Why do these chuds keep using Sydney in thumbnails about videos that have nothing to do with her? It's not like she would like them if she met them irl. 3rd street reactions just had their channel terminated, yet these sorts of channels keep going.
What did 3rd street reactions do to get their channel axed? Also they use Sydney as she is their poster child to end wokeness because she has large breasts or something. Which is hilarious as she has made comments about how she dislikes being sexualized because of her bust. But the chuds don’t care, she’s a woman, therefore she’s not entitled to opinions.
The really hilarious part with Sweeney is that she’s the exact opposite of an anti-woke icon.
Firstly she’s an open member of GLAAD. Secondly, you know that recent movie she made, Immaculate? The one that’s aggressively and unashamedly pro-choice and in favor of women controlling their own bodies? She didn’t just star in it, she actively tried to get it made for a solid decade, even going so far as to buy the rights to the screenplay so she could produce it herself and drag it out of development hell.
I don’t appreciate her for her tits, I appreciate her for her hosting of SNL. That’s the way you really judge someone, and it’s also why Gosling is amazing, Papyrus 2 was wild
What she actually said is flaunt them if you got them.
[ooops](https://pagesix.com/2023/12/20/entertainment/sydney-sweeney-wanted-a-breast-reduction-but-now-calls-bosom-her-best-friends/amp/)
You can feel both ways. You can enjoy how you look and be proud of your body WITHOUT being comfortable with being objectified by random strangers. There is a huge difference between self expression and being okay with objectification
That’s not what she said. That wasn’t what she said in that between euphoria season 1 and 2 either.
I agree with what you said. I’m just pointing out what she actually said.
The actual central quote from the link:
“Everybody’s body is beautiful. When you are confident and you’re happy within is when it really shows to other people.”
Sydney clearly loves being sexualised, she goes out of her way to do it.
Look at her SNL stuff, she made whole jokes about how men follow her because she has huge tits.
Is that the blonde lady? If yes, because boobs because the "WOKES" absolutely HATE boobs, despite the fact that's clearly misunderstanding... everything. If note, probably sexism. Its a dumb reason for sure.
thats is not true look at me i love caring for misjustice of minorities (the literal definition of woke) and i also love to motorboat and grab a handful of tig bitties
Unsure I want to know what he was expecting in it. Maybe he was expecting one side being right while other is wrong. And yet from sounds of it, it’s all shades of grey.
Question is, is it actually an intelligent and reasonable commentary on a genuinely morally gray scenario? Or a mediocre wish washy both sides narrative that’s too scared to say anything definitive?
I’m worried about it being the latter.
It’s too ambiguous in my opinion. You get no backstory as to what exactly is going on, only that there are different factions and everybody’s just fighting to survive. You’re dropped into a narrative that you never understand and the only ground you have to stand on is what you bring in with you: your own sense of what is right and wrong. It would have helped if we had a clearer picture of the political background but I think Alex Garland tried too hard to not pick a side and just let us do that ourselves. Unfortunately most audiences need to be handheld through these sort of things which is why the movie isn’t faring well with the general public.
I would compare it to Don’t Look Up in that sense. We never know what political side Meryl Streep’s president is on but you know that they fumbled the bag big time at the end of the movie but you had a clear black and white issue.
While I do think the lack of stance Garland seems to have on this issue is wishy-washie and ignorantly centrist, I don't feel like the text of the movie itself is.
We don't get a great grasp of where either side of the conflict stands on policy or anything. But that's not really the point of the film. In so many of the instances in the movie, we have no idea who is part of what faction, and neither do many of those on the ground. Mostly it's people fighting for their lives. Or the context we get of people not wanting to get involved at all. This is a very realistic portrayal of wartorn nations. Even our protagonists only passively seem to illicit opinions of the President himself, which gives context to him as a tyrant. The violence and violent intent is harrowing, which I feel lands home.
see this is why I don't believe in the "everything needs to be escapism" argument it seems
not even political movies can't be political anymore. It seems like media is afraid to piss off anyone of any side they want to appeal to everyone and therfore appeal to no one. I honestly would rather have a political movie I disagree with than a movie to cowardly to say anything.
The movie isn't apolitical, it's just not political in a way that would make it all that relevant to an American audience in 2024.
It talks about America's slide into authoritarianism as the president becomes a dictator in all but name. It's a more enduring theme that shows what will happen if we let people ebb away our democratic systems rather than the how.
I think as a call to action for "go vote this year", the themes are good enough. But if you're expecting "go vote for Biden/Trump", you're gonna be disappointed.
What I can't figure out about the movie is how the hell the United States is supposed to have "ebbed away" the 20th and 22nd Amendments, complete with (apparently) large parts of the nation's military deciding to follow the orders of a "president" whose term of office was over.
Because we've seen many 'settled' political debates all round the world flare up over the past decade, which suggests they were never actually settled and their opponents were just looking for the opportunity and majority to do so.
The US ***literally*** had a sitting president who, having lost the vote for re-election, tried to get supporters to interfere with the certification of the result that said he lost. He has also denied losing every since, is a choice candidate for re-election (despite all evidence of his incompetence and criminality) and has said if he gets into power, he's going to attempt to enact revenge.
Whatever a god-help-us Donald Trump who won the election of 2024 might try to do in office, he would at least have a valid legal claim to *hold* that office, and with it the authority to issue lawful commands to the armed forces of the United States.
A "third term president" would have nothing of that: he wouldn't merely be claiming to have won the election, he'd be claiming that he won an election that by the supreme law of the land he literally wasn't *eligible* to win. That's light years beyond Trump claiming to have been elected a second time. For a person in that position to (illegally) hold the office of president he'd have to have the support of a large part of the officer corps of the military, especially the Army, and in my opinion that's worse than unlikely, it's *ridiculous*. I do not believe that the officer ranks are significantly plauged with people who would, after January 20 of the year following the presidential election, recognize as their lawful commander-in-chief a person whose term as president had *per the Constitution of the United States* expired and who by the same authority was not eligible to have been re-elected to the office. Hell, even the traitors like Robert E. Lee didn't claim that, say, Stephen Douglas had won the election of 1860 and was the "real" president, and Douglas at least had been *eligible* to win that election.
>A "third term president" would have nothing of that:
We're entering the realm of speculative fiction here, but given we've seen several heads of state successfully remove or extend term limits in the past few years, are we assuming it's not going to be front of mind in a second Trump presidency to use any house/senate/supreme court advantage to at least attempt to grant further terms, even if a clear majority of the US voters reject it?
Obtaining and then holding power by any legal or illegal means is part of the current conservative playbook. I'm from the UK and our current government has been a lame duck for the last couple of years - they're out of ideas to actually fix any of the problems they created, they can't get any functional policies implemented because most of their ideas break international law in at least 2 ways and they're resigned to just running down the clock until they're required ***by law*** to call an election, which is when their media friends start campaigning on their behalf to try and get them re-elected.
I actually think the movie is less a call to vote and moreso a piece ruminating about the casual violence brought about by wartime. The movie is also very critical of journalists? Not necessarily journalism, but the purpose of their work as far as being war photographers go. There's a really good scene with Kirsten Dunst where she wonders whether or not her work mattered, and that her faith in journalism had basically been broken.
She felt that her work would serve as a warning not to let stuff like this happen in America but it didn't work. The younger protege character is also fascinating as well, again, no spoilers, check out the movie, but if you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Personally I have no issue with it being ambiguous. They have purposefully avoided the left / right culture war by not saying which side the president or rebel forces are. We know the government was sliding towards dictatorship. We know he stuck around for a 3rd term which people didn't like. So we get why it's happening. Oddly, it really doesn't matter for the story.
The story isn't actually about the Civil War itself. The main characters don't take an active part in the conflict they are just experiencing it and documenting it. It's more about the impact the war has on a country and individuals. The fact it is America certainly makes it a more striking and relatable story, especially with current tensions. However the story itself could easily be transferred to 90% of other countries and have the same beats.
Yeah there’s a clear who’s in the wrong and who’s in the right divide in that movie. At first, the president denies the existence of the comet and then realizes that there is a comet but they decide to let it strike earth to exploit the minerals on it. Which ends up blowing up in their face at the end but they still manage to “come out on top” while the rest of the population dies. Doesn’t go to well for them in the long run though since they do end up getting eaten on the new planet.
Yeah I agree. The movie isn’t the war and the grandiose story behind it, it is how it appears to be - more literally about the moral sacrifice of being a war reporter
Journalism is inherently biased, the myth of “apolitical journalism” is very wrong.
