CIVIL WAR Movie Review - Transcript

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Shownotes
0:00 Introduction
1:04 The Road Trip Film Analysis
3:03 Acting in Documentaries
16:52 Anachronistic Photography Methods
21:12 Lack of Character Arc and Trauma Exploration
25:14 Sacrifice and Coldness in Relationships
27:35 Combat Realism and Weapon Source
28:06 Division in the US Military
29:05 Loss of Communication
30:07 Unrealistic Unification of Left and Right
30:54 Lack of Realism in Combat Scenes
35:37 Lack of Strategic Warfare
38:39 Moral Ambiguity in Political Violence
41:24 Consequences of War Crimes
46:45 Critique of Government-Corporate Power
51:39 Escalation of Violence and Future Implications
54:58 Lack of Trial for Political Enemies
56:17 Casting and Character Analysis

Long Summary

I and my guests dive into a detailed movie review of a film titled Civil War, directed by an individual who transitioned from a leftist to a centrist perspective. Our discussion centers on the absence of character backstory, the director's political evolution, and the portrayal of political unrest within the movie, prompting reflections on governmental functions and blind spots. We analyze the characters' visual presentation, alongside the director's stance on payment inequalities in the film industry, fostering a nuanced examination of societal issues. Furthermore, we deliberate on the authenticity of female character portrayals in the movie, highlighting behavioral inconsistencies and questioning the necessity of professional photographers in an era where cell phones capture real-time events. Our dialogue touches upon intricate topics such as trauma depiction, the portrayal of combat in unrealistic ways, and the characters' emotional depth or lack thereof, shedding light on themes of sacrifice and the exploration of interpersonal connections within the film. Ultimately, we contemplate the implications of differing weapons regulations across states, adding a layer of complexity to our reflections. During a segment featuring the team, we venture into discussions about the realism surrounding political disarray and civil conflict depicted in the movie set in the present day. Our exploration extends to the feasibility of accessing advanced weaponry amidst chaos, the representation of various political factions, and adherence – or lack thereof – to established war conventions within the film's narrative. Ethical dilemmas regarding the glorification of violence, combat strategies, and the consequences of war crimes also emerge, underscoring the societal impact of cinematic violence on audience perceptions of conflict. As the conversation progresses, we focus on the film's depiction of political violence, the absence of moral discernment within its storyline, and the glorification of extreme actions. Critiquing the normalization of violence and the lack of repercussions portrayed in the movie, we deliberate on the potential long-term effects of such narratives. By dissecting the characters' roles and the director's stylistic choices, we unravel the underlying messages and potential political commentaries embedded within the film, culminating in a call for thoughtful analysis of its thematic components and societal implications.

Introduction

Stefan:
[0:00] All right, well, good afternoon, everybody. So we're doing a little bit of a different show.
We're doing a movie review of the movie called Civil War by leftist, now centrist, director.
And it's a pretty interesting film. Just quickly around the table, if you'd just like to say hi and whether you think people should watch the movie. I think you should.
Myself, I think it's an interesting movie. I think there's a lot to talk about.
And what do you guys think?

Team:
[0:25] Yeah, I think it's worth a watch compared to what's out there.
Hi, I'm Jared Hi, I'm Yuri and I think it's worth a watch too I found the ending kind of depressing, but, it's worth a watch, it wasn't very long Yeah.

Stefan:
[0:41] Yuri didn't like it that the fascist got killed obviously he's pro-fascist clear.

Team:
[0:46] Clear half Ukrainian, half Russian a lot of internal struggle going on James?
This is James uh, and I've got some mixed feelings about the movie, uh, but I think it's, um, I think it's worth a watch. I think there's a lot to think about, a lot to talk about.

The Road Trip Film Analysis
Stefan:
[1:04] So there's going to be spoilers here just to be aware if you want to go watch the movie and listen to this afterwards, but I don't, because it's not a plot driven movie, it's a road trip.
It's a road trip, like easy rider, like even apocalypse now where you go from vignette to vignette, And it's an exploration of, obviously, a morally chaotic universe, an ultra-violent universe.

Stefan:
[1:31] It's funny, after nagging the guy for telling me, you've got to make it worth my while to watch Fallout, I did watch a Fallout or two, the new series, which I'll get into another time.
But it's the same sort of ultra-violent universe of chaos and bloodshed.
And it's just going from strange situation to violent and strange situation with the culmination, which we'll get to at the end. So it's a road trip.
It's a spectacle it's absolutely not about character you know one of the things that i look for when i'm looking for characters in a movie is do they have last names or any outside relationships whatsoever they have a father do they have a mother siblings anything and it's to me you know i remember when i was writing my novel the present i hesitated for like two days before i I wrote the scene with Oliver and his family because there are like 95 characters in that scene, which is pretty tough to do from a writing standpoint.
And it was even tougher to do from an audiobook standpoint because everyone has to have their own voice and mannerism and so on. So I always look for that.

