Into this furnace step four journalists, the hard-bitten Lee (Kirsten Dunst), the charming Joel (Wagner Moura), the world-weary Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and the novice Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Their efforts to document what is almost certain to be the complete collapse of the U.S. test each of them in ways that challenge their emotional and physical stamina as well as their devotion to their jobs. Civil War doesn’t explain much about how the country got to this terrible place; the catastrophe has already happened, and Garland’s film asks, “We’re here. Do you like it? What will you do about it?”
Has Apocalyptic Cinema Changed?
Civil War is, in some ways, just the latest movie to predict doom and disaster for the U.S. if not the world at large (although the global ripple effect of the U.S. and its economy drowning in a morass of authoritarianism and sectarian war would no doubt be severe). Audiences have seemingly always flocked to see films in which ordinary people struggle to survive calamity, going back to a 1901 British short film called Fire! Tidal waves slammed into New York City in 1933’s Deluge while 1936’s San Francisco depicted the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake in the city of the same name in spectacular, horrifying fashion.
Since then we’ve experienced big screen disasters natural, supernatural, and geopolitical: more tidal waves, meteors, quakes, tsunamis, nuclear conflagrations, terrorist attacks, giant monsters rampaging, alien invasions, global pandemics, and, of course, zombie plagues. But lately, things feel different. Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film Contagion was a realistic look at the worldwide spread of a new virus that was chilling in both its portrayal of societal breakdown and its scientific accuracy. It also rather shockingly sent popular stars like Kate Winslet and Gwyneth Paltrow to grim onscreen deaths without a relatively triumphant ending to ease us out of the theater (certainly more fantastical TV shows like The Walking Dead also picked up on that thread, offing main characters with barely a moment’s notice).
“If you watch the movies about tsunamis or earthquakes or volcanoes, there’s usually someone who I call the everyman who somehow is the unlikely hero,” says Dr. Christina Scott, Associate Professor of Social Psychology at California’s Whittier College. “He usually is white, estranged from his spouse, and has kids that he has to finally step up and save… I think maybe the movies are now being made differently. We’re not getting that kind of satisfying ending where the estranged husband gets back with his wife and his children, who love him now, and he’s going to find happiness and peace. And maybe that’s part of the post-pandemic response that we really aren’t able to find those endings as satisfying.”
Do Audiences Want Fantasy or Reality?
Without going into spoilers or details, Civil War certainly doesn’t end with the status quo, let alone the United States as we’ve known it, restored as everyone settles back down for the next Super Bowl. The spectacle of Jan. 6 and its violent attempt to overthrow a free and fair election, combined with the still-fresh memory of the pandemic bringing the country to its knees may now make it impossible for films like this to offer any kind of even halfway positive resolution.
“I do wonder whether audience appetite for fictional apocalypses has been damped by real-world events since 2016, though of course what’s going on is always going to inspire writers and filmmakers to tell stories about these things,” says novelist and film critic Kim Newman, author of Apocalypse Movies: End of the World Cinema. “I suspect that the defining horror franchises of our era are the Purge and Quiet Place films—the one pre-Trump, the other pre-pandemic—because they caught the mood of big horrors, the culture wars and lockdown, a little in advance of everyone having to cope with them.”
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