Civil War Director Alex Garland On Making An Honest War Movie That Doesn’t Sensationalize Violence

Civil War is set shortly after a second Civil War has plunged America into a nationwide conflict. The country is split into different factions as the American government contends with the Western Forces, driven by an alliance between Texas and California, the Florida Alliance, and the New People’s Army. The movie, directed by Alex Garland, follows a group of embedded wartime journalists as they travel across the country with the hopes of speaking to the leaders of these factions in search of the truth.

Although conflict is at the heart of Civil War, the cause of this country’s wide divide is not the primary focus. Instead, Garland shows the true impact of war on the journalists who cover it, in the mentality of the soldiers who fight, and the effects it has on a country as a whole. Civil War is a horrifying warning of what Garland fears could be the future if the extreme divides in America lead to violent conflict, taking cues from fables that teach children about the dangers of the world. The jaded outlook of the characters shows how failure to heed this warning can completely change the course of so many lives.

Screen Rant interviewed writer and director Garland about his new movie Civil War. He explained how he approached the action sequences in Civil War, keeping in mind the goal of making a war movie that doesn’t sensationalize war. Garland also discussed working with veterans to keep the film honest and authentic in how it shows the battle sequences play out.

Civil War’s Team Was Conscious Not To “Accidentally Make A Pro-War Film”

Civil War is a decidedly anti-war movie. Many war movies, often unintentionally, can sensationalize the violence in part through the cinematic approach to showing war. Garland was extremely careful in how he approached filming the action scenes taking inspiration not from famous war movies, but instead from the veterans he worked with and the reality of war that has been filmed via documentaries and news footage.

Alex Garland: Well, I mean, it was the product of a large group of people thinking about it a lot, discussing it, and also really not wanting to accidentally make a pro-war film. The cues, the visual cues, the action cues. It also sound, the sound of gunshots, whatever it is. They’re not taken from film grammar so much as news footage, documentaries.

But I think this is quite important as well, lived experience. So the experience of some of the filmmakers, which they then brought to the film in a way that came in various forms, but one of the most obvious ones was that some of the people making the film were veterans, so they had been in combat, and we were collectively looking to avoid certain kinds of ways of sensationalizing violence and presenting it closer to truth.

Garland worked with former Navy SEAL Raymond Dose and used his go-to method of “football play” action plotting to make the combat scenes feel authentic. Near the end of the movie, a siege plays out on screen, and part of planning that sequence was allowing Dose the freedom to bring in other veterans and run through the action as they would in an actual combat situation, then build the scene around them. This allowed Garland to bring truth to Civil War while also not falling into the trap of romanticizing war like many war movies do.

I’m glad you mentioned his name. I’m about to work with him again, and he is a really important part of this film. I also like and respect him very much, and we are hoping to work together again shortly.

The football play thing is something I do anyway. Storyboards are great; they work very well for certain kinds of films. In something like this, and in general when I’m doing action, what I want the actors and crew and all of us to understand is the flow of movement. Actually, football plays explain that more clearly than storyboards do. You look at a top-down view and you can see an arrow in these little circles, which are the people are moving through here and around. It’s a of suspending the thing in a clear way in everybody’s mind.

What I said to Ray in the sequence that you are referring to was, “How would a group of SEALs move from this position to that position? How would they get there?” They’ve got people shooting at them trying to stop them. That was the only input I had into that. He brought in some colleagues he served with, and they did their thing. And then what we did was function. I said, “Don’t worry about the camera, don’t even think about the camera. Don’t even think about the actors playing journalists. The journalists will then do what they’re supposed to do, which is record what you guys are doing. And then, as the crew, we will record the journalists recording you guys.”

And so what we had in the end was something in some ways like a controlled, contrived documentary sequence that then we could shoot. There’s dialogue and actions that were never in the script; never intended. That’s just Ray and his colleagues working together to do their thing, and then we are recording it.

About Civil War

A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.

Check back for our interview with Civil War stars Kristen Dunst, Caliee Spaney, and Wagner Moura.

Source: Screen Rant Plus