An interesting detail I noticed is that Jesse Plemon's character (red glasses soldier) has multiple watches on his wrists, meaning he's been stealing them from corpses

As a Canadian, I can attest that any universe where the greenback is worth LESS than *our* money truly is the darkest timeline

The people who are upset that Alex Garland didn't pick a side as the "Good guys" in this movie are like that soldier at 5:14. They don't care about the message of the movie, they only care about getting validation that their beliefs are the right ones or to hate him for not sharing theirs.

That shooting stand off is incredible and subtle. The point? One side is trying to kill the other. That’s it.

Jesse Plemons was in this movie for what, 5-6 mins? We don’t even know the name of the guy he plays. Yet, it’s him that has had the biggest impact on me.

This movie takes the cake for most tactically unsound use of an attack helicopter...

The map and the names felt like Fallout and HOI4

I think it’s best the film doesn’t get into detailed politics or ‘picks a side’ because it should be a warning that this nightmare scenario must be avoided. Everyone loses.

Something about the lack of HOME outro is somewhat chilling....just silence

I'm actually glad there is no good guy side in the civil war. If it ever comes to it, it won't be pretty, and I'm not sure how it will end. It turns it from an action movie to a political warning, which in this climate right now, is very, very much needed.

Cool idea. Either it’s timed horribly due to current political climate or it’s timed perfectly due to the current political climate. Try not to take things too seriously it’s just a movie about a modern civil war and how bad it would be if things escalated to that degree.

I hear this is so popular they're already making a irl remake next year

As a guy from rural west Louisiana who has a house full of guns and holds traditional beliefs, I'll say that a Civil War in America is about as likely as an alien invasion or Zombie Apocalypse. Most Americans aren't physically fit enough to endure the riggers of the outdoors for an extended period and would have an extremely difficult time coping with the elements. Americans have lived in a bubble and relatively issolated from the real trauma of life on planet earth. Once the power would go out and the food stopped coming, people would fold up like babies. Also. 70% of Americans depend on some type of doctor prescribed drug to function normally and a simple untreated infection would kill a person very easily due to the fact most have grown up in fairly sterile environments since the 1970s. Those old enough to have grown in harsh conditions (The Vietnam Generation) are now too old to be part of an effective fighting force. Also. Most of the states that would want to rebel against the Federal Government are the most reliant on Federal money. Louisiana being one of them. Go one hot summer in Louisiana without electricity, running water and A/C and you'll never talk about another Civil War again.

Highly recommend watching this in IMAX. The sound was deafening from all the aircraft, explosions. Each gunshot was terrifying and made plenty of people in the theater jump in their seats (me included). It's more of a road trip movie than anything else

this show needs a Cloverfield style website to explain what went on to the leadup of the film

This movie is to show a civil war from a outside view. We don't know what side is the "good guys" but it's clear that both sides contain no humanity left, as we see on multiple occasions the brutality that they bring on eachother. This film was disturbing, and yet heart breaking seeing your own troops kill eachother and let alone the president they swore at one point to protect. Serving this nation's Army, definitely had a deep impact on my view of the film and left me very disturbed. It left my theater in silence and I think the message of "do not do this!" Got across everyone's head. At the end of the day, no body is ready for something so heinous as a civil war like people think they are.

Civil War was pretty stressful to watch. It did a good job of depicting the horrors of war, even the gunfire made me jump out of my seat a few times. The fact these protagonists cared more about getting a good photo during these killings more than helping each other made me disgusted with humanity as whole. More than that soldier who just killed foreigners, that guy at the gas station who tortured those men, that fascist president, and all those factions. The one scene where I saw a glimpse of humanity in someone was when Lee deleted a photo of Sammy’s death.

I just watched this movie last night. The end of this movie left me in shock. It felt so wrong everything. The amount of non combatants being executed by forces was just horror. I could only imagine how much worse It would be in an actual Civil War.

Imo, I think the message that the movie is pushing is that maybe there are some things wrong with the government to a point that people might wonder if replacing the current system with a new one would be beneficial, and the movie is saying yeah, okay but what happens when that actually happens and war breaks out? Is a potentially more efficient and effective government worth the catastrophic effects of a civil war, especially in a country like the US, where defense spending takes top priority? The death and destruction would be immense.

I could pretty much guarantee you that the maps of states shown in the beginning wouldn’t be the same by the time of the film. If California and Texas were working together, you could bet that Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada would have already been conquered by the Western Alliance. No way either of those states would be rolling on Washington DC without taking out those potential threats to their backyards. Plus, to get to DC they would have had to roll through at least four other states to get there.

