After writing the likes of 28 Days Later and Sunshine, filmmaker Alex Garland stepped behind the camera to helm mind-bending sci-fi movies like Ex Machina and Annihilation.
In 2022, he freaked us all out with his horror movie, Men, and Garland will next take us to a post-apocalyptic future that looks all too real in A24's Civil War. Today, we have a new trailer for the movie which offers a better idea of what to expect from this glimpse into America's possible future.
The brief synopsis for Civil War simply describes it as, "An adrenaline-fueled thrill ride through a near-future fractured America balanced on the razor's edge." This sneak peek seems to suggest we'll follow a group of photojournalists who are covering the battle between the "United States," the "Western Forces of Texas and California."
Asked by Empire why Texas and California have united, Garland said, "That’s embedded in the film. I tend not to spell things out in films. I sometimes feel overly spoon-fed by cinema, and so I probably just react against that. That question, why Texas and California, is a question that I want the audience to ask."
Interestingly, despite Civil War being billed as a sci-fi movie, that's not a description the filmmaker himself appears to agree with.
"I’ve seen it described as sci-fi, but I don’t see it as sci-fi at all," Garland explained. "There’s no ‘sci’ in it, for a start. Journalists are vilified, often, by all sorts of different people. By politicians, by the public. It’s not necessarily a side of a political spectrum. And the truth is that if you want a government with checks and balances, you need journalists."
"In the inferences within the film," he adds, "one of them is an inference about journalists, and about how important they are."
We're definitely intrigued to see where Civil War takes us and, unfortunately, fully expect the movie to receive some backlash. That's inevitable when politics are involved and it's apparent from this preview that Garland isn't shying away from any of that here.
Civil War stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons, and Jonica T. Gibbs. The movie is set to be released in theaters on April 12 and will also play on IMAX screens.