California and Texas teaming up was like "Hey! This movie won't offend either sides so come watch it." I just knew instantly.
Yeah... another way to look at it is that it just takes place in an AU. Just because our Texas and California right now are on different sides means that it could or should be in a film that may take place in the near future.
I will point out, I was going to save this for maybe a thicker later review post, but the film also references "Portland Maoists" and not in a positive light either. They also compare the current US President whose widely described as a Fascist to Mussolini and Ceaucescu.
I wasn't talking about that lol
I meant as a movie I knew it was going to try and dance around the whole political aspect of it. Critical Drinker was right. It neutered the film.
So... I actually posted about this on the very first page of this thread, but a while ago I saw a film with a very similar theme called
Bushwick. It literally thrust the main character, who was basically a bystander who just arrived in some outer borough of New York City out of a subway station and seeing literal urban chaos going on. Random, chaotic violence with explosions and molotov cocktails and shooting going on and whatnot and panic and the like, and the first hour of the film was just... what the hell is going on. It was engrossing stuff.
Halfway through the film, it explains what's going on. And my brain just turned off because I immediately was like... "Oh that's what's happening. I don't care anymore. It's so stupid."
And yet you want(ed) an explanation. This film, I feel handles it because its taken from the POV of these war journalists who have to cover something in a presumably non-biased manner. The people who are hung up on the world building I feel just want to expect something more so they can either approve or disapprove of it.
In a film like
Blood Diamond or
Harrisons Flowers, we don't really get too in depth with the political messaging regarding the real world events those are based off of. Sure to be fair, in the former there's an antagonistic plot pertaining to 'blood diamonds' but we never get into the particulars of why the Government and Rebels are fighting each other beyond apparently wanting blood diamonds, and that's barely a step above... not detailing why everyone is fighting ya know.
Here in Civil War, you get enough to know why people are fighting in a broad sense like those films. But it's not like Tom Hanks is narrating the intro of every episode of
Band of Brothers or
The Pacific.
Anyways, I feel that the film wasn't really neutered. It had plenty to say and the 'Sound and Fury' IMHO and other spectacles was a pretty strong message of what impact a Civil conflict would have in the United States. Seeing America looking like what you'd see West Africa or the Middle East look like while watching BBC World News or from foreign correspondents and the like is pretty significant IMHO and it'd only be curbed IMHO if it was taking a more partisan stand of "MAGAts/Alphabet people" did this.