While the vagueness of identifying the specific forces affiliation is a HUGE intentional strength of the film, I think there were masterful visual and dialogue suggestions allowing people to fill in the gaps that I think many people missed, first I think on both sides it goes without saying that while there are formal large scale forces, there are also logically going to be paramilitary groups with varying degrees of affiliation and that have potentially splintered off from the larger forces. If you notice there was a recurring association between pastel rainbowish color tags and also the ethnicities of actors being cast(specifically there were seemed to be a higher number of non white and specifically east Asian people in the western forces which demographically makes sense with the demographics of the West Coast) and the western forces or potentially the maoist faction that was only mentioned once. The paramilitary(lack of uniform) in the second pit stop seem to have been associated with the western forces(obviously they were fighting gov/loyalist forces) additionally the snipers also had similar rainbow color tags, hair dye and nail polish and so were likely paramilitary associated with the western forces or a unit that had become separated from main forces for awhile. In a negative association, the refugee camp, was almost exclusively non white people, suggesting that some faction may have been particularly targeting or expelling them, it doesn't seem like the loyalists were strictly ethno nationalist, but given the location of the refugees near the border of effective loyalist control it seems likely that either the loyalist faction has ethno nationalist factions embedded or has an ideology that loosely compliments ethno nationalists and therefore results in many nonwhite groups getting targeted as enemies AND we know the WF wasn't strongly ethno nationalist from their force composition. So, the group who seemed to be ethnically cleansing, based upon the limited amount we know, has a few possible origins, either they are a truly unaligned(and never aligned) paramilitary group that has their own unique take and have been empowered in the chaos OR what seems more likely given their resources they are a paramilitary group with limited affiliation with the loyalists/were a loyalist unit that went rogue and is effectively operating under the local leadership to perform an ethnic/nationalist cleansing. Additionally, an interesting thing within the WF forces was that there also seemed to be really deep world building where slightly different uniforms, dialect, dialogue and presented unit operations suggesting who were forces originally from Texas vs California, most memorably, the team that stormed the white house seemed to be comprised of some type of special forces unit and a couple individuals from another more generalized combat unit, the black woman in the group seemed to be suggested as being from California, where the special forces unit(or at least their lead officer) seemed to be suggested as from Texas which was also good because these were the two that performed the final execution meaning neither sub faction was solely responsible. All that said, I think again the strength of the movie was that these things weren't so explicitly stated which is good as a movie/story telling but also maintained strong chaotic ambiguity in the ideological lines.

This movie is called "Fall of the Empire" in my country.

The scenes of devastation at Washington DC are reminiscent of Berlin in Oliver Hirschbiegel's epic film 🎬 Der Untergang (Downfall).

I swear if somebody says first here and not even watch this quality content I'm putting them on Alderran 5 seconds before the Death Star fires.

The true enemy is war.

Eck: "I am Canadian." Me: "What kind of Canadian are you?"

I went and saw the movie with my daughter. We both thoroughly enjoyed the movie and the fact that the viewer got to decide if the good guys won or not (or if it was just irrelevant). As a photographer myself, I was actually quite impressed with the photography used in the film and the cinematography. I was also impressed by the combat scenes. They were loud, just like the real thing. Gunfire wasn't muted. I own AR-15s and the 5.56/.223 ones are very loud. I also appreciate that different firearms sounded different. The knack-knack-knack staccato of distant weapons all played in to make you feel like you were there right alongside these four. There were some nice touches, too, like the Boogaloo Boi outfits some of the combatants were wearing. You're right there in the thick of it, experiencing everything. In the end, the politics here don't matter. The meaning of the story is found in Jessie overcoming herself and becoming what her heroine once was. I will say this, though: If you have combat related PTSD, stay away from this movie or at least wait for it to hit the streams instead. You don't want flashbacks in a theater.

Jessie, the young reporter is the villain of this movie.

It felt like a movie about War correspondents than anything else. I get that it's fictional, but one issue i've noticed with a lot of historical analysis, is the attempt to "depoliticize" war, when war is inherently political. I know there was the vague "fascist president who destroyed democracy to stay in power", but the tone of the film just comes off as a typical "both sides bad" lazy thought termination.

you kno I wanted to see the movie ever since my friend joked that they had to put california and texas together just so people know its fiction. I am also happy to see KD and other notable actors in the role. It seems like a good movie to watch.

🎉🎉🎉 Congrats on 1Million my man! 🎉🎉🎉 Been following you since 2015. Keep it up for the next million!

