‘Civil War': Alex Garland Says “Both Sides" to Blame for U.S. Polarization

A lot has been said in regards to Alex Garland’s recent comments about his call not to choose a political side in his upcoming “Civil War.” Instead, Garland made the decision that his film should tackle the inherent risks involved in a polarized country.

Most of the negative response has come from people attacking Garland for “bothsideism” and wanting him to be more explicit about today’s risks to U.S. democracy. Garland isn’t biting, he says the last thing he wanted his film to be was a “lecture.”

The filmmaker has rather decided to take on a more apolitical approach to “Civil War” — which is said to be about how disunity, lack of debate and polarization can lead to the resulting violence in the film. The comments that his detractors have zeroed in on stem from an interview Garland gave to THR, here’s a pull quote from it:

Why are we talking and not listening?We’ve lost trust in the media and politicians. And some in the media are wonderful and some politicians are wonderful—on both sides of the divide. I have a political position and I have good friends on the other side of that political divide. Honestly, I’m not trying to be cute: What’s so hard about that? Why are we shutting [conversation] down? Left and right are ideological arguments about how to run a state. That’s all they are. They are not a right or wrong, or good and bad. It’s which do you think has greater efficacy? That’s it. You try one, and if that doesn’t work out, you vote it out, and you try again a different way. That’s a process. But we’ve made it into ‘good and bad.’ We made it into a moral issue, and it’s fucking idiotic, and incredibly dangerous … I personally [blame] some of this on social media. There is a an interaction that exists human-to-human that floats away when it reaches a public forum.”

This past week, “Civil War” garnered polarized reactions when it screened at the SXSW Film Festival. I’m only supposed to catch it during the first week of April, but are we at all surprised that a film warning us about the divisive nature of the country would, gosh, turn out to be so divisive?

The heroic figures in “Civil War” are journalists, and, supposedly, the main ones are conservative, not liberal, which was a purposeful creative decision made by Garland. He didn’t want to take sides — that’s also why Texas and California, for some reason, are allied forces in the film.

Garland believes it “wasn’t necessary to lay out current-day politics” in “Civil War,” he’s more inclined to describe the film as being about the “dangers of polarization."

“Civil War” was shot in the spring of 2022 and, by all accounts, was supposed to be released last year only to be delayed for this election year. The AP has called Garland's film an "election year provocation," and said it was a "bold gamble to capitalize on some of the anxieties that have grown in highly partisan times and ahead of a potentially momentous November presidential election."

Jeff VanderMeer, whose novel, “Annihilation,” Garland turned into a well-received 2018 sci-fi film, retweeted Garland’s comments about “both sides” being responsible for the current state of the country … he’s not a fan.