah, I mean, you know, look, the highways are a little clogged, but you know, just take the back roads and you're okay. It's like, like I said, it's the most boring zombie movie I've ever seen. Like what, Okay, cool?

I guess you didn't have a budget. They're invisible zombies. Oo like the Last of Us, fall Out, Twisted fucking Metal even is a better post apocalyptic anything than this, because you know what, at this point, like I said, as much fun as it is to anising book the reality, if it were to happen, I would just want to see the weird shit that happened instead, because this is just this is just so padantic in every sense of the word. And Alex Garland should never be considered a dantic by any stretch of the imagination, Chris, When you're not riffing on mainstream movies, what argure you up to these days? This is why we don't riff on mainstream movies, by the way, This is the reason, folks, That's why we don't do it.

But that's why possibly you may be hearing it more often. But yeah, if you want to hear everything that I'm doing normally very positive, not this kind of critical, Weirdingwaymedia dot Com, which is a podcast network where you can find everything that I work on and so many many other things that I don't So yeah, Weirdingwaymedia dot com. What about you, fa helone. Oh, I'm also over there at the Weirdingway Media. You can check out our show Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology podcast, where we're currently taking a look at tales from the Dark Side.

You can also hear me over on Dark Destinations that is a radio drama that I write and produce. Find that all over at the weirding Way and ask for me. You can hear everything that I do also at Weirdingwaymedia dot Com, including a brand new show that we have coming out called the Chasing Chevy Chase Podcast, which should be dropping it in about a week from the time that this comes out, So looking forward to hearing reactions to that. Not necessarily looking forward to hearing reactions to this episode, because we were pretty mean to Alex Carland and just had to be some negative about this movie. Such a bunch of negative Nellies, even though one of us said Annihilation is literally one of their favorite movies.

But it's okay. That part will get forgotten because we're just so mean to the guy who was given one hundred and fifty million dollars to make a big budget movie. Sorry, I love Dred. I don't care what anyone says. Alex Garland.

I love him. I'm looking forward to the next one next month. Na man, you know, like I'm a fan of the guy. It's just that this was such a horrible misstep in every direction. Did you guys stay till the end of the credits with this one, because this is actually in the Ex Machina universe.

You get to see there's a there's a moment when it's nick Off from in there on the ground, and then oscar ees if it comes dancing that I would have Yeah, couldn't redeem it though, could it? No dot pana