If Eck is dipping his toes into more genres surely i can convert him to mobile suit gundam?

Remember how Grey state was supposed to be released but the producer was killed off? I wnted to watch that movie but i guess Garland did what he could with the leftovers.

When life hands you Plemons.. you make Plemonade 😂

Great review.

My take away was that a lot of people in this country are incapable of realizing the reality of these topics without putting it into a framework like this that they can relate to on a personal level. The lack of realism in the framework of the conflict stemming from the fact that it's simply not the point.

I remmber when i found the trailor a three months back and it was all ireland and uk and the comments where all "oh a new documentry"

Can we just talk about the only time in the movie you see the true Stars and Stripes is in this water truck attack and when the president is removed.

Great vid dude.Halifax Nova Scotia born and raised here. Ps I had to add that after hearing you jail from N.S. Keep up the great work Bro.

something i noticed is that when lee told jesse that as a war photographer (?) they dont usually ask the questions but they take the pictures and let other people ask the questions. In the movie, we could see their photos as they were taken as a way to show that we are that other people who would be asking the questions, i think that adds to the theme of ambiguity of the film

It’s interesting to see the lines that the movie draws. From my point of view a lot of people theorize that any civil war in the future will be the government vs the people. I don’t think specific lines like the movie shows would be drawn in the United States mostly because it would just become anarchy if the government lost control. As much as I don’t want conflict, if the government devolves into tyranny it’s the job of the people to stand up against it.

A friend told me he did not like the movie because it did not have enough "meat" in the movie. I saw the movie and loved it. I love the fact it did not go into the politics or reasons. The important thing is what is going through people's lives during this dark times. No matter what the reasons are, it showed the country had broken up into different factions and americans were killing americans. Which the main characters were just showing their perspective of this event. That for me is the point of the movie.

Loved the change in format.

1:50 MJ after decades of trying to make things work with Peter is now a war photographer.

I have heard a lot of bad about this film, but looking at the journey, not the overall story, make the film interesting. Not fun, just interesting. I am more apt to see this, than avoiding it.

What happened to the ending music man? That always makes me crack up.

Ek just made a video about the absolute banger CIVIL WAR! Did not expect this but I am so here for it.

Eck. As a fellow Canadian. If you haven't yet, I HIGHLY suggest you dip into Mobile Suit Gundam, specifically the Universal Century timeline.

Good to see Kirsten Dunst in another movie, last I saw her was as Mary Jane in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. Might check this one out. Also I like how she was acting as a girlfriend of a photographer/hero and now she plays a photographer as her new character.

Welcome to "STAY ALIVE!" the #1 gameshow in these disunited states! For our latest contestant we have an Asian man! Now the rules are very simple. Give the wrong answer.... and you die! So on to our questions! You are faced by a homicidal madman demanding to know what type of American you are. Do you answer A: Floridian B: Missouri C: Colorado or D: Hong Kong.

The moment you click on a video about a movie but it has the voice of the guy that gives you daily hockey updates! How did I not know you had this channel?

I plan to see it but thank you so much for plot breakdown. I'm definitely going to go see it and as for the latter question that you asked as a US Marine Veteran I don't have another home to go to I can't just walk to another country and hope that they'll give me asylum so if a situation ever arose where this country was like in the movie in the midst of a civil war I'd give my life to defend my home

I just watched this movie a few hours ago. The ending left me thinking "Sooooo, that's it? The movie just started to get interesting and it's just...over?" I found Kirsten Dunst's character annoying, she's so depressed, anxious and withdrawn, bossy and unemotional through most of the movie, I seriously thought she was losing her mind near the end.

People always seem to forget "If everybody is wrong, nobody is tight". sm

I never thought i would see you reviewing this movie, but i'm glad i did

the trailers for Civil War did not leave me with high hopes or high expectations as it felt really exploitive and gross. then i went to see it...and i found it to be really exploitive and gross. my issues are not with its explicit content or the violence. what really bothered me about the film is this perception of its apolitical stance. this film does have an opinion but wants to hide it in the background which i to be pretty cowardly. in particular when they run with the Boogaloo Boys who are fighting soldiers in ACU's who were are not too sure about. Are they government forces? WF? Who knows. but we do know that when the warcriming begins and the upbeat 90's hiphop song is employed at an attempt at juxtaposing the tone of the song with the tone of the visuals and it just doesn't work. There are other blatantly subtle choices: "WE are going to Charlottesville, the front line" as a reference to the Take Bakc the Right a few years back. Using photos of BLM protests from Andy Ngo. dropping a phrase like AntiFa Massacre aren't so much points of references but easter eggs for anyone whos been tracking American political discourse. I thought it was an excellently crafted film, the performances are as good as they can be under a flawed direction, the shot compositions are gorgeous and the sound mix shockingly good. but at its core, this film is gutless and cowardly and i don'[t respect it. it pretends to be indifferent when its not and tries to hide its beliefs in plain sight and i find that to be disappointing, because as the film unfolds it has so much promise to be a truly great film but in the end is just a centrist's mealy mouthed "war is bad" and war porn from a different end of the political spectrum from the GWOT propaganda we are used to.

