I saw the new movie "Civil War" so you don’t have to. You’re welcome, and you owe me. Fifteen years ago this month, I started writing for the legendary Andrew Breitbart at Big Hollywood, where we drew attention to the increasing wokeness of Tinseltown. That’s why I saw this movie – to see if Hollywood had learned any lessons. I think it did, but it learned the wrong lessons.
Spoiler alert—it’s a bad movie, and you don’t want to see it. I’m going to tell you some of what happens, but you shouldn’t care because, if you’re smart, you’re going to listen to me and not spend money on it.
The problem with "Civil War" isn’t its point of view, to the extent it has one. Now, you can tell that, beneath the surface, it has a generic left-wing orientation. The bad guy president is vaguely Trumpy. He’s a straight white male, of course. In fact, every single villain is a straight, white male. None of the major heroes is a straight, white male. You can make movies where the villains are straight, white males, and where none of the heroes are straight, white males, but it’s now a woke Hollywood cliche to make all the villains straight, white males, and none of the heroes straight, white males. You can’t unsee it. Rural white guy? Definitely a villain. Black woman? Hero!
But the mandatory pseudo-diversity of Hollywood is not the main problem with "Civil War." Nor is how the movie employs the hackneyed device of characters doing stupid, impulsive things to drive the plot. Don’t go do that thing, don’t go do that thing, don’t go do that thing – and then the character goes and does that thing, and all the other characters have to deal with the consequences, and that’s how the plot progresses. Weirdly, it’s always a young female character who seems to go do that thing. Anyway, it’s annoying.
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But the real issue with "Civil War" is that it is not about the cinematic civil war. When I go to a movie called "Civil War," I’d like to learn a little about the civil war, like what happened and why it happened and what one side believes, and what the other side believes, and how our society degenerated into open combat nearly two centuries after the Democrats started – and lost – the last civil war. But you don’t get that. I spent two hours watching this movie and I still have absolutely no idea what caused this civil war. I know that the Trumpish president character – he’s not a complete Trump clone, but it’s pretty clear he’s Trumperrific – is supposed to be a bad guy. But that doesn’t mean that his side is necessarily bad. The good guys can be led by a bad guy. Or a good guy can lead the bad guys. The movie seems to attribute the cause of this civil war to a single personality instead of illuminating the politics that drove it. That’s not particularly compelling as drama.
I know a little about Second Civil War fiction since I’ve written a best-selling series of novels about it. And you know what I focused on? How America gets into a Second Civil War and what happens when it does. How do things change? What expectations are upended? How would things work out in that situation? That’s what’s interesting about the concept. That’s what we want to know. And frankly, that’s what teaches us what to avoid so we never get into that situation again no matter how much the Democrats try to provoke Round Two.
But this movie ignores the civil war stuff and is all about journalists on a road trip. Despite the fact that most journalists today are loathsome communists, that’s not necessarily a bad way to show us around the Second Civil War. You could get lots of perspectives, and you can see and learn what happens and why through reporter characters. But the only perspectives we get are about the reporters themselves, and they’re annoying people – which is at least a taste of realism. But they never talk about the war itself. There’s no context to all the mayhem.
Remember, it’s the world-building that’s interesting to us, not these characters. I don’t care about the characters. You have a jaded war correspondent. And another jaded war correspondent. And a third jaded war correspondent. And a fourth war correspondent who’s young and isn’t quite jaded yet but who gets jaded at the end. That’s not interesting, and that’s not what I’m trying to buy when I throw down nearly 20 bucks for a ticket to a movie called "Civil War."
Look, the actors are competent. They’re just playing boring people. And the movie is boring. That’s the crime. The lesson Andrew Breitbart always taught about political movies is to be good first. Be interesting. Make a good movie. Then you can get your message across. He didn’t object to the idea of a left-wing viewpoint. "JFK" is a left-wing movie with an idiotic message, but it was interesting. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, even though it was unbelievably stupid. I barely kept my eyes open here.
Alex Garland is not an untalented filmmaker. The Englishman has made a few vaguely interesting movies. The problem is he shoots this one like a movie-of-the-week. It is very workmanlike. What he wants to do is set up really interesting shots like helicopters flying around the Washington monument. That’s a pretty cool image. A gun battle at the White House? Yeah, that’s an interesting concept. But not the way he does it. You can see this was not a big-budget movie. All the battles have like 10 people.
Another beef – as a military guy, all the military stuff bothered me. It doesn’t look like a military operation, and it’s kind of hard to explain to civilians why. For instance, you’ll have a weird mix of vehicles with a HUMVEE and a truck and a tank and another HUMVEE and a tank rolling, and overtop are helicopters flying really low, and F-35s are flying at treetop level just because it looks kind of cool. But it’s not realistic. Military guys, be prepared to bust out laughing at the scene where a guy is sleeping on the ground around a bunch of parked trucks. Yeah, sleep on the dirt among parked trucks and see how that works out for you. Look, some of the battles do look kind of cool, but not as cool as they could. The movie isn’t particularly spectacular, though it tries to be. The imagery is kind of distracting.
But not as distracting as the relentless breakaways to boring expositions about the characters’ backgrounds. I think way too many Hollywood people have been watching Netflix shows where they stuff three hours of drama into nine hours of episodes. Here’s how I wrote the People’s Republic novels – I made it all good parts. If it didn’t make you think, or laugh, or get your pulse racing, I cut it out. Here, something interesting happens, and all of a sudden the action comes to a flying stop for a five-minute dialogue scene with the characters in a head-on two-shot sitting on benches talking about their childhoods. It’s a movie called "Civil War." I don’t care about your feelings or these characters.
Garland’s objective in not having any discussion of the politics in "Civil War" was clearly to take politics out of the movie. But here’s the problem. It’s a movie about a civil war. You can’t take politics out of it. That’s the essence of it. To make an effective drama about it, you have to have a point of view. In interviews, all the actors denied that the movie had an agenda, and maybe that was what they intended. But that’s the problem. Without a clear point of view, none of it makes sense.
My books have a point of view. I’m a conservative, and the conservatives in the books are right. Not perfect. Not faultless. And not always nice. But generally right. The conservatives are the good guys. In my books, the red states are who you should be rooting for. You know that going in, and you can evaluate what I say on that basis. Am I right? Am I wrong? What am I missing? You don’t have to agree with me, but at least we have something to debate.
What’s not interesting is a bowl of mush. This was a missed opportunity. We’re at a very dangerous time in our country. That’s the point of my Second Civil War novels. That should be the point of this movie. But the movie is afraid to make a point because it doesn’t want to alienate anyone. And that’s why it’s a missed opportunity.
But conservative billionaires, you have an opportunity to make a real difference. Instead of wasting cash donating to DC think tanks like the Forum for Families, Liberty, Eagles, and Forums, throw a few million bucks behind some conservative movies. That was Andrew Breitbart’s hope – that we make quality, thought-provoking entertainment with a conservative message. Note the order – the thought-provoking and entertaining parts come before the conservative message part. And until we make our own movies, we’re going to be stuck with stuff like "Civil War."
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