Civil War. Probably not the best movie to release in current year, but it does look pretty entertaining...
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Thursday, June 12, 2025 08:12
VIEWED: 3333
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Circling back to where I started: With Alex Garland as the writer, you could have predicted failure as soon as the movie was first announced. I call it Superdeterminism. The conspiracy behind the physical laws of the Universe wishes that Alex Garland's movies lose money, regardless of how unique and entertaining Garland is. It is in the numbers. Production Budget: $50,000,000 (worldwide box office is 0.7 times production budget)
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Have you heard of Superdeterminism? Physicists have.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism
It's no more or less crazy than anything I just typed up.
An Alex Garland Movie Comparison: Civil War (2024) vs. Men (2022) vs. Annihilation (2018) vs. Ex Machina (2015) vs. Dredd (2012) vs. Never Let Me Go (2010)
https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/custom-comparisons-extended/Civil-W
ar-(2024)/Men-(2022-United-Kingdom)/Annihilation/Ex-Machina/Dredd/Never-Let-Me-Go#tab=day_by_day_comparison
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I could have predicted had I known. As I said before, the only movie I was aware he had anything to do with was 28 Days Later and that made more than 10 times its budget. I wasn't even aware that I'd seen another of his movies until 2 days ago.
As soon as I realized the budget was $50 Million and it only grossed about $27 Million on opening weekend I knew it was going to be a failure.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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I would bet Alex Garland gets most of his screenplay themes from reading Daniel C. Dennett, which would explain why Garland is both entertaining and a money-loser for Hollywood. Who is Dennett? For one thing, he's died today:
Quote:That is from "Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, Dies at 82"
But Mr. Dennett, who never shirked controversy, often crossed swords with other famed scholars and thinkers.
An outspoken atheist, he at times seemed to denigrate religion. “There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” he said in a 2013 interview with The New York Times.
According to Mr. Dennett, the human mind is no more than a brain operating as a series of algorithmic functions, akin to a computer. To believe otherwise is “profoundly naïve and anti-scientific,” he told The Times.
For Mr. Dennett, random chance played a greater role in decision-making than did motives, passions, reasoning, character or values. Free will is a fantasy, but a necessary one to gain people’s acceptance of rules that govern society, he said.
Espousing his ideas in best sellers (the kind of books Alex Garland reads), he insisted that religion was an illusion, free will was a fantasy and evolution could only be explained by natural selection.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/books/daniel-dennett-dead.html?unlo
cked_article_code=1.lk0.m4tB.6tQB6YBXNj-l&smid=url-share
If you looked at the free books Daniel Dennett wrote, you are likely to see resources Alex Garland used to give weight to his screenplays.
https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Daniel+C.+Dennett
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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It's an interesting point of view.
I genuinely feel happy for people who think they've got it all figured out.
He knew where he wasn't going when he died.
Maybe he was wrong and he's still kicking around somewhere. It's a fate I'd wish on anyone who dies before we figure out how to upload everyone's consciousness somewhere before they die.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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‘Civil War’ has a stark warning for Washington
by Giancarlo Sopo | 04/19/24 3:30 PM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4605569-civil-war-has-a-stark-war
ning-for-washington/
In the 2014 film “Ex Machina,” director Alex Garland offered a chilling forecast of a future dominated by unchecked artificial intelligence. The groundbreaking sci-fi thriller prompted us to consider what happens when such technology is developed by an unscrupulous narcissist who sidesteps profound ethical quandaries. The film was both prescient and clear in its warnings: Be wary of concentrated power and take precautions to prevent such a catastrophe.
A decade later, “Civil War,” Garland’s latest dystopian offering, threads a similar cautionary tale, but with key differences. This time, the calamity is unfolding and its catalysts are largely unexplored.
The film’s vagueness has elicited mixed — yet strikingly similar — reactions across the political spectrum. On the left, critics accuse the film of “utter cowardice” and betraying audiences for not denouncing MAGA. Meanwhile, the right blasts the film for overlooking the “socialist, anarchist” roots of our divisions and its treatment of the media. Alas, both sides are essentially making the same argument by demanding that Hollywood vindicate their respective worldviews.
This isn’t just horseshoe theory. (Philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye invented Horseshoe Theory after observation of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union's joint invasion of Poland which started World War II.) Social science teaches us this need for validation, known as confirmation bias, is endemic to the human condition. In this vein, central to “Civil War” is its auteur’s belief that Republicans and Democrats are more alike than partisans care to admit. The film is more concerned with probing the underlying psychology, incentives and structures that could precipitate a national cataclysm than it is with scapegoating individual politicians or the ideologies they champion as intellectual scaffolding. This approach may not flatter our partisan biases, but it offers a more truthful — and cinematically superior — alternative to more simplistic counterparts.
Like William Wyler’s portrayal of post–World War II America and Sergio Leone’s reinvention of the Western, “Civil War” follows the tradition of incisive commentaries on American life filtered through a foreign lens. The British Garland, himself the son of a newsman, seems especially interested in political journalism’s role in our decay. The film is hardly coy about this — it begins and ends at the nexus of media and politics in Washington. If Garland were to expose the Beltway any more explicitly, he would literally have to hold up a mirror to it in a cameo.
These bookends invite us to scrutinize the role of the “Grift Industrial Complex” — the sordid ecosystem of fame-first politicians and their networks of online influencers and clickbait media platforms — in eroding our politics and culture. With the help of social media companies, those at the top profit handsomely off the paranoia, resentment and pervasive sense of victimhood they cultivate among their audiences.
Their exploitation is particularly troubling, not only because of the psychological harm it inflicts, but because a victimhood mentality inherently requires an aggressor. Viewing the other half of the country as enemies rather than as neighbors with differing opinions sets the stage for animosity.
One of the film’s most critical insights is that hatred leads to asking others “what kind of Americans” they are. In fairness, the nation may already be lost if significant numbers despise their countrymen on account of a few grifters. But you don’t have to believe we’re on the brink of an armed internal conflict to see the prudence in pumping the brakes.
In addition to muting, unfollowing and unsubscribing, a critical first step is recognizing that the Grift Industrial Complex thrives on the demise of institutions. This underscores the urgent need for people of good conscience within ostensibl
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Overall, that's an excellent article and honestly just what I wanted to hear about Civil War when I first saw the trailer.
You might remember in the OP I stated this:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
My hope with this movie is that it's another "The Hunt". Something that pisses off both sides equally and nobody ends up seeing it.
So I love reading his take when he says:
Quote:
The film’s vagueness has elicited mixed — yet strikingly similar — reactions across the political spectrum. On the left, critics accuse the film of “utter cowardice” and betraying audiences for not denouncing MAGA. Meanwhile, the right blasts the film for overlooking the “socialist, anarchist” roots of our divisions and its treatment of the media. Alas, both sides are essentially making the same argument by demanding that Hollywood vindicate their respective worldviews.
This is exactly what happened to The Hunt, except it's on a larger scale since The Hunt got flushed right down the Covid toilet and literally no one saw it.
It's going to fail, and it's going to be misunderstood by most people who watch it, let alone everybody who just refuses to watch it because somebody online influenced them out of seeing it. It's a movie that doesn't hold your hand and trusts you that you can spend 90 minutes outside of the comfort of your box and think about something that doesn't exist merely to validate your own point of view.
And now that I read this article, I think I might have gotten exactly what I wanted. I think I have a really good movie to watch soon.
My apologies to Garland and the Studio for the flop though. You had to know that $50 Million was too much money to spend on that. Those contracts may have all been signed way back before everybody else caught up to reality that Hollywood was choosing to die by suicide and finally some people had to step in to intervene. Bummer for all of those involved who saw a much rosier picture of future 2024's economy and the overall health of Hollywood as a whole if that's how it went down.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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I don't watch as many films in cinema these days but I would be tempted to watch this movie
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Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
I don't watch as many films in cinema these days but I would be tempted to watch this movie
I know I will be watching it. You'll probably get to it before I do though, I'd imagine. I'm curious to see what you think of it if you do.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Positive reviews from TheWrap, Chicago Sun-Times but it is controversial some however love it and some really dislike it
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I'll let you know what I think when I see it. Not sure if I'm going to wait to watch it with my dad or not since we've already got a pretty big list of things we want to see and we haven't been working on that backlog since he's been really busy recently. Things should slow down soon and we can chip away at it though.
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Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President. 
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Cheap and Low Budget?
At least to dream: a film about "Putin's death" was shot in Poland
https://eadaily.com/en/news/2024/11/27/at-least-to-dream-a-film-about-
putins-death-was-shot-in-poland
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