its a crime that Jesse Plemons was only in this movie for about 5 min..

As much as I understand the desire to be neutral and "non-political," from a worldbuilding perspective the total lack of identity to any of the factions just makes the setting seem bland rather than bipartisan, a nothingburger instead of the intended neutrality. Seriously, all they had to do was have a few two/three-word slogans for each faction and it would've done wonders for the setting. It would've even made that scene with the "What sort of American are you" line even tenser, after having heard so many warring factions on the trip up to that point.

This reminded me a lot of the Civil War (comic, not MCU) tie-in series, Frontline. At some point, right or wrong (pragmatics) doesn't matter when you fully grasp the human cost of either side.

I love the outro music!!!

2:59 IRL Mexico and Canada would become the new Laos and the new Cambodia (during the Vietnam War) during an eventual second american civil war.

I think the states that make up the factions are incredibly important, as there are actual regional differences between the states and some of the combinations felt more like he just threw them together for no other reason then to keep it as vague as possible without taking a longer look into them as to WHY certain states would form new conglomerations or not. Keep in mind also that nations with heavily diverse ethnic groups balkanize once the major authority falls apart, exactly like what happened to the Balkans (hence the name) when the Soviets left the area. The only thing holding all those disparate groups together and not murdering each other was the oppressive force of the communists, and when they left everyone started carving out their little spaces at the expense of everyone else. Hell, you might even see the southern border states get re-integrated into Mexico just from the sheer amount of people with Mexican ancestry choosing to reform with their home nation now that the US is no longer a viable Republic anymore. TLDR: Garland would've been better off not showing a map of the fictional civil war factions and just kept it ground level.

Well said. I’ve been trying to explain this to some of my family members for hours now (just saw the movie). I’m making them watch this video

How did you get these clips from the movie outside of trailers?

I always have issues with Garland's films for some reason. He has these great concepts, and the setup and middle of his films are exciting. It's their ending I always have trouble with. I felt the same way about Annihilation and Ex Machina- they had great setups and executions, but the ending left me lacking. Unfortunately, I felt the same with Civil War--I thought the idea of him not choosing a side and seeing things through the photojournalist's eyes was spot on; however, by the 3rd act and the attack on DC, I kept saying to myself: "Okay, so this is it? The end?' I felt something was missing, IMO.

Guy gets rid of the alphabet agency? Damn he's got my vote

Saw this last night and really enjoyed it. I enjoyed how it was very apolitical, because as you say the whole theme of the film isn’t about right vs wrong but rather the cost of human life in a warzone. Very good film and very much enjoyed the stylistic splicing of the still images into the action.

Great review fellow Canadian!🥌

Factions compared idea sci fi insect swarm. Such as Tyranids, arachnids, Zerg, rachni, terminids.

This is truly the glass onion of civil war...

What is the game in the background

Definitely plan to see this

That map I believe is completely wrong. The president says how the Carolinas joined the Florida alliance. The North-East from what we can tell is not in alliance with the President,etc

The trailer lost me once the California-Texas thing was revealed

I literally just walked out of the movie theater and wow I thought that was absolutely phenomenal

I find it silly that Canada is considered stable in this movie when realty is Canada would be fighting a losing three-front war and maybe a civil war on top of that.

The president is clearly a trump-esque figure! 1. The hyperbolic speech at the beginning 2. The talk of third terms 3. The mention of disbanding the FBI 4. At the end, Greenland is mentioned as a US territory, a trump proposal. It’s subtle but it’s there.

I've only heard mostly positives about this movie yet hearing it has "divided" responses from audiences does confuse me mainly because I cannot seem to find many bad reviews of it out there even after it just came out, besides it recieving more 1 star reviews on Google which I've not read. For those who've seen it, what do you think about this? Plus, I'm british myself, so I'm probably not one who may get this movie too much, so my bad there.

THIS is why people who talk about civil wars or revolution so candidly should think again. War, of any type, is not something you want happening in your hometown, neighbourhood or even backyard. We had too much of this in Ireland in the last century, it's primarily the reason we are neutral now. You would not wish this on anyone, particularly if you have other avenues to voice discontent. Complain on-line, peacefully protest, go on strike and above all else, vote, but for goodness sake leave the guns out of it.

A movie meant for the theatres the insanely loud gunshots were wild when red glasses killed the first guy I jumped from how casual he was and then the loud shot. I really liked how the gunfights were insanely loud and then it would go silent and show the black and white photos. Another small thing that was nice is that the guns seemed somewhat realistic compared to other movies was that they actually reloaded and had semi auto m4s not just spraying and praying with infinite amo

The most scariest part is that this was just a giant ad for the Ford Excursion 😮

If America actually had a Civil War (II) the rest of the world would be absolutely fcked. The gloves would come off and any country that was thinking about doing evil stuff would just go ahead and do it, knowing that the world police wouldn’t (couldn’t) step in. Haven’t seen the movie yet myself.

What game is playing in the background

I definitely wanna check it out

Not picking a side isnt the problem. Not SHOWING the sides is the problem. All you see here is airsoft players playing war.

Pretty sure this movie fed into the fearful narrative of a trump “dictatorship”. Pretty comical people think this movie isn’t “picking sides”

Hollywood have been producing war movies for more than a half of a century, but in those movies the wars are always somewhere else. When they bring the war to themselves, they always say that’s an “uncomfortable” movie to watch.

I've only seen the trailer so hearing that there is 4 factions was something I wasn't expecting

The timing of this movie’s release could not have been any worse

I’m interested in seeing it,kinda wanna know what the “controversy”is all about,you made your points clear but i fail to grasp what’s exactly is wrong with the movie itself.anyways thx for sparking up interest.

I saw a comment about the movie recently that talked about how the scariest places are the smaller towns where people like this Jesse Plemon's character would be, or the guys at the gas station. These militia like ppl would have the chance to take matter into their own hands without the structure of an organized military. I think after seeing that doc Four Hours at the Capitol on HBO, I would agree - seeing how angry these civilians are, I think they would take the chance to use it as an outlet for their violence. Also - the Canadian money had us all laughing.

I was able to see an advance screening at the imax in Bayers lake it I absolutely loved the movie. You explained it very well, the movie is brutal and shocking while having some real emotional beats to it

It’s an anti-Trump movie.

Texas and california have never been politically alligned enough to unite againts the federal government

9:05 Mark! 5.1K Thumbs Up + Mine! 👍 You're welcome, and thanks! 😊 Notes: I wasn't aware of the existence of this movie until I called the local movie theater's answering machine. I had to ask "Google" about it! Then I watched "Double Toasted" review it, and then there have been other videos like this one. I for one get the story and the neutrality as unlike others I don't need a movie to make me feel vindicated about choosing a side in reality. I've been a registered Independent since I was 18. I do my own thinking and decision making whenever I vote. I like and appreciate your valid points! 😌 Namaste! 🙏

I think two of the more horrifying moments for me were the two occasions where people with their arms raised were shot (both women). Along with Jesse Plemons character and others, the movie shows a kind of callousness that is not normally a staple of life in the USA (at least for most people).

Wait until the Larp version comes...

The reason for California and Texas to be on the same side is actually pretty simple. What is happening in the movie isn't a really Civil War, but a military coup. The president has preformed numerous illegal and unconstutional acts. The military is supported by Texas and California state governments (Western Forces). Near the end of the film, most of the "loyalist" military surrenders, leaving only the secret service, and some military members. Most of the other factions are most likely due to the breakdown federal government services, and have opted for self governance than outright rebellion. Basically the movie is really is "What if Trump was successful in overturning the election on January 6th". Without any real evidence to support his claims, most military generals would view it as a violation of their oath to defend the Constitution, and remove him from power. Most states would most likely support this type of removal.

This movie somewhat follows the original Civil War, and 6:47 says it better than any other timestamp. Obviously photography was in it infancy so pictures accompanying articles was not a thing, but after a battle and one side retreated, causing the shooting to stop, the journalists would rush onto the now defunct battlefield and write their notes for the future article.

I plan on seeing it in the next day or so. I find films about conflict - nation v nation, or civil, to be very interesting and shines a light on where we could be headed. I've always liked movies about war, be it based loosely on/close to , real-life events, completely fictitious historically, futuristic, etc.