Civil War: A Desperate Message Delivering to the Next Generation

“Civil War” is a typical road movie. Road movies have three basic elements: the road, confusion, and growth. The confusion, in this movie, comes from a sense of crisis about America’s future, and the growth represents hope for the younger generation.

“Civil War” is a very poor war movie. There is a “war” in its title, but the U.S. has been at peace domestically for so long, that American filmmakers simply cannot imagine how a highly developed industrial society would enter a state of war. In every scene of the urban street battle, the backdrop is a brightly lit city. Even in the suburban area where the interview team rests on the first night, you can see machine guns opening fire with some functioning streetlights in the backdrop. Nearly a century after Thomas Edison’s death, Americans can no longer understand that “a lit lightbulb is a miracle.” Details that don’t fit the war atmosphere also include clean streets, freshly mowed lawns, and well-maintained highways—the worst “destruction” being a pile of abandoned cars that jammed the road so you have to drive around for a short distance. It seems the filmmakers were unaware that these commonplace, day-to-day living conditions require tens of thousands of professionals working around the clock to maintain. A real war would first destroy the daily operations of various public sectors, especially eliminating the financial basis that pays their salaries. On the one hand, the script sets up a detail where the U.S. dollar has devalued crazily and shopping is impossible, yet on the other hand, Americans still enjoy reliable power supply and roads. I can only say that Americans have been too well-protected for the past century.

Thus, the war in this film appears to be a mix of three types of chaos: gunfights in the U.S. territory, Latin American gang crimes, and the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Alex Garland and the other writers completely fail to understand how catastrophic it would be when a highly developed and industrialized population of three hundred million starts unleashing its destructive power.

But such a film still has significance. It shows that some Americans are aware of what they know, and what they don’t.

Using the theme of a U.S. civil war and constantly showcasing the contrast between peaceful life and chaos, it indicates that Americans are aware that their current reality harbors severe crises, which could lead to societal fragmentation and shatter the facade of prosperity in unimaginable ways.

By ignoring the political causes of the civil war and simply using their (somewhat limited) imagination to depict the brutality of war, it shows that Americans know they do not understand the root causes of the crisis and are deeply confused.

The core character of the Civil War movie is a young girl who joined the interview team at the last minute. One of the rebellious soldiers says, “She is a true American,” which is exactly what the movie wants to convey. The filmmakers want to show the crisis to the younger generation of Americans and also display the confusion of themselves to the youth. At the movie’s end, two older journalists sacrifice their lives one after another, leaving the “true American” to witness the entire crisis before her eyes. This is the theme of the movie. From the perspective of ordinary Americans, or rather from the young girl’s perspective, the ending can be interpreted in both optimistic and pessimistic ways. On the pessimistic side, the older generation has left only a superficially prosperous material legacy, unable to explain current problems spiritually, and certainly without a solution. On the optimistic side, the older generation at least has the determination to sacrifice themselves, reminding the young people to “diagnose” society’s problems. The balance between optimism and pessimism is a typical feature of road movies.

Regardless, the movie is very impactful because it cleverly captures a shortcut—disrupting people’s familiar daily lives can deliver a profound psychological shock. During World War II, multiple countries engaged in strategic bombing and used POWs and spies to verify the various effects of these bombings. One conclusion was that “nothing is as impactful as bombing familiar neighborhoods.” Specifically, to create the strongest psychological shock for soldiers and munitions workers, making them lose their ability to work, the best method wasn’t to kill their loved ones, kill their superiors, or even cut off their food supply, but rather to let them come home to find their house gone and the familiar surroundings almost unrecognizable. Therefore, bombing workers’ residential areas during working hours might avoid the heavily guarded factories, but still cause the same disruption to production.

Now, Alex Garland and his team are metaphorically “bombing Americans’ familiar neighborhoods,” much like the disaster movie “2012”, allowing everyone to feel the insignificance and helplessness of individuals when the entire society collapses. This naturally enhances the film’s impact beyond its limited budget. However, I would still like to remind Americans, and people of all countries—war’s destruction is even greater than you can imagine.