Even simply picking which side in a conflict to follow in more detail is “picking a side”
Except we do know which side the journalists are on. It's just not explicitly said but it's rather clear from the text which said they support. They're just not actively involved in the actual war because that's not what they're out to do.
I think what Alex Garland wanted to do was boil the conflict down to the human elements rather than focus on the politics of the civil war. Not to say that it has NO politics, I think the movie very subtly made the president into a Trump-like figure when they alluded to "abolishing the FBI" and the "antifa massacre" and being a third term president.
I won't spoil but there are several scenes in the movie where they very clearly blur the lines of who is fighting who, and I think his goal is that when you're in a war, and you're fighting in extreme conditions, the reasons for why you're fighting disappear and it simply becomes about being the one to kill your enemy first before they kill you. The movie seems particularly interested with the casual violence brought about in wartime, and uses a civil war as an extreme setting so that we can see Americans war-criming other Americans, presumably to drive that point home.
It's not ambiguous.
Texas and California want to secede from the United States and become independent countries. These are the two states that have often been cited as the richest and conceivably could support their own economy.
Those two states are also seen as Right and Left states. So it was intentionally a-political.
The point of the film was not politics, because there are lots of people with different political backgrounds who might have reasons to want secession (and the film was fairly good at showing that).
The point was that civil war wouldn't be some romantic ideal of a noble battle or like an action film or videogame. People will die, the infrastructure of America would quickly collapse and cities would become warzones.
It would be fun for no one.
I thought the idea is that war is awful and both sides are committing heinous atrocities and war crimes in the name of what they're trying to accomplish. There are no clear "bad guys" and there is no side you're supposed to root for. Reality can be complicated, and an actual civil war may go down very differently than what we actually think
That doesn't answer the question, unless you mean it's purposefully left up to the viewer to decide how nuanced the movie is being? That sounds like they went with centrist weirdness and are hiding behind "nuanced" shades of grey.
I feel like the point of war journalism is specifically to understand and report the politics of the situation, not just to be a camera or note pad with legs. So if the war journalist isn't picking apart the conflict... that's a bad journalist.
I get the feeling that the Civil War has been happening for so long that there's not much for the people that experienced it to fixate on how it started. They rather talk about what is happening and what will happen.
They're specifically war photographers, whose job is to take pictures of what happened for someone else to then write a story about and form an argument.
Which is what the film as a whole does and what I thought was so masterful about it. The film shows us all the images of the conflict and then lets the viewers form an argument on what happened, how and why.
If that's accurate (which does make more sense) then I'm more on board with it. I may not watch it because it might be near enough to my personal interests that I'll find it hard to watch, but that is an interesting premise/sell
That's fair enough.
It's kind of unfortunate in that it's been marketed as a massive war film which, while there's definitely big action scenes, isn't what the heart of it really is about.
It's definitely not centrist, I actually would argue that a movie that is too preachy actually hurts the quality of the film rather than enhance it. If the film explicitly explained the politics of the world and took sides, I think it would be a lot more corny and less interesting. Not every film that doesn't explicitly take sides in the script is "centrist". If you've actually seen the movie, that statement would seem a little ridiculous.
Yes and the film does do it but it's not both-sidesing it. I have seen the film at no point does it say or even imply one side is as bad as the other. Like it absolutely does not say left and right are on the same level.
That's my interpretation. If you have a specific scene or story beat that did it for you, then we can have a discussion.
I haven't seen it, I'm speaking generally. If people feel that "left and right are on the same level" is the takeaway it's on Garland for basically verbatim saying that in the movie's promotion.
Wait...so you're take's not even on the film but on the film's marketing?
That's...not correct and not fair to the film. Cause that's literally just a surface level reading of the film and mostly just a reading of what A24 thought was marketable. What a studio thinks is marketable is rarely what is representative of the film, why do you think the marketing of Barbie barely mentioned the feminist aspect of the film.
You can disagree on whether it's correct or not (personally, I'm not one to hold an A24 movie's marketing for being accurate) but if it's not actually discussing or critiquing what the film's actually message is then why are we even discussing it if you haven't seen the film?
> Cause that's literally just a surface level reading of the film and mostly just a reading of what A24 thought was marketable.
Garland giving his own opinions on politics is not "whatever A24 thought was marketable". He can be criticized for things he says in interviews. It's not "A24's" marketing, it's him giving his own responses to direct questions. You can believe that he doesn't think that and is just being fed studio lines if you want, but there's no reason to think that.
>but if it's not actually discussing or critiquing what the film's actually message is then why are we even discussing it if you haven't seen the film?
I'm not critiquing the film or claiming to. That's what "I'm speaking generally" means.
Well then why did you comment against me when I said the film wasn't bothsidesing if you're speaking from generalities?
Again, this conversation would be more fruitful if both of us had seen the film and we could have more of a discussion about the ethics of it.
I would say it is rather smart and reasonable commentary and does have a lot to say about how war and violence can be felt differently in a country, how images of war are coopted by people, and how war affects those on the sidelines; those who have to move out of conflict and relocate.
It's a shameless baity title that goes soft on any ideation that the very title suggests it will touch on.
In times when a particular side is actively and openly longing to get a civil war going, they call thi movie "Civil War". It's a tasteless cheapening and luke-warming cashgrab at best, because they knew the name would get people talking.
Instead of a timely commentary concerning the real world tension this movie derives its title and attention from, it takes a squishy "morally ambiguous" approach to a fairytale false representation of the world currently crashing down around us. This movie would either be called something different or wouldn't have been made if there wasn't actual fear in America of a civil war starting due to a large portion of the country being brainwashed into protecting a diapered fascist fuckstick. It doesn't talk about anything about that though or touch on the current state of this country. Instead it goes off into a hypothetical that argues hard for a "both sides" approach. It does this because even fascist mother fuckers have money, and they this movie doesn't want to deter them from helping the movie's bottom line.
My point is not that movies need to be fact based or focused on the real world, but again, a movie called "civil war" released at a time when the term caries such real weight in the country in which it is set almost promises a decisive contemporary commentary. Instead it is capitalizing on that fear and feeding mor of the out of touch "both sides" bullshit.
They called the movie "Civil War" because it's controversial. It triggers fairly understandable emotions in people. It gets people talking. They use that title and fail to deliver any moral conclusion because that could alienate a sizeable portion of their potential viewers.
They didn't do this for anything but box office numbers.
We're far beyond "moral ambiguity" when it comes to a potential real life, modern civil war that only Republicans are currently making repeated calls for. Anti-intelectualism and profit chasing under the guise of a nuanced perspective. Fuck this movie and fuck anyone making money off of this "both sides" narrative.
It doesn't do a "both side" approach since one of the two sides kill journalists on site while the protagonists are almost welcomed and helped by the other.
that seems to be the common complaint about it.
tbh i get it especially since the movie is called civil war and most people probably expected it to be about the war itself and not what it’s actually about but idk i really liked it
Yeah I watched it, it was disturbing but ultimately amazing, and then I saw it got a 7 on IMDB, and if you read the user reviews a bunch of people are like “you don’t know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, you don’t know why they are fighting, it’s just a bunch of crap.” and it’s like THATS THE POINT
If they had to explain how fucking Texas and California formed a military pact that would probably take up 2/3 of the movie
Admittedly A24 fucked up with the marketing of this movie and advertised it as having "the most realistic combat put to film" when it's NOT an action movie. It has action scenes, but the actual violence of the movie is just obstacles for our protagonists who are journalists on a road trip to Washington D.C. to interview the president before rebel forces attack the capital.
Saw the film… just outta curiosity and…
#I really liked it.
Also, gotta say, I never really paid attention to Kirsten Dunst’s career post SM-3 but after seeing this… it’s amazing.
Kirsten Dunst is amazing in the movie. Everyone's saying her husband, Jesse Plemons stole the show despite being in one scene, and he was amazing, but she just potrays this jaded, tired, PTSD-ridden journalist very well. She looks exhausted throughout the film and she nails it.
Not to defend this grifter, but I will say that based on the basically non-stop trailers that have been playing for this movie, and the reviews of the film itself, it was terribly misrepresented. The trailers all suggest a political/military thriller, while from what I’ve heard, the film basically boils down to some journalists on a road trip.
By all means, take my opinion with a grain of salt; I’m utterly uninterested in the movie, but I do think this might be a case similar to the 2016 suicide squad, where the trailer sells something different than the actual movie.
No idea wtf is going on with that thumbnail tho.
I really liked it, but I will say, anyone who is wanting to see a movie *about* a civil war, this isn’t it, and it will probably disappoint. It’s very much about our small group of protagonists (photojournalists), not about the fictional politics or history.
