Civil War Vlog

I need him to respond to the morbid zoo video terribly

Yeah, I basically agree but I read a bit less cynicism into it. Specifically, it feels to me that Garland had a question he wanted to ask, "what's the point of war journalism?" and he didn't actually have an *answer*. Which is a bit of pointless deconstruction that ends up being a Snyder-style attempt at sounding profound while having no substance. And I don't think the film had substance. I did like it, though, because it made me think about the question he posed and I think that the question is worth thinking about, but I also have no answer. I think the problem of desensitization (both of soldiers and the war journalists) is a real one and I'm not sure what there is to do about it. So ultimately, I find it hard not to respect the asking of a difficult question, and ultimately I like the film for it. I do not think he's trying to say anything about soldiers or war or politics or whatever; they're just necessary props if you're going to talk about the people taking pictures of them. (And there's something to be said about the reporter who died by trying to play action hero, too.) I really loved the entire ending sequence, too. Not for the cool explosions or whatever, but because it was such a fantastically well-put-together climax and flashpoint of the film's question. From "Reporters are moving out." to the ending picture.

So, Mariana of The Morbid Zoo posted a similar stream of consciousness review of the film but seemed to come to some very different conclusions about it. I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts about her interpretation of the film.

Does anyone know: has there been a good analysis of the post 9-11 shift towards depicting increasingly realistic militaristic violence (from the comic book movie to this film) as an intentional propaganda technique to erode the effectiveness of journalism like Dan is talking about? I've seen analysis that in a post 9-11 world people no longer wanted to picture classic comic violence because of an increased awareness of the real horrors. But, has there been an analysis from the opposing view point? The Military/Political complex understands that in an age of 24/7 news the horror of war would be placed in people's homes instantly, and therefore providing material support to films that normalize these scenes will blunt the response of the "typical" person.

Can't say I disagree with you, but i did have a slightly different journey to get there. The opening protest scenes had me quite disgusted, and it was my perception that the film wanted to critique journalism's insistence on sitting on the sidelines. By the time the gang got to Washington my thoughts were more along the lines of "someone has to be neutral because that's the only way you can safely document certain events. If someone isn't sitting on the sidelines taking photos, no photos will ever be taken, and an immediate historical document of the conflict will never be made." Then *that* death happened and the ending happened and I was left with that overwhelming feeling of cynicism and futility that you described. Whatever Garland wanted to say about conflict and neutrality was washed away by that nasty, bitter note of an ending. I was liking everything up to that death, which threw a bucket of deeply cold, cynical water on me.

Huh, I literally released a mini video on Civil War and Garland's Centrist politics yesterday. What a absolute delight that I get to see Dans thoughts as well. I don't know if links are allowed, but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upcuj518tuY

This really captures my feelings on the film. I found it incredibly myopic- obsessed with capturing the aesthetic of the American dystopia but with nothing to say about its causes or how to prevent it. In some way, that also seems to reflexively be the motivation of the characters, which plays into the themes Garland is trying to communicate about journalism, but that frankly seems like a defeatist stance to take when engaging with such politically charged material. Conversely, I don't feel like those ideas are served any better by being placed in the civil war setting and are actively distracted from by not engaging with the politics. There's a gaping flaw of contradiction at the heart of this story, one that causes me to constantly circle back to question of "why would you do it this way?"

I haven't seen the film but I am a big Alex Garland fan and listening to this kind of made his work come into focus a bit for me because I think one of the throughlines is that he's incredibly self-critical to the point that it seems like he thinks no matter what he makes, it's never going to be good enough. Which, as someone who is working on their dysfunctional level of self-criticality, can take you to this place where you're like "it doesn't matter what anyone does because in the end everything will still be shit because people are kinda terrible". In particular it makes me really think about the end of Devs, which makes more sense to me if you look at it as saying "it doesn't actually matter if free will exists because even if people can choose what they do, everything will suck regardless".

Sorry, not related to the content of the video: what's sitting on the chair's arm next to you?

.... Until I started the video I thought you were talking about the marvel movie. Oops.

This feels like a fun throwback to the stream of consciousness movie reaction videos (glass, zero dark loxley) you used to do on YouTube.

As someone who really, really liked the film, but also agrees with the points you make here, I'd love to hear more if you're moved to make a longer video about it!

I think a good complement to that movie would be to read the comic DMZ which has the exact same plot (suprised they weren't credited), but takes a very different approach where every one is an actor even the new guy who isn't a lost boy, but a political actor who does have a limited impact on the war depending on what he does.

Did you catch that the movie credited additional footage to Andy Ngo? When I saw that on Twitter it pretty much killed any desire I had to see it, which is admittedly kinda petty, but I couldn't imagine that sort of decision being made by careful storytellers with important things to say. Since you've seen the movie and know who Ngo is, I'm curious if that impacts your feelings on it.

The moments of Civil War that have lingered with me, surprisingly, have been those static black and white images. Especially the one that slowly fades in (as if it is being developed in real time) over the end credits. It’s been a challenge to reconcile that emotional feeling with Dan’s totally accurate point about the film being so cynical and fatalistic about the lingering effects of photojournalism. Odd how the film seemingly is aware of the power that final image will have over an audience, and yet wallows in that futility.

I wasn't a fan. Worst marvel movie imo