Alex Garland‘s 2024 dystopian thriller Civil War has been going viral in the wake of the Democrats winning the Texas governor’s mansion and a U.S. Senate seat for the first time in decades.
In the film set in the near future, California and Texas were partnered up and were called the “Western Forces.” The states were resisting a tyrannical president amid a civil war tearing the country apart.
The alliance between a traditionally entrenched blue state and a red state wasn’t explicitly explained in the film, leading to a lot of head scratching, confusion and even some outright criticism among viewers.
But given senator-elect James Talarico and governor-elect Gina Hinojosa’s victories last night, people are giving the film’s premise another look.
One user on X posted the divided U.S. map from the film and wrote, “You all owe Alex Garland an apology.”
An editor for The Bulwark wrote, “Me: CIVIL WAR was intentionally vague to the point of ideological incoherence to avoid mapping on to current culture war nonsense. Alex Garland: I literally foresaw California and Texas rising against the populist fraud in the White House.”
Amid the film’s release, Garland explained at South by Southwest that he thought the film’s premise alone was enough to lead viewers to a conclusion about why the states were allied.
“I personally think questions are answered,” Garland said. “There is a fascist president who smashed the Constitution and attacked [American] citizens. And that is a very clear, answered statement. If you want to think about why Texas and California might be allied, and put aside their political differences, the answer would be implicit in that. So I think answers are there but you have to step to it and not expect to be spoon fed these things. It makes assumptions about the audience.”
“The warnings [about the country falling apart] all out there, but for some reason they don’t get any traction,” Garland added. “[I wondered,] ‘Is it the polarization? Is it just that we are not able to absorb any information because of the position we’ve already taken?’ Hence, making a movie that pulls the polarization out of it.”
Civil War starred Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Sonoya Mizuno and followed a group of journalists covering the final days of a second civil war.