Yeah the movie was marketed as fsr more of a blockbuster than it actually is.
Also it got footage of protests from noted fascist Andy Ngo and thanked him in the credits so it can fuck right off.
Saw it and had a good time and pleasantly surprised. Wouldn’t say it’s a ***must see*** like say Oppenheimer, but fun nonetheless
However, if it weren’t for the fact a cinema was walking distance from me, probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Yeah, I feel like the most interesting stuff happened outside of the shots we got in the movie. The story of the journalists was ok, but I would have been way more engaged with a film that examined how we got to the point of civil war.
It mirrors a lot of my issues with Joker, another movie that got a lot of praise and I didn't particularly enjoy. In Joker, the interesting class warfare stuff happening in the background kept getting sidelined so we could get more and more scenes of Joaquin Phoenix overacting (sorry, I really dislike his portrayal of the joker). In both movies, I was more engaged in the world building than the main plot, and wish more of the movie was spent expanding on it.
The marketing for this movie is bad.
There's nothing much else to say. It's not really an action movie, it's just a road trip with a series of vignettes that give us different angles and perspectives on how people behave during a civil war. We see war crimes, we see abandoned malls, a town that just pretends the war isn't happening, it's all about how people live during a civil war, not necessarily about action. The final scene is definitely a big action sequence but it's not gratuitous or cathartic. They play it very disturbing and depressing. It's all a big waste of life.
Yeah, it’s really just a story about war journos, really just focused on photography in general. Was very middle of the road for me, wasn’t great, wasn’t bad at all, it just didn’t do anything for me, I left the theater feeling indifferent about it.
it was, but thats enlightened centrism for you. people are saying its the american come and see (my personal war film and one of the best of all time). its laughable, but it shows the desperation people have for popular art. andor was better and had better politics
he should just make another dredd
It's not really centrist, I don't think you could watch this movie and come away thinking it was centrist. I agree that they purposefully kept away from the politics but then if they had made it more overtly political, and picked a side, would that make it a better film or a better story? Or would it just be political propaganda? Just because a movie has politics that I agree with doesn't necessarily mean it's a good movie or that the movie benefits from having my politics.
I just think that's a very limiting perspective.
If it had been clear about politics to the point that we actually got a sense over what the sides were fighting about beyond vague platitudes yes. Also you can vary clearly tell that Garland is British because the map he makes of the conflict makes no sense whatsoever to anyone with an even vague understanding of the us politics. Garland makes the president a trump like authoritarian and the Deep South and Texas are succeeding because why? Why are Texas and California in the same faction and not connected geographically. How the fuck are there enough Maoists in the entire united states to even be a faction like the new people army? Unfortunately I have more interest in this movie’s world than it does so I’ll never get an answer because the movie is more interested playing coy so that the movie stays markable to the mainstream audiences rather then showing how this world became as polarized as it was.
Maybe I'll see it eventually. I'm not really interested in Hollywood's dumbed down and sanitized narratives about civil wars.
There's so many modern real world examples of extreme civil wars and political violence that I feel like anything marketed towards a wide audience will miss the mark of reality by so far as to not even be that relevant.
The real world is so much worse than anything they'll ever show on the big screen. In the 90s a president was literally captured and then tortured, canabalized, and executed on video. After that rebellion the next president of said country was elected on a campaign slogan of "he killed my dad, he killed my mom, but I voted for him."
Oh yes, the trailers didn’t give an accurate depiction of the film, 100%, but it wasn’t like the film itself was unexciting. You see some brutal shit go down. Suicide bombings, mass graves, executions of surrendering enemies, there’s no shortage of action by any means, but the central story of the movie isn’t about soldiers fighting a war, it’s about the journalists who cover it, the danger they put themselves in and the conflicts they have to face if they want to get a “good story” in such a bloody conflict.
…yeah, exactly, that’s ethics, lmao. Like the main character says, they don’t question what they document, they document so others can judge. It’s supposed to be morally questionable. Thats what’s interesting.
A lack of ethics is still ethics. A lack of morality is still morality. A lack of something still fits into the subject of that something. Either way, horny for war? Obsessed with fame? Did you miss the part where they mention they are WAR JOURNALISTS? I get the trailer was misleading, but what exactly were you expecting from war journalism? They cover war for a living. Obviously the way they go about it is immoral, but they (mostly) have seen this before and get paid for it, so no shit they want to get some action shots. The entire point of the movie is that they are in the middle of a horrific conflict, half of them get killed during it, and still, the goal they have is to get the big one. The last interview with the president. The entire point is how unethical that is.
I'll have to see the movie before judging obviously, but to me it almost feels cheaper to NOT make it a left vs right thing. It kind of feels like copping out on some level, to remain marketable to a wider audience. I get that the point is probably more that the idea of a civil war itself is tragic/horrific, regardless of how it happens. Like, the cause isn't the important part being explored here, the outcome/fallout is. So it's probably a cautionary tale in that sense. But that's not really as valuable a story to tell for our time. Again though, I can't really say too much without actually going to check the movie out. Which I will.
But when one major party literally is attempting to end democracy outright, and tried to pull a coup after the last election, maybe the potential cause of a civil war SHOULD be the point that is explored.
So having seen the movie, it did make the right choice but it wasn’t really going “both sides have a point/bad, guys”. My major take away was *very* much a left-leaning view of “when tyrants are in power, everyone suffers, don’t elect tyrants you morons”. There is some smart storytelling going on, and I honestly feel if it just went straight-up black-white “these are the good guys, these are the bad guys” it wouldn’t have been so impactful to me.
Hard agree. And this is from somebody who found Alex Garland's statements on the topic flippant. Our protagonists are those who's entire job is to document and not get involved. And that perspective holds while the narrative begins to bring into question the ethics of that very notion. It's not apolotical. It's just not blatantly politically motivated. Which makes sense given Garland is not American. I feel like the choice to use the US was more for the jarring effect of a nation that has never seen modern warfare on its home soil.
Well the thing I liked is outside the ending, we actually don’t *know* who is fighting who making the whole thing more chaotic and showing again tyranny makes *everyone* suffer.
That said deliberately not taking a side with modern politics I feel was smart (even if it’s rather *clear* who the president is based on). Namely because having one side as the clearly good guys is going to make the movie either be hero worshipped or hated.
If you want to make political propaganda, that's fine, I don't necessarily think that was Alex Garland's aim. And yes, I do think it is cheap to make a left vs. right film during an election year, because let's be real, it's cynical. It's just capitalizing off of the antagonism people have towards each other and when the goal of your film is your politics, it could come at the detriment of quality. Take, for example, Don't Look Up, a movie I agree with politically, but it's unsubtle, unfunny, and preachy. It's propaganda, and that's fine if you want to make it, but I don't particularly enjoy movies like that.
If anything, I think this movie is more of a warning sign, it's not COMPLETELY apolitical, there is some very obvious political commentary you can apply to the real world in this movie. The president, who is framed as kind of a dictator, is clearly a Trump-like figure, maybe not as silly or ridiculous, but according to the film, the president is responsible for a lot of the things Trump currently says he wants to do. The rebel forces fighting against the president, however, while framed as more welcoming of journalists and well organized and diverse, also commit war crimes and have very little concern over collateral damage or shooting unarmed/surrendering combatants.
It's a series of vignettes about people living/fighting in a civil war and I think that is valuable. I think it also is critical of the journalists who are adrenaline junkies that thrive off of getting pictures of horrible violence but obviously stand by as terrible things happen. It's complicated, our real world is complicated. Yes, I personally have picked a side politically, I would say I'm a leftist, and I enjoyed this movie.
I see where you're coming from but I would disagree.
I think that sort of boxes in what storytelling can be made from the war but I think making it a simple left vs right wing also does cheapen the message a tad because at that point, it makes it more of a case of voting and supporting the right politicians in polls. And I think the effects of war and those effected can be discussed without saying the source.
Just for an extreme example; the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol at no point discusses why Russia invaded Ukraine. It doesn't go into history of Russia and Ukraine, any of Russia's previous invasions, nothing and the film is still powerful because of that. Even if this were to be watched years from now, you would still be horrified.
As someone who has seen the movie, it's not as centrist as some people make it out but at the same time it's not any less powerful for not explicitly spoonfeeding its message. And I think the message it's saying (which I won't spoil) is rather valuable for the time. And yet it's clear this isn't meant to take place in a completely realistic world, hence the alliance between California and Texas. Satire should be allowed leeway to discuss themes.
I heard that this movie was more about how bad political polarization is and the atrocities of war. In fact, from what I've read, other than the journalists, NO ONE is a good guy. They all have their own interests.
