Civil War vs Apocalypse Now: The War Movie

Hello, I'm Jacob Krueger, and this is the Write Your Screenplay podcast. This week, we are going to be looking at Alex Garland's new film, Civil War. Civil War explores what happens when we become polarized, stop looking at each other as human beings and instead view one another as enemies. Structurally, Alex Garland’s Civil War is essentially built like Apocalypse Now, with a touch of The Last of Us.  But in the case of Civil War, the characters’ journey into the “heart of darkness” takes place in an America on the brink of collapse, rather than the Vietnam War. The zombie-like tones of Civil War won’t come as a surprise to those who know Alex Garland's work. He wrote 28 Days Later.  We're going to be talking a bit about the structure of Civil War and it’s similarities to the structure of Apocalypse Now and The Last of Us. We’ll also look at key differences in the socio-political implications of building a war movie by contrasting Civil War with Top Gun: Maverick. (Check out my Top Gun: Maverick Podcast). One of the interesting choices that Alex Garland makes in the writing of Civil War is not to tell you what the hell is going on. We only have snippets of what's happened.  We know that a president has stayed in office for three terms against the will of the American people, or at least against the Constitution.  We don't know exactly how or why that happened. There's virtually zero exposition but we know that has happened. When we first meet the President, played by Nick Offerman, we suspect he’s making a “disinformation” speech about a victory tha doesn’t reflect what is really going on.  We know that in this world, in Washington, D.C., the press are shot on sight. We know that the press are seen as enemy combatants by the President.  That is all we know. We don't know the President's politics. We don't know if he is left or if he is right or if he’s somewhere in between. We don't know if he is a fascist. We don't know if he is a communist. We don't know anything about his point of view except that he has violated the constitution and he is against journalism. He is against the truth coming out. We know that America has fractured and that some kind of alliance called the Western Forces (WF) has been created in opposition to The President. In our society this seems like an impossible alliance. It's between California and Texas. And quite frankly, we don't know what that alliance is about. We don't know their politics. We don't know what they believe in.  We don't know if they're liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, communist or fascist. But we know that they are fighting against the President, trying to retake the country. Alex Garland has come under some fire for his depiction of the Western Forces– the fictional alliance of California and Texas– in Civil War. Some critics have essentially said “This is crazy. This is just ridiculous whitewashing. California and Texas- they're so far apart politically. This choice to imagine them as a combined force is just Alex Garland obscuring of the actual political message to avoid offending anyone.”  And if you've listened to my Top Gun: Maverick podcast, you know that that's something that I criticized that film for. In Top Gun: Maverick, like in Civil War, the nature of the political conflict,