During our SXSW 2024 coverage, we were able to attend the premiere of Alex Garland’s latest feature, Civil War. He also wrote the script of this war drama, in what is A24’s most expensive production to date with a price tag of $50m. Civil War hit cinemas this Friday and is already breaking records within its first weekend. It has delivered the biggest domestic opening of A24 and Garland’s career with $25.7m, which almost doubles the studio’s previous biggest opening of $13m for Hereditary.
We got a chance to be a part of a roundtable with Alex as a part of his Civil War press tour and talk to him about his latest project. The English filmmaker, known for exploring the human condition from distinctive lenses and often offering an almost opaque perspective on his characters’ morality, talks about how he loves people and wants to write about things that concern him. He also calls the world “strange and disturbing”. He further expresses his frustrations around the contempt being shown towards journalists and reveals that in Civil War’s case, the story largely arose from “anger”.
Civil War has received a highly divisive response from audiences and critics alike. The controversy does not come as a surprise given the movie’s subject matter. The story also does not take sides or define a clear right and wrong, and chooses to focus on the point of view of war journalists, a third side that stands as a watchdog for both sides. However, the movie also does not tell its viewers whether to root for or against our main group of journalists and the media in general.
We asked him how this story evolved for him, to which he answered “It was a growing sense of frustration which I was just talking about but I would say I feel almost embarrassed sometimes that I write a story that then gets called prescient, and it’s not true.” He also added that this story was “marinating for a while”. When talking about why he chose to tell this story now, he said “One thing is the situation now was pretty much identical four years ago. It just might be slightly worse but it was essentially identical in most meaningful terms. Saying something like Ex Machina, a lot of people were talking about AI, a lot of people were making films about AI at the same time. There was a whole bunch of films about AI at the same time as Ex Machina and I often thought I’m not sure I’m saying anything that wasn’t also said in 2001 which was decades before.”
Alex also explains this story needed to be told by saying, “It honestly was generated by anger and then thinking I need to control the anger, I need to modulate it, I need to make it thoughtful, I need to make it precise, I need to not be alienating. One of the things that happens when people get angry in a way is they shout and whoever they’re shouting at stops listening. It just turns into a punch-up or a shouting match.” We also asked him if the story was always from the point of view of journalists, to which he replied “It was always from the point of view of the journalist.”
Civil War is now playing in theaters.