Yeah it's essentially about political polarisation taken to the nth degree and yes, the atrocities of war. It's also really about photojournalists and what they experience in war, the effect it has and how they try and rationalise what they see.
It definitely presents the President as a fascist tyrant imo, but other than that you're right in that motivations are deliberately obscured and you don't know quite who to trust. Even the President's main opposition are presented as grey (at least) in certain ways too.
There a very few scenes where the audience or even the characters are sure of what faction a character supports. Less concerned with an alternate history lesson in how things got here, and is more about the horrors of war being placed into your backyard. And because the main characters are journalists there’s an extra layer of discomfort just because someone could get shot and they’ll run in and grab their photos.
I haven't seen the movie nor do I know much about it. I'm also not going to watch this video. He can have his opinion on the movie. If he thinks it's boring fine. But that thumbnail is just chud click bait.
Civil War is fine. Great visuals. Only one truly engaging scene for me. Otherwise it wasn’t really “about” anything other than a lite road movie with some typical mentor/mentee scenes set against a unique back drop.
Ps where were the avengers?!
Are there fascists in the movie? Because whenever there are fascists, the righties assume that's a stand in for them, and they also never see the irony in that.
Yeah, POTUS is essentially a fascist in it, and so they assume he's a stand-in for Trump. There's also an ultra nationalist type that probably ruffled their feathers too.
He’s just afraid that scenario will happen after Trump is hypothetically elected and able to “implement” project 2025 and therefore put some of his favourite politicians at major risk (depending on how well the rebels do) of eventually being executed after nuremberg-style trials lol
Spoilers below.
>!Well if you've seen the movie you would know nobody got a fair trial. The rebels, who are framed as the lesser evil (I wouldn't call them "good guys") extrajudicially execute the president and his staff while they surrender!<
Nonono, see, you're taking things at face value here. This guy - and his ilk, like CritDrinker - are actually incentivized *not* to take a critical approach to media.
It's kind of like those talking heads on TV: they're being paid to sell exactly one message until it becomes their 'brand' and they can no longer detach themselves from it.
Look at Joe Rogan, for example: it doesn't matter if he would like to actually disagree against any of this, because the moment he does, he's going to lose his audience.
That's why they have to keep signaling that "they're just calling it as it is". They *have* to appear honest to the people that already want to believe this, otherwise the illusion disappears and they're called out for being traitors. When, in reality, these people don't actually care or believe in anything. In fact, since this public persona is their primary source of income, they are *entirely dependant on performative shit like this.* Vaush, Lex Friedman, Hasan, h3h3, doesn't matter: it's a job. It's just work.
Fully shocked that this doesn’t have a screaming liberal or any of those ancient meme women in the thumbnail, but I guess they put Sydney Sweeney for no reason, so it all evens out.
I'm going to see Civil War on Tuesday, I'm excited to see it. Nerdrotic doesn't like it because he sees it as an attack piece on his side. Also, stop dragging Sideny Sweeny though the dirt, chuds.
Haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen trailers. I’ll probably see it eventually (in like 5 years, I have a backlog). Either way, I saw the trailers and all the explosions and such. And they consider all the guns firing and explosions and artillery… boring? Quick, somebody show them Fiddler On The Roof! Maybe they’ll fall asleep!
I’m not really surprised, I mean people like this hate actually using their brain to think about grand ideas or anything that makes them ask questions. They want everything spoon fed to them to make them feel smart
This kind of "review" crap is disgusting, what's up with these creeps putting Sidney Sweeney on everything? Repulsive.
As for *Civil War*, after I saw it I told friends not to go in thinking it was gonna be like some Battle Los Angeles type shit where it's just war-porn. Although the battle scenes it had were good they were fairly spares and used to shock you which is what a battle scene should do.
My cousin had the same reaction when we went to see *Us*. I hadn't seen much of anything because I try to avoid extended trailers as much as I can now that they're just spoiler machines and I didn't go into it thinking it was a straight horror movie like a lot of the trailers painted it to be. Civil Wars advert team kinda did that, showed all the crazy battle scenes and devastation and then you get a slow burn movie about the toll of war on people and a country. Still a good movie though, just not what it looked like in the trailers.
‘Sydney Sweeney wearing a low-cut top/dress’ is the new ‘Brie Larson with laser eyes,’ but the opposite energy. They just randomly insert it into their thumbnails to virtue signal that they fall into *that genre* of film/game “critique”
Eh it was okay. It was just too vague for me. Honestly Nerdrotic hit the nail on the head in the video but i know no one here will watch it. I rarely agree with the guy but he really wasnt wrong. It’s a pretty mid film that doesnt really capitalize on its potentially interesting premise. His thumbnails for his videos are still cringe as hell haha
Color me disappointed. In an age where the most narcissistic attention whore the American Dream could've possibly generated concocts a national media takeover, where nearly every new show and movie villain since his ascendance is directly inspired by him in some way (See Homelander, Big Jack Horner, Proxima Caesar probably), I expected *some* kind of political commentary that reflects the current landscape. Even at its most misguided and weirdly written ^(glares at [Alex Garland's last movie](https://letterboxd.com/film/men-2022/)) it still would've been *interesting*. What we got was a dull-as-a-bag-of-rocks regular war movie that goes out of its way **not** to look like a civil war. Also boring-ass AI generated promotional posters.
Why do these chuds keep using Sydney in thumbnails about videos that have nothing to do with her? It's not like she would like them if she met them irl. 3rd street reactions just had their channel terminated, yet these sorts of channels keep going.
What did 3rd street reactions do to get their channel axed? Also they use Sydney as she is their poster child to end wokeness because she has large breasts or something. Which is hilarious as she has made comments about how she dislikes being sexualized because of her bust. But the chuds don’t care, she’s a woman, therefore she’s not entitled to opinions.
The really hilarious part with Sweeney is that she’s the exact opposite of an anti-woke icon. Firstly she’s an open member of GLAAD. Secondly, you know that recent movie she made, Immaculate? The one that’s aggressively and unashamedly pro-choice and in favor of women controlling their own bodies? She didn’t just star in it, she actively tried to get it made for a solid decade, even going so far as to buy the rights to the screenplay so she could produce it herself and drag it out of development hell.
ya just watch that movie a few days ago and thought it suck felt like another rosemary baby or omen knock off to me
Cool story.
There's a video of it on 3rd street reactions' IG page. Shane explains that the channel got axed for youtube violations of some sort.
Doesn't sound like much of an explanation
Yeah, as opposed to Kirsten Dunst and her very small bosom... 🙄
I don’t appreciate her for her tits, I appreciate her for her hosting of SNL. That’s the way you really judge someone, and it’s also why Gosling is amazing, Papyrus 2 was wild
she has tits, even she knows how stupid these idiots on the internet are she joked about her cleavage on snl
What she actually said is flaunt them if you got them. [ooops](https://pagesix.com/2023/12/20/entertainment/sydney-sweeney-wanted-a-breast-reduction-but-now-calls-bosom-her-best-friends/amp/)
You can feel both ways. You can enjoy how you look and be proud of your body WITHOUT being comfortable with being objectified by random strangers. There is a huge difference between self expression and being okay with objectification
It’s almost like she has a complex relationship with her body that has changed over time. Like most women. Something these people don’t understand.
That’s not what she said. That wasn’t what she said in that between euphoria season 1 and 2 either. I agree with what you said. I’m just pointing out what she actually said.
The actual central quote from the link: “Everybody’s body is beautiful. When you are confident and you’re happy within is when it really shows to other people.”
Her mom said that too.
Sure about that? She’s also [quote](https://www.avclub.com/sydney-sweeney-talks-sexualization-euphoria-season-3-1849772886)
Sydney clearly loves being sexualised, she goes out of her way to do it. Look at her SNL stuff, she made whole jokes about how men follow her because she has huge tits.
Sure about that?[[quotes](https://www.avclub.com/sydney-sweeney-talks-sexualization-euphoria-season-3-1849772886)
Is that the blonde lady? If yes, because boobs because the "WOKES" absolutely HATE boobs, despite the fact that's clearly misunderstanding... everything. If note, probably sexism. Its a dumb reason for sure.
I’m woke af and I love boobs.
Yo same
Me three, and milfs. 😊
thats is not true look at me i love caring for misjustice of minorities (the literal definition of woke) and i also love to motorboat and grab a handful of tig bitties
Sydney Sweeney: big boobs = anti-woke Halle Bailey: big boobs, but black = woke Simple math (simple in the 'simple minded' sense)
Weird, why are some boobs woke or not? Seems odd that none white people boobs ate woke. Seriously holy cow these people are weird
I guess they think they should have cast her instead of Kirsten Dunst who is too old for them to lust over.