Stefan:
[2:37] Arlo had his family. Rachel had her family.
Everybody has relations and a history and other people in their lives.
Aunt Crystal had her history with the Count, and she, of course, was the sister to Rachel's mother.
So I always try to look for, is there a last name?
Is there an accent? Is there any sense of history? Is there any sense that…

Acting in Documentaries
Stefan:
[3:04] When you see a documentary, it always bugs me about acting, that when you see someone in a documentary and you imagine an actor trying to be as good and natural as someone in a documentary, it's impossible, right?

Stefan:
[3:15] I was watching a documentary, if you've seen these ones where somebody's being interviewed by the cops, and you think if you were to write that scene and get actors to do it, they'd just never do it as well.
So I'm looking for a movie where you come in and people are living their lives and you're just filming this portion of it, right?
That to me is when a story is great.
When you're just, you know, you can imagine, like when I was an actor, we had to always talk about backstory, right?
Because you don't just materialize when you come in the scene.
You're a guy who's had a life and you come in and you do this scene and it's just a little vignette out of a larger portion of your life.
So I look for backstory. I look for relationships.

Stefan:
[3:55] And man, unless I missed a whole bunch, there was nothing.
The three main characters, which is the senior war photographer, Lee, the Kirsten Dunst character.
And then there was the interviewer who basically did nothing but wait to ask the president questions at the end and didn't really get to do that at all.
And then there was the i mean lord lord above when i first saw her i thought she was like 15 or 16 years old the the young young girl and then she seemed to get a little older or look a little older as she sort of moved through the movie but i'm like okay who who brings a child to a war zone like who brings a child on this kind of trip it didn't it didn't make any it didn't make any sense fundamentally but i guess they had to have the younger person there to make the older woman look wiser and more generous.

Stefan:
[4:46] And so, yeah, so none of them have, I don't even remember the last names.
They didn't seem to have any backstory. They didn't have any relationships.
And they were just atomized people there to serve.

Stefan:
[5:00] You know, it's there to serve what? It's not a big, uplifting moral story.
It's not a tragedy. It's certainly not a comedy, obviously.
So what is the movie for? And that's always my big question. To make a movie is huge.
It's monstrous. Like the amount of time, effort, energy, scouting locations, hiring the actors, contract negotiations, getting all the right people, the post-production, the advertising, the marketing.
It's just a monstrous endeavor. ever this guy started writing this movie like four years ago four years of his life what's it for i mean for.

Team:
[5:32] Me right.

Stefan:
[5:32] The what's it for is the big question to answer sorry go ahead.

Team:
[5:35] I see me and i maybe i'm just too cynical about this it was for the clicks for the attention for the money and like and that kind of backs up your point when you put this much time and effort into it it's got to pay off and so it's whatever decision could get the most uh you know attention the most revenue at the end of the day you don't have to have to this day you don't have to have a coherent story to make money.
It doesn't have to be moral. It doesn't have to be ethical.
You just got to push the right buttons of the populace. It's a large contrivance, and art is dead, is my simple and cynical take on the movie.

Stefan:
[6:07] I think he started about four years ago.
I assume this had something to do with January 6th and talk of insurrection and so on.
But the movie, because there was no backstory even to the Civil War.
So something was mentioned about the president in his third term.
Now, I don't know if the president's third term, was it described as, well, the Civil War was a consequence of the third term, or did he take a third term because there was a Civil War or I assume there was significant civil unrest before the Civil War?
So was it he just, banana republic style he grabbed his third term and then there was all this unrest and violence or because it just seemed to get mentioned in passing and i wasn't sure if you guys have any sense of the.

Team:
[6:53] Causality of that so yeah that's one of the things that bothered me a lot and uh and so i was driving home and like trying to piece that put that together from what i had and based on lee's age she said she was in college when she took this this picture of the antifa massacres which i'll i'll get back to you um yeah we don't know whether that's.

Stefan:
[7:12] Antifa being massacred or Antifa doing the massacre, but that was the kind of bridge straddling that drove me crazy in the movie that it's just California and Texas are both allies. It's like, why?
Very different politically. Anyway, go ahead.

Team:
[7:25] And so I did, I looked at a conversation some people were having online about this. Like, was it explained?
Did I just miss it? Was it me? And like, you do see, I do see two sides of it.
It seems like in general, people are like, it was left vague for a money grab, you know?
And that's the general conclusion that I see for a lot of people reviewing the film.
But then you do see occasionally someone came in and they're like, no, no, obviously, you know, the reason Texas and California were allies is that, you know, this guy took power.
This fascist took power and they put aside their differences to get rid of this greater threat, you know, to the Constitution and democracy and the republic.
Like, oh, God, I know that's not obvious at all and not realistic at all.
To me. And so anyway, all right. So back into the timeline of what happened.
So she mentions the Antifa massacres. So what I could the best I could put together because nothing is nailed down. It's totally by design.

