And being subtle about what caused the movie's civil war is a big part of that
What the Civil War is really about
Alex Garland keeps getting the same question about his new movie, Civil War. It is an obvious question. Garland, best known for Ex Machina, Annihilation and Men, wrote and directed a film set in a near-future America, focusing on a civil war that has torn the United States apart – and yet he reveals very little about how that war came about, or what the warring sides represent. Instead, he tells an almost clinical procedural action story about photojournalists who cross the country to cover that war, without ever delving into the details. Why make a seemingly apolitical film about an American Civil War at a time when so many pundits are worried that we are on the brink of an actual civil war?
Garland disagrees with the basis of the question. "I don't see how it's abstract," he told Polygon in an interview ahead of the film's release. "[In Civil War] there is a fascist president who has dismantled the constitution enough to stay three terms, has removed one of the legal institutions that could threaten his position by doing so, and is causing violence and attacking his own citizen. It may be abstract, possibly, at first blush – but to me it does not stand up to any inspection at all, as far as the actual content of the film is concerned."
However, that description sounds much more direct than the film actually feels. The details above are all that viewers can only pick up from short, scattered lines of dialogue. As Garland says, the details "come in largely by inference," rather than being major focal points of the film.