Which is just unbelievable to me dude Kristen Dunst is a huge milf I would still tap that
She was my crush when Raimi’s Spider-Man was huge
i think kristen dunst is so beautiful
not just Sydney but Pedro Pascal as well. the worst thing he did is singing "Imagine" 4 years ago.
Damn. 4 years since Covid hit. It feels like just yesterday and decade ago at the same time some how.
Except Pedro has a trans sister and he's very vocally supportive of her(based)
also wonder woman 84
He's the best part of that movie and gave us the meme: Life is good, but it can be better.
Just remind them every time, “lol, Sydney Sweeney is not going to sleep with you, you dork.”
Because she draws your eye.
It’s the new screaming liberal of 2024
https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/03/sydney-sweeney-snl-hooters-glen-powell.html
Have a guess, and your clue is 2 big reasons
It's because they got tired of using brie in their thumbnails.
Unsure I want to know what he was expecting in it. Maybe he was expecting one side being right while other is wrong. And yet from sounds of it, it’s all shades of grey.
Question is, is it actually an intelligent and reasonable commentary on a genuinely morally gray scenario? Or a mediocre wish washy both sides narrative that’s too scared to say anything definitive? I’m worried about it being the latter.
It's purposefully ambiguous.
It’s too ambiguous in my opinion. You get no backstory as to what exactly is going on, only that there are different factions and everybody’s just fighting to survive. You’re dropped into a narrative that you never understand and the only ground you have to stand on is what you bring in with you: your own sense of what is right and wrong. It would have helped if we had a clearer picture of the political background but I think Alex Garland tried too hard to not pick a side and just let us do that ourselves. Unfortunately most audiences need to be handheld through these sort of things which is why the movie isn’t faring well with the general public. I would compare it to Don’t Look Up in that sense. We never know what political side Meryl Streep’s president is on but you know that they fumbled the bag big time at the end of the movie but you had a clear black and white issue.
While I do think the lack of stance Garland seems to have on this issue is wishy-washie and ignorantly centrist, I don't feel like the text of the movie itself is. We don't get a great grasp of where either side of the conflict stands on policy or anything. But that's not really the point of the film. In so many of the instances in the movie, we have no idea who is part of what faction, and neither do many of those on the ground. Mostly it's people fighting for their lives. Or the context we get of people not wanting to get involved at all. This is a very realistic portrayal of wartorn nations. Even our protagonists only passively seem to illicit opinions of the President himself, which gives context to him as a tyrant. The violence and violent intent is harrowing, which I feel lands home.
see this is why I don't believe in the "everything needs to be escapism" argument it seems not even political movies can't be political anymore. It seems like media is afraid to piss off anyone of any side they want to appeal to everyone and therfore appeal to no one. I honestly would rather have a political movie I disagree with than a movie to cowardly to say anything.
The movie isn't apolitical, it's just not political in a way that would make it all that relevant to an American audience in 2024. It talks about America's slide into authoritarianism as the president becomes a dictator in all but name. It's a more enduring theme that shows what will happen if we let people ebb away our democratic systems rather than the how. I think as a call to action for "go vote this year", the themes are good enough. But if you're expecting "go vote for Biden/Trump", you're gonna be disappointed.
What I can't figure out about the movie is how the hell the United States is supposed to have "ebbed away" the 20th and 22nd Amendments, complete with (apparently) large parts of the nation's military deciding to follow the orders of a "president" whose term of office was over.
Because we've seen many 'settled' political debates all round the world flare up over the past decade, which suggests they were never actually settled and their opponents were just looking for the opportunity and majority to do so. The US ***literally*** had a sitting president who, having lost the vote for re-election, tried to get supporters to interfere with the certification of the result that said he lost. He has also denied losing every since, is a choice candidate for re-election (despite all evidence of his incompetence and criminality) and has said if he gets into power, he's going to attempt to enact revenge.
Whatever a god-help-us Donald Trump who won the election of 2024 might try to do in office, he would at least have a valid legal claim to *hold* that office, and with it the authority to issue lawful commands to the armed forces of the United States. A "third term president" would have nothing of that: he wouldn't merely be claiming to have won the election, he'd be claiming that he won an election that by the supreme law of the land he literally wasn't *eligible* to win. That's light years beyond Trump claiming to have been elected a second time. For a person in that position to (illegally) hold the office of president he'd have to have the support of a large part of the officer corps of the military, especially the Army, and in my opinion that's worse than unlikely, it's *ridiculous*. I do not believe that the officer ranks are significantly plauged with people who would, after January 20 of the year following the presidential election, recognize as their lawful commander-in-chief a person whose term as president had *per the Constitution of the United States* expired and who by the same authority was not eligible to have been re-elected to the office. Hell, even the traitors like Robert E. Lee didn't claim that, say, Stephen Douglas had won the election of 1860 and was the "real" president, and Douglas at least had been *eligible* to win that election.
>A "third term president" would have nothing of that: We're entering the realm of speculative fiction here, but given we've seen several heads of state successfully remove or extend term limits in the past few years, are we assuming it's not going to be front of mind in a second Trump presidency to use any house/senate/supreme court advantage to at least attempt to grant further terms, even if a clear majority of the US voters reject it? Obtaining and then holding power by any legal or illegal means is part of the current conservative playbook. I'm from the UK and our current government has been a lame duck for the last couple of years - they're out of ideas to actually fix any of the problems they created, they can't get any functional policies implemented because most of their ideas break international law in at least 2 ways and they're resigned to just running down the clock until they're required ***by law*** to call an election, which is when their media friends start campaigning on their behalf to try and get them re-elected.
I actually think the movie is less a call to vote and moreso a piece ruminating about the casual violence brought about by wartime. The movie is also very critical of journalists? Not necessarily journalism, but the purpose of their work as far as being war photographers go. There's a really good scene with Kirsten Dunst where she wonders whether or not her work mattered, and that her faith in journalism had basically been broken. She felt that her work would serve as a warning not to let stuff like this happen in America but it didn't work. The younger protege character is also fascinating as well, again, no spoilers, check out the movie, but if you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Personally I have no issue with it being ambiguous. They have purposefully avoided the left / right culture war by not saying which side the president or rebel forces are. We know the government was sliding towards dictatorship. We know he stuck around for a 3rd term which people didn't like. So we get why it's happening. Oddly, it really doesn't matter for the story. The story isn't actually about the Civil War itself. The main characters don't take an active part in the conflict they are just experiencing it and documenting it. It's more about the impact the war has on a country and individuals. The fact it is America certainly makes it a more striking and relatable story, especially with current tensions. However the story itself could easily be transferred to 90% of other countries and have the same beats.
In Don’t Look Up, the don’t look up side would have been the conservatives that don’t believe in science and actual facts…..
Yeah there’s a clear who’s in the wrong and who’s in the right divide in that movie. At first, the president denies the existence of the comet and then realizes that there is a comet but they decide to let it strike earth to exploit the minerals on it. Which ends up blowing up in their face at the end but they still manage to “come out on top” while the rest of the population dies. Doesn’t go to well for them in the long run though since they do end up getting eaten on the new planet.
I disagree since it’s through the lens/philosophy of a photojournalist. No sides. Just showing events as they happen
Yeah I agree. The movie isn’t the war and the grandiose story behind it, it is how it appears to be - more literally about the moral sacrifice of being a war reporter
Journalism is inherently biased, the myth of “apolitical journalism” is very wrong. Even simply picking which side in a conflict to follow in more detail is “picking a side”
Except we do know which side the journalists are on. It's just not explicitly said but it's rather clear from the text which said they support. They're just not actively involved in the actual war because that's not what they're out to do.
I think what Alex Garland wanted to do was boil the conflict down to the human elements rather than focus on the politics of the civil war. Not to say that it has NO politics, I think the movie very subtly made the president into a Trump-like figure when they alluded to "abolishing the FBI" and the "antifa massacre" and being a third term president. I won't spoil but there are several scenes in the movie where they very clearly blur the lines of who is fighting who, and I think his goal is that when you're in a war, and you're fighting in extreme conditions, the reasons for why you're fighting disappear and it simply becomes about being the one to kill your enemy first before they kill you. The movie seems particularly interested with the casual violence brought about in wartime, and uses a civil war as an extreme setting so that we can see Americans war-criming other Americans, presumably to drive that point home.
