From Ryan Cordaro

There’s always this place on social media that a director’s entire work can be discredited if they make even one bad thing in their career, especially within different fandoms. The biggest example of this is Taika Waititi with Thor: Love and Thunder, when even after winning an Oscar, an entire fanbase can turn on you if they don’t like something you make that’s a part of their franchise. Alex Garland seems to be in this position too after his last movie, Men, which was also with A24. That was more divisive than anything, but I’m personally firmly on the hate train with it. To me, though, that doesn’t discredit that the guy made Ex Machina and Annihilation, two of my personal favorite sci-fi movies of the 2010s. That doesn’t even include his writing credits, which includes 28 Days Later and Sunshine.

That’s why I’m still relatively excited for Civil War, the very on-the-nose new film from Garland. Set in the near future, Civil War follows a group of journalists that travel across America during a quickly accelerating civil war that engulfs the entire nation. Not much else is known about the plot, but I think you could definitely put together what the film is at least attempting to say. It’s worth pointing out that this is coming out during an election year, and if the discussion around the movie hasn’t already been relatively annoying, it’ll only grow once we get closer to the film. Another interesting tidbit is that this will end up being A24’s biggest production to date, taking the title from last year’s Beau is Afraid. A lot of money is being sunk into this, so for the sake of wanting movies to do well, I hope Civil War ends up doing okay.

The film stars Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog, Spider-Man), Wagner Moura (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, The Gray Man), Stephen McKinley Henderson (Beau Is Afraid, the upcoming Dune: Part Two), Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, the upcoming Alien: Romulus), Jesse Plemons (Killers of the Flower Moon, I’m Thinking of Ending Things), and Nick Offerman (The Last of Us, Devs).

Civil War hits theaters on April 12th, 2024.

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