This could be interesting... although I'm a little puzzled about what brought Texas and California to become allies against the rest of the Union. what do you guys think? Seems like a Wordforge kind of movie, but I can see them botching it up too.
It has something to say about how awful a civil war would be. But I really don't trust their handling of it - yeah, Texas and California are about as far apart as possible. I might catch it streaming if I hear good things. But my guess is I'd just walk out of the theater pissed off.
The two most populous states teaming up like old Mexico days? This looks interesting. Jesse Plemons has been dieting. He looks closer to his Breaking Bad days than he does more recent productions.
It might be good. Alex Garland seems to like working with the specter of a US dystopia, and the emergent civil rights changes that are born from it. If he does it well, then it could be huge. If not, it will end up toothless.
THere was a project a few years back to turn the game "Shattered Union" into a movie. This may be an evolution of that?
Sitting the theater and the credits are rolling. I’m very disappointed in this movie. It ignored the politics of how a nation could delve to the point of civil war and leaned totally in to the spectacle that a war is bad. No shit. Glad I caught the matinee.
I haven't seen the movie, but I think most people thought it was going to be about MAGA starting the war. My friend said it's more about philosophy than it an action shoot em' up. If that's true, then I'm glad because that's not what I'm looking for from Alex Garland.
I’m not sure what movie they saw but the President was clearly an analog for Donald Trump. He was in his “third term” as POTUS and shot journalists on sight. That’s not nearly my disappointment with the movie. I wanted to see how a nation got to this point. This movie went to painful places to avoid the politics behind the war and I think it suffered because of it.
I'll almost certainly never watch it because the suspension of disbelief challenge is simply too high. Yes I watch SF and comic book movies but those make no pretense at "real life" stories. The premise that Texas and California are allies - literally for ANY reason - and Florida separately seceding as well...NO. The proper formulation (TX and FL as one and sweeping up the rest of the deep South which would certainly happen in such a scenario - while CA sees some advantage of bugging out separately (likely with the other pacific states and Nevada in tow) was literally right under their nose and they fucked it up. Also, if the president is a Trumpish figure, you'd make THAT dude president of the NeoConfederacy and some more gentle type in DC (who would have to do hard things that are against his - or her - nature in the course of this war) I don't profess to be any sort of screenwriter but the broad strokes of how the country balkanizes almost writes itself. All you have to do is choose a path based on who wins the election this year. Trump wins? SCOTUS writes a blank check and center-left states reach a breaking point and say "I ain't doing that" or, conversely, Biden wins and, say, has to give way to Harris within a couple of years, and - at a minimum - all of the old confederacy except Virginia...and also OK KY and MO probably - start saying (even louder) "to many brown people!" and secede thinking she won't have the support to go to war with them. Then you have to postulate a war (not certain in reality) for the drama and off you go.
CA: "Gag me with a spoon, like we're totally not joining you rednecks!" TX: "I reckon there's only two sides in this war . . . our side, and the side that has New York City and Boston on it." CA: " . . . we won't have to shoot brown people, will we?" TX: "Not unless y'all ask nicely."
Haven't seen the movie, so I don't know how they try to support the premise or how far in the future it is supposed to take place, or if it is supposed to be an outgrowth of our real history as opposed to an alternate history where the cultural and other reasons that might make a TX/CA alliance impossible/improbable don't exist. But there are a few ways that I could see it happening that don't strike me as any more farfetched than, say, a future where humans have grown beyond the prejudices they have had for millenia toward each other and see all forms of sentient life as equals. 1. Naked self-interest/power. California is rich with tech and food production, while Texas is rich with oil. Both start off with a disproportionate share of military might and political capital. To survive and thrive, they can combine forces. 2. Over time, cultural and demographic shifts make Texas and California more alike. There is a conservative streak in parts of California that gave us Reagan and Nixon that over time could be fanned higher. There are parts of Texas that are mostly blue, and those parts could be growing. 3. A common enemy could bring TX and CA to realize the adage that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" no matter what differences they retain. I suspect that we collectively have probably done more thinking about this subject than the screenwriters have, though, and they just wanted to use it as a backdrop for a mindless action flick. We'll see when it comes to streaming.
I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that modern day prejudices still exist in this movie. One of the most captivating scenes shows us this all too well. It's worth pointing out that California has more Republicans than any other state in the union. Of course, Garland didn't want to draw attention to anything that might show us that despite our political differences, there are a lot of things that we all have in common and totally different things that might drive us apart. Such a missed opportunity.
I want to live in a reality where Canadian currency isn't monopoly money. @Ten Lubak @Spaceturkey @14thDoctor
Just saw this. Until the final act, there was no reason for this to be an American "civil war" film. It could have taken place in any war-torn nation. And even the final act, as action-packed as it was, fell completely flat. I get why the film avoided politics -- America is already horribly divided and Hollywood is all about the $$$ so no need to piss one side off -- but the lack of explanation for why the country fell apart weakens the film immeasurably. Again, this movie could have been set in Sudan or Somalia or Rwanda or anywhere.