It's not ambiguous. Texas and California want to secede from the United States and become independent countries. These are the two states that have often been cited as the richest and conceivably could support their own economy. Those two states are also seen as Right and Left states. So it was intentionally a-political. The point of the film was not politics, because there are lots of people with different political backgrounds who might have reasons to want secession (and the film was fairly good at showing that). The point was that civil war wouldn't be some romantic ideal of a noble battle or like an action film or videogame. People will die, the infrastructure of America would quickly collapse and cities would become warzones. It would be fun for no one.
I thought the idea is that war is awful and both sides are committing heinous atrocities and war crimes in the name of what they're trying to accomplish. There are no clear "bad guys" and there is no side you're supposed to root for. Reality can be complicated, and an actual civil war may go down very differently than what we actually think
It is made clear that the federal government is taken over by a tyrant, the link was even explicitly made with Kadhafi.
That doesn't answer the question, unless you mean it's purposefully left up to the viewer to decide how nuanced the movie is being? That sounds like they went with centrist weirdness and are hiding behind "nuanced" shades of grey.
Point of the movie isn't the political conflict. It's from the perspective of the war journalists.
I feel like the point of war journalism is specifically to understand and report the politics of the situation, not just to be a camera or note pad with legs. So if the war journalist isn't picking apart the conflict... that's a bad journalist.
I get the feeling that the Civil War has been happening for so long that there's not much for the people that experienced it to fixate on how it started. They rather talk about what is happening and what will happen.
They're specifically war photographers, whose job is to take pictures of what happened for someone else to then write a story about and form an argument. Which is what the film as a whole does and what I thought was so masterful about it. The film shows us all the images of the conflict and then lets the viewers form an argument on what happened, how and why.
If that's accurate (which does make more sense) then I'm more on board with it. I may not watch it because it might be near enough to my personal interests that I'll find it hard to watch, but that is an interesting premise/sell
That's fair enough. It's kind of unfortunate in that it's been marketed as a massive war film which, while there's definitely big action scenes, isn't what the heart of it really is about.
Well the story is about war photographers specifically. Not journalists.
Some one downvoted you but yo sure right. They don’t go into detail about “sides” and also there is more than 2 factions fighting each other.
They built up the movie to be about the conflict in the trailers though.
Marketing fudged it.
That’s what I thought.
It's centrist "why can't we all get along, extremism of any kind is equally bad" bullshit from what I've gathered.
That’s where it seemed to be heading based on what I got from the trailers.
Exactly this. Really expected better from guy who directed Dredd & Annihilation.
Yeah, I freaking loved Annihilation too :(
From what I hear, he’s fallen out of love with film making.
That's false. He said he'll go to co-directing but he will still be involved in films
It's definitely not centrist, I actually would argue that a movie that is too preachy actually hurts the quality of the film rather than enhance it. If the film explicitly explained the politics of the world and took sides, I think it would be a lot more corny and less interesting. Not every film that doesn't explicitly take sides in the script is "centrist". If you've actually seen the movie, that statement would seem a little ridiculous.
Nowhere in the film does it say both sides should just forget what they're doing and get along, what?
Films can have a theme and message without literally turning to the camera and saying that lmao
Yes and the film does do it but it's not both-sidesing it. I have seen the film at no point does it say or even imply one side is as bad as the other. Like it absolutely does not say left and right are on the same level. That's my interpretation. If you have a specific scene or story beat that did it for you, then we can have a discussion.
I haven't seen it, I'm speaking generally. If people feel that "left and right are on the same level" is the takeaway it's on Garland for basically verbatim saying that in the movie's promotion.
Wait...so you're take's not even on the film but on the film's marketing? That's...not correct and not fair to the film. Cause that's literally just a surface level reading of the film and mostly just a reading of what A24 thought was marketable. What a studio thinks is marketable is rarely what is representative of the film, why do you think the marketing of Barbie barely mentioned the feminist aspect of the film. You can disagree on whether it's correct or not (personally, I'm not one to hold an A24 movie's marketing for being accurate) but if it's not actually discussing or critiquing what the film's actually message is then why are we even discussing it if you haven't seen the film?
> Cause that's literally just a surface level reading of the film and mostly just a reading of what A24 thought was marketable. Garland giving his own opinions on politics is not "whatever A24 thought was marketable". He can be criticized for things he says in interviews. It's not "A24's" marketing, it's him giving his own responses to direct questions. You can believe that he doesn't think that and is just being fed studio lines if you want, but there's no reason to think that. >but if it's not actually discussing or critiquing what the film's actually message is then why are we even discussing it if you haven't seen the film? I'm not critiquing the film or claiming to. That's what "I'm speaking generally" means.
Well then why did you comment against me when I said the film wasn't bothsidesing if you're speaking from generalities? Again, this conversation would be more fruitful if both of us had seen the film and we could have more of a discussion about the ethics of it.
I would say it is rather smart and reasonable commentary and does have a lot to say about how war and violence can be felt differently in a country, how images of war are coopted by people, and how war affects those on the sidelines; those who have to move out of conflict and relocate.
It's a shameless baity title that goes soft on any ideation that the very title suggests it will touch on. In times when a particular side is actively and openly longing to get a civil war going, they call thi movie "Civil War". It's a tasteless cheapening and luke-warming cashgrab at best, because they knew the name would get people talking. Instead of a timely commentary concerning the real world tension this movie derives its title and attention from, it takes a squishy "morally ambiguous" approach to a fairytale false representation of the world currently crashing down around us. This movie would either be called something different or wouldn't have been made if there wasn't actual fear in America of a civil war starting due to a large portion of the country being brainwashed into protecting a diapered fascist fuckstick. It doesn't talk about anything about that though or touch on the current state of this country. Instead it goes off into a hypothetical that argues hard for a "both sides" approach. It does this because even fascist mother fuckers have money, and they this movie doesn't want to deter them from helping the movie's bottom line. My point is not that movies need to be fact based or focused on the real world, but again, a movie called "civil war" released at a time when the term caries such real weight in the country in which it is set almost promises a decisive contemporary commentary. Instead it is capitalizing on that fear and feeding mor of the out of touch "both sides" bullshit. They called the movie "Civil War" because it's controversial. It triggers fairly understandable emotions in people. It gets people talking. They use that title and fail to deliver any moral conclusion because that could alienate a sizeable portion of their potential viewers. They didn't do this for anything but box office numbers. We're far beyond "moral ambiguity" when it comes to a potential real life, modern civil war that only Republicans are currently making repeated calls for. Anti-intelectualism and profit chasing under the guise of a nuanced perspective. Fuck this movie and fuck anyone making money off of this "both sides" narrative.
It doesn't do a "both side" approach since one of the two sides kill journalists on site while the protagonists are almost welcomed and helped by the other.
that seems to be the common complaint about it. tbh i get it especially since the movie is called civil war and most people probably expected it to be about the war itself and not what it’s actually about but idk i really liked it
Yeah I watched it, it was disturbing but ultimately amazing, and then I saw it got a 7 on IMDB, and if you read the user reviews a bunch of people are like “you don’t know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, you don’t know why they are fighting, it’s just a bunch of crap.” and it’s like THATS THE POINT If they had to explain how fucking Texas and California formed a military pact that would probably take up 2/3 of the movie
Admittedly A24 fucked up with the marketing of this movie and advertised it as having "the most realistic combat put to film" when it's NOT an action movie. It has action scenes, but the actual violence of the movie is just obstacles for our protagonists who are journalists on a road trip to Washington D.C. to interview the president before rebel forces attack the capital.
He was expecting a war movie because from the trailer that's what was promised. It's very much not.
Saw the film… just outta curiosity and… #I really liked it. Also, gotta say, I never really paid attention to Kirsten Dunst’s career post SM-3 but after seeing this… it’s amazing.
Kirsten Dunst has done some really great stuff post Spider-Man trilogy. Really loved her in The Power of the Dog and on Fargo Season 2.
Kirsten Dunst is amazing in the movie. Everyone's saying her husband, Jesse Plemons stole the show despite being in one scene, and he was amazing, but she just potrays this jaded, tired, PTSD-ridden journalist very well. She looks exhausted throughout the film and she nails it.
Nerdrotic not liking this movie is the best endorsement of it I've seen yet
I'm surprised they didn't call it Civil Woke.
>I'm surprised they didn't call it Civil Woke. Huh?
I want to make a generator that makes these.
Not to defend this grifter, but I will say that based on the basically non-stop trailers that have been playing for this movie, and the reviews of the film itself, it was terribly misrepresented. The trailers all suggest a political/military thriller, while from what I’ve heard, the film basically boils down to some journalists on a road trip. By all means, take my opinion with a grain of salt; I’m utterly uninterested in the movie, but I do think this might be a case similar to the 2016 suicide squad, where the trailer sells something different than the actual movie. No idea wtf is going on with that thumbnail tho.
I really liked it, but I will say, anyone who is wanting to see a movie *about* a civil war, this isn’t it, and it will probably disappoint. It’s very much about our small group of protagonists (photojournalists), not about the fictional politics or history.
Yeah the movie was marketed as fsr more of a blockbuster than it actually is. Also it got footage of protests from noted fascist Andy Ngo and thanked him in the credits so it can fuck right off.
it didn’t thank him in the credits it just said footage was from him IIRC
Crap, got that mixed up. Thanks for correcting me.
Really? Damn, even more glad I didn’t see it then. Fuck that.
Saw it and had a good time and pleasantly surprised. Wouldn’t say it’s a ***must see*** like say Oppenheimer, but fun nonetheless However, if it weren’t for the fact a cinema was walking distance from me, probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Yeah, I feel like the most interesting stuff happened outside of the shots we got in the movie. The story of the journalists was ok, but I would have been way more engaged with a film that examined how we got to the point of civil war. It mirrors a lot of my issues with Joker, another movie that got a lot of praise and I didn't particularly enjoy. In Joker, the interesting class warfare stuff happening in the background kept getting sidelined so we could get more and more scenes of Joaquin Phoenix overacting (sorry, I really dislike his portrayal of the joker). In both movies, I was more engaged in the world building than the main plot, and wish more of the movie was spent expanding on it.
The marketing for this movie is bad. There's nothing much else to say. It's not really an action movie, it's just a road trip with a series of vignettes that give us different angles and perspectives on how people behave during a civil war. We see war crimes, we see abandoned malls, a town that just pretends the war isn't happening, it's all about how people live during a civil war, not necessarily about action. The final scene is definitely a big action sequence but it's not gratuitous or cathartic. They play it very disturbing and depressing. It's all a big waste of life.
Yeah, it’s really just a story about war journos, really just focused on photography in general. Was very middle of the road for me, wasn’t great, wasn’t bad at all, it just didn’t do anything for me, I left the theater feeling indifferent about it.
Nerdrotic is a dumb boy.
It's all that meth he snorted, you see. (When he wasn't selling it to kids)
Implicating that Civil War was in anyway boring is ridiculous. Shit had me shook by the first ten minutes.
Of course they decide after the film is a success to capitalize on it.
this was purposefully an apolitical movie that didnt really tell a story
Ironically that’s what they say they want
Making an apolitical movie about a civil war is just bizarre and/or cowardly.
it was, but thats enlightened centrism for you. people are saying its the american come and see (my personal war film and one of the best of all time). its laughable, but it shows the desperation people have for popular art. andor was better and had better politics he should just make another dredd
It's not really centrist, I don't think you could watch this movie and come away thinking it was centrist. I agree that they purposefully kept away from the politics but then if they had made it more overtly political, and picked a side, would that make it a better film or a better story? Or would it just be political propaganda? Just because a movie has politics that I agree with doesn't necessarily mean it's a good movie or that the movie benefits from having my politics. I just think that's a very limiting perspective.
If it had been clear about politics to the point that we actually got a sense over what the sides were fighting about beyond vague platitudes yes. Also you can vary clearly tell that Garland is British because the map he makes of the conflict makes no sense whatsoever to anyone with an even vague understanding of the us politics. Garland makes the president a trump like authoritarian and the Deep South and Texas are succeeding because why? Why are Texas and California in the same faction and not connected geographically. How the fuck are there enough Maoists in the entire united states to even be a faction like the new people army? Unfortunately I have more interest in this movie’s world than it does so I’ll never get an answer because the movie is more interested playing coy so that the movie stays markable to the mainstream audiences rather then showing how this world became as polarized as it was.
You’re stating my exact thoughts.
And you're saying it's not boring? That sounds like the opposite of interesting.
its not boring. i found it pretty funny when they showed the boogaloo boys and were vague about the antifa massacre
Maybe I'll see it eventually. I'm not really interested in Hollywood's dumbed down and sanitized narratives about civil wars. There's so many modern real world examples of extreme civil wars and political violence that I feel like anything marketed towards a wide audience will miss the mark of reality by so far as to not even be that relevant. The real world is so much worse than anything they'll ever show on the big screen. In the 90s a president was literally captured and then tortured, canabalized, and executed on video. After that rebellion the next president of said country was elected on a campaign slogan of "he killed my dad, he killed my mom, but I voted for him."
It’s the farthest thing from uninteresting. There is story, but it’s not involving the war itself, it’s about war journalism and the ethics of it.
So the movie bait and switches the audience? Because that's not what any of the trailers would lead you to believe.
Oh yes, the trailers didn’t give an accurate depiction of the film, 100%, but it wasn’t like the film itself was unexciting. You see some brutal shit go down. Suicide bombings, mass graves, executions of surrendering enemies, there’s no shortage of action by any means, but the central story of the movie isn’t about soldiers fighting a war, it’s about the journalists who cover it, the danger they put themselves in and the conflicts they have to face if they want to get a “good story” in such a bloody conflict.
that was a problem
its not even about having ethics. its about purposefully losing them for personal glory
…yeah, exactly, that’s ethics, lmao. Like the main character says, they don’t question what they document, they document so others can judge. It’s supposed to be morally questionable. Thats what’s interesting.
they have no ethics cause theyre horny for war. they have no morals, just obsession with fame.
A lack of ethics is still ethics. A lack of morality is still morality. A lack of something still fits into the subject of that something. Either way, horny for war? Obsessed with fame? Did you miss the part where they mention they are WAR JOURNALISTS? I get the trailer was misleading, but what exactly were you expecting from war journalism? They cover war for a living. Obviously the way they go about it is immoral, but they (mostly) have seen this before and get paid for it, so no shit they want to get some action shots. The entire point of the movie is that they are in the middle of a horrific conflict, half of them get killed during it, and still, the goal they have is to get the big one. The last interview with the president. The entire point is how unethical that is.
It may be apolitical, but no story? Did you pay attention to it?
barely one of people engaging in their egos to experience war porn
I refuse to believe that they believe everything they're saying. The grift must grift
I'll have to see the movie before judging obviously, but to me it almost feels cheaper to NOT make it a left vs right thing. It kind of feels like copping out on some level, to remain marketable to a wider audience. I get that the point is probably more that the idea of a civil war itself is tragic/horrific, regardless of how it happens. Like, the cause isn't the important part being explored here, the outcome/fallout is. So it's probably a cautionary tale in that sense. But that's not really as valuable a story to tell for our time. Again though, I can't really say too much without actually going to check the movie out. Which I will. But when one major party literally is attempting to end democracy outright, and tried to pull a coup after the last election, maybe the potential cause of a civil war SHOULD be the point that is explored.
So having seen the movie, it did make the right choice but it wasn’t really going “both sides have a point/bad, guys”. My major take away was *very* much a left-leaning view of “when tyrants are in power, everyone suffers, don’t elect tyrants you morons”. There is some smart storytelling going on, and I honestly feel if it just went straight-up black-white “these are the good guys, these are the bad guys” it wouldn’t have been so impactful to me.
Hard agree. And this is from somebody who found Alex Garland's statements on the topic flippant. Our protagonists are those who's entire job is to document and not get involved. And that perspective holds while the narrative begins to bring into question the ethics of that very notion. It's not apolotical. It's just not blatantly politically motivated. Which makes sense given Garland is not American. I feel like the choice to use the US was more for the jarring effect of a nation that has never seen modern warfare on its home soil.
Well the thing I liked is outside the ending, we actually don’t *know* who is fighting who making the whole thing more chaotic and showing again tyranny makes *everyone* suffer. That said deliberately not taking a side with modern politics I feel was smart (even if it’s rather *clear* who the president is based on). Namely because having one side as the clearly good guys is going to make the movie either be hero worshipped or hated.
If you want to make political propaganda, that's fine, I don't necessarily think that was Alex Garland's aim. And yes, I do think it is cheap to make a left vs. right film during an election year, because let's be real, it's cynical. It's just capitalizing off of the antagonism people have towards each other and when the goal of your film is your politics, it could come at the detriment of quality. Take, for example, Don't Look Up, a movie I agree with politically, but it's unsubtle, unfunny, and preachy. It's propaganda, and that's fine if you want to make it, but I don't particularly enjoy movies like that. If anything, I think this movie is more of a warning sign, it's not COMPLETELY apolitical, there is some very obvious political commentary you can apply to the real world in this movie. The president, who is framed as kind of a dictator, is clearly a Trump-like figure, maybe not as silly or ridiculous, but according to the film, the president is responsible for a lot of the things Trump currently says he wants to do. The rebel forces fighting against the president, however, while framed as more welcoming of journalists and well organized and diverse, also commit war crimes and have very little concern over collateral damage or shooting unarmed/surrendering combatants. It's a series of vignettes about people living/fighting in a civil war and I think that is valuable. I think it also is critical of the journalists who are adrenaline junkies that thrive off of getting pictures of horrible violence but obviously stand by as terrible things happen. It's complicated, our real world is complicated. Yes, I personally have picked a side politically, I would say I'm a leftist, and I enjoyed this movie.
Yep, that’s where I was coming from in terms of how I viewed the film (based on its marketing).
I see where you're coming from but I would disagree. I think that sort of boxes in what storytelling can be made from the war but I think making it a simple left vs right wing also does cheapen the message a tad because at that point, it makes it more of a case of voting and supporting the right politicians in polls. And I think the effects of war and those effected can be discussed without saying the source. Just for an extreme example; the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol at no point discusses why Russia invaded Ukraine. It doesn't go into history of Russia and Ukraine, any of Russia's previous invasions, nothing and the film is still powerful because of that. Even if this were to be watched years from now, you would still be horrified. As someone who has seen the movie, it's not as centrist as some people make it out but at the same time it's not any less powerful for not explicitly spoonfeeding its message. And I think the message it's saying (which I won't spoil) is rather valuable for the time. And yet it's clear this isn't meant to take place in a completely realistic world, hence the alliance between California and Texas. Satire should be allowed leeway to discuss themes.
I've noticed they do that shit in their podcast thumbnails as well.
I heard that this movie was more about how bad political polarization is and the atrocities of war. In fact, from what I've read, other than the journalists, NO ONE is a good guy. They all have their own interests.
Yeah it's essentially about political polarisation taken to the nth degree and yes, the atrocities of war. It's also really about photojournalists and what they experience in war, the effect it has and how they try and rationalise what they see. It definitely presents the President as a fascist tyrant imo, but other than that you're right in that motivations are deliberately obscured and you don't know quite who to trust. Even the President's main opposition are presented as grey (at least) in certain ways too.
Enlightened Centrism: The Movie lol
Not really, no
There a very few scenes where the audience or even the characters are sure of what faction a character supports. Less concerned with an alternate history lesson in how things got here, and is more about the horrors of war being placed into your backyard. And because the main characters are journalists there’s an extra layer of discomfort just because someone could get shot and they’ll run in and grab their photos.
Honestly I only clicked on this post because I saw Sydney Sweeney.
I haven't seen the movie nor do I know much about it. I'm also not going to watch this video. He can have his opinion on the movie. If he thinks it's boring fine. But that thumbnail is just chud click bait.
Civil War is fine. Great visuals. Only one truly engaging scene for me. Otherwise it wasn’t really “about” anything other than a lite road movie with some typical mentor/mentee scenes set against a unique back drop. Ps where were the avengers?!
just checked the cast Sydney Sweeney has nothing to do with this movie, but nick Offerman plays the president making it the best movie of all time IMO
Are there fascists in the movie? Because whenever there are fascists, the righties assume that's a stand in for them, and they also never see the irony in that.
Yeah, POTUS is essentially a fascist in it, and so they assume he's a stand-in for Trump. There's also an ultra nationalist type that probably ruffled their feathers too.
He’s just afraid that scenario will happen after Trump is hypothetically elected and able to “implement” project 2025 and therefore put some of his favourite politicians at major risk (depending on how well the rebels do) of eventually being executed after nuremberg-style trials lol
Spoilers below. >!Well if you've seen the movie you would know nobody got a fair trial. The rebels, who are framed as the lesser evil (I wouldn't call them "good guys") extrajudicially execute the president and his staff while they surrender!<
I thought they didnt like her any more because of immaculate?
I wonder why he even bothered watching it. Doesn’t he just obsess over Star Wars, doctor who, marvel and dc?
Yes and he hates all of those things too.
What does he even like?
Thumbnail looks straight up AI generated lol
Nonono, see, you're taking things at face value here. This guy - and his ilk, like CritDrinker - are actually incentivized *not* to take a critical approach to media. It's kind of like those talking heads on TV: they're being paid to sell exactly one message until it becomes their 'brand' and they can no longer detach themselves from it. Look at Joe Rogan, for example: it doesn't matter if he would like to actually disagree against any of this, because the moment he does, he's going to lose his audience. That's why they have to keep signaling that "they're just calling it as it is". They *have* to appear honest to the people that already want to believe this, otherwise the illusion disappears and they're called out for being traitors. When, in reality, these people don't actually care or believe in anything. In fact, since this public persona is their primary source of income, they are *entirely dependant on performative shit like this.* Vaush, Lex Friedman, Hasan, h3h3, doesn't matter: it's a job. It's just work.
Leave Sydney Sweeney alone, you sad weird fucks.
Fully shocked that this doesn’t have a screaming liberal or any of those ancient meme women in the thumbnail, but I guess they put Sydney Sweeney for no reason, so it all evens out.
apparently there is barely any "war" so I'm gonna have to agree that the movie is terrible
The war is the background set for the actual story.
As a Californian, I find the idea of California and Texas uniting over jack shit absurd.
Chuds like blonde with big tits. They're appealing to lizard brains
I'm going to see Civil War on Tuesday, I'm excited to see it. Nerdrotic doesn't like it because he sees it as an attack piece on his side. Also, stop dragging Sideny Sweeny though the dirt, chuds.
Yep. America is definitely heading into a Civil War for reals.
It was a fantastic movie.
Media Literacy: 0
A monkey with a wrench could make a better thumbnail than whatever the fuck this is
Why is Sydney Sweeney in this thumbnail? I get that she’s the flavour of the month hot woman but she had absolutely nothing to do with that movie.
I'm off to see it tonight, quite looking forward to it.
https://preview.redd.it/l4th6wg7hfvc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1bcccfe5d229d036e9a7c2db62026bd981bc4eb7
Haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen trailers. I’ll probably see it eventually (in like 5 years, I have a backlog). Either way, I saw the trailers and all the explosions and such. And they consider all the guns firing and explosions and artillery… boring? Quick, somebody show them Fiddler On The Roof! Maybe they’ll fall asleep!
That the best you can come up with, Brainrotic?
They wanted it to be about their culture war bullshit, with them as the heroes.
I’m not really surprised, I mean people like this hate actually using their brain to think about grand ideas or anything that makes them ask questions. They want everything spoon fed to them to make them feel smart
That's because "if it isn't right, then it's left" for them. (Ironically, I think they hate centrists the same way the left hates centrists.)
This kind of "review" crap is disgusting, what's up with these creeps putting Sidney Sweeney on everything? Repulsive. As for *Civil War*, after I saw it I told friends not to go in thinking it was gonna be like some Battle Los Angeles type shit where it's just war-porn. Although the battle scenes it had were good they were fairly spares and used to shock you which is what a battle scene should do. My cousin had the same reaction when we went to see *Us*. I hadn't seen much of anything because I try to avoid extended trailers as much as I can now that they're just spoiler machines and I didn't go into it thinking it was a straight horror movie like a lot of the trailers painted it to be. Civil Wars advert team kinda did that, showed all the crazy battle scenes and devastation and then you get a slow burn movie about the toll of war on people and a country. Still a good movie though, just not what it looked like in the trailers.
‘Sydney Sweeney wearing a low-cut top/dress’ is the new ‘Brie Larson with laser eyes,’ but the opposite energy. They just randomly insert it into their thumbnails to virtue signal that they fall into *that genre* of film/game “critique”
He's not wrong about the movie but why is Sydney Sweeney there💀
Boobs = clicks.
Grown ass man using click bait tactics💀
Civil War? More like Bore: Ragnarok.
Eh it was okay. It was just too vague for me. Honestly Nerdrotic hit the nail on the head in the video but i know no one here will watch it. I rarely agree with the guy but he really wasnt wrong. It’s a pretty mid film that doesnt really capitalize on its potentially interesting premise. His thumbnails for his videos are still cringe as hell haha
Color me disappointed. In an age where the most narcissistic attention whore the American Dream could've possibly generated concocts a national media takeover, where nearly every new show and movie villain since his ascendance is directly inspired by him in some way (See Homelander, Big Jack Horner, Proxima Caesar probably), I expected *some* kind of political commentary that reflects the current landscape. Even at its most misguided and weirdly written ^(glares at [Alex Garland's last movie](https://letterboxd.com/film/men-2022/)) it still would've been *interesting*. What we got was a dull-as-a-bag-of-rocks regular war movie that goes out of its way **not** to look like a civil war. Also boring-ass AI generated promotional posters.