Civil War director Alex Garland gives insight into his creative process and details how football plays were useful when planning his latest movie. The upcoming action-thriller follows a group of journalists as they traverse through a fictional second Civil War set in the near future. The film stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons, and Stephen McKinley Henderson.
In an interview with Screen Rant, filmmaker Alex Garland detailed how football plays became integral when planning the film’s climactic siege sequence. The director said his use of football plays was necessary to properly illustrate the flow of movement in an action scene to his cast and crew. He asked collaborator Raymond Dose, a former Navy SEAL, to assist him in this maneuver. Garland and Dose were able to achieve a sequence that should be both captivating and realistic. Read Garland’s full quote below:
Civil War has earned its first wave of reviews and is currently ranked the highest of all the films Garland’s directed so far. At the time of this writing, Civil War has a 93% on review-aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes with 40 reviews. This suggests the movie should top out at the low nineties or high eighties. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the upcoming film is being applauded for its unsettling concept and gripping handling of its violent, captivating themes.
With the rest of his filmography as proof, Garland is no stranger to violent imagery alongside themes full of complexity and depth, with Civil War as no exception. In particular, its dystopian premise has led to many discussions about its implications for the real world, almost as a forewarning in light of the current political climate. The Civil War trailers also left questions about Texas and California’s unusual pairing as allies, further leaving intrigue about the movie’s events.
After insinuating in an interview with The Guardian, the movie became even more significant as it could have been spelled as the final directorial movie under Garland’s belt. However, that comment has since been clarified that the director is simply taking “a break from directing for the foreseeable future.”
With the A24 movie being one of the most ambitious, it’s no surprise that the director took the time to focus on the technical aspects to give it the realistic nature of the dire event. The approach will seemingly pay off in theaters when audiences see the anticipated siege sequence. When combined with the subject matter being dangerously close to the U.S.’s political strife, Civil War is shaping up to be a disturbing moviegoing experience that sticks with the viewer.