Stefan:
[8:19] Yeah.

Team:
[8:20] Yeah. Is that you have this quote unquote Antifa massacre, which based on the bias they put towards the president's at the time being compared to fascists.
He's compared to Ceausescu.
He's compared to Gaddafi. He's compared to Mussolini, most importantly.
But now I could see someone saying like Ceausescu was on the left, blah, blah, blah. It's like they're all on the left.
Fascism is – yeah, that's a whole other tangent. tangent but yeah so he's the president's compared to fascists and that he disbanded the fbi um and those were supposed to be the the disbanding of the fbi and the president using airstrikes on civilians were supposed to be the impetus for the civil war to where ostensibly left and right in the united states put aside their differences and go to war uh against the federal government which to me i'm like absolutely that just doesn't make sense to me at all like total balkanization I could see like total breaking into smaller localized groups.
I could see that like some unified keeping the Fed together.
The Fed is not loved that much for that to happen.

Stefan:
[9:25] Well, like, you know, so and I thought maybe if it was California and Texas that it maybe had something to do with the border crisis, but then they threw in Florida, didn't Florida later join or if I remember that rightly.
So it just seemed like a big mishmash. And here's the thing, too. So the filmmaker said, look, you know, I wanted to make this movie about increased polarization.
And he said, you know, I've now become a centrist. Right. He said he used to consider myself on the left. Now I've become a centrist. But here's the funny thing.

Stefan:
[9:53] It's sort of like in the sex question, the only violence that can be conceived of is male violence, right, to cover up the violence that women commit against men, 50% of domestic abuse cases, and significantly more than men, against children.
And so I always look for that, right, which is, okay, so if you're a centrist, then you should equally criticize the left and the right, which I think is valid.
There's things to criticize on both sides. Now, this guy, though, as a centrist, he said in an interview, and sorry, this is outside the movie, so I'm totally cheating in a way, but he said in an interview, he's like, oh, I got to think about what's the purpose of government.
He says, ah, well, the purpose of government, you see, is to protect us from fascism, right?
The purpose of the government is to protect us from fascism.
Now even if we say fascism is on the right right even though it was the national socialist german workers party and uh mussolini was a committed marxist in his youth and so on right so even if we ignore all of that leftist stuff and we say okay fascism is the tyranny of the right.

Stefan:
[10:58] If the only fascist if the only tyranny you can conceive of is on the right you're not a centrist you're not even close right so the if he it would be like saying the only purpose of the government is to protect you from communism it's like okay well then what about fascism it's like well you know you could say that there aren't thousands of fascists uh theoreticians in american universities but there's certainly thousands of avowed marxists so you know it's a bit more of a risk or danger or whatever but he can't conceive of tyranny that doesn't come from the right even and i think this was pretty clear in the movie and it's clear in the interviews he gives about his political perspectives and this is just a wild blind spot i mean is there tyranny on the right yes if we ascribe fascism to the right absolutely is there tyranny on the left yes there is right and the the body count of tyranny on the left and socialism communism Communism is far higher than, than fascism, but he can't conceive of tyranny from the left.
At least I couldn't see anything to do with that. And that's just a wild blind spot to me.

Team:
[12:09] Yeah, I think it's a total blind spot. And I, I wonder like, do, do I grant him his self-assessment that like he's trying to be, you know, more towards the center or do I like look at his actions and like, well, you just, you're ignorant of, of your, of your, that you're still on the left. You're still wildly biased, you know?

Stefan:
[12:26] Right. Now, the main character, Lee…
Was a kind of an enigma and uh jared before the show you were saying you know she looks terrible and so on it's like well but she's i think isn't she in her mid-40s or something like that i mean i think that's just how women look she's.

Team:
[12:45] Just early 40s right now i think i looked at it yes early.

Stefan:
[12:47] 40s okay so yeah between between jared and me yeah it was.

Team:
[12:50] A shocking contrast like compared to like the last time i saw her in a movie was probably like a oh god probably not even a movie like just a advertisement.

Stefan:
[12:58] For spider-man she was the one complaining that that she didn't get paid as much as the guy who played spider-man in the movie spider-man it's like it's it's spider-man it's not spider-man's girlfriend of course he's and plus he had to be paid even if he was paid a dollar an hour for all the time he spent at the gym to be a spider-man ab boy it's like he's got to be paid more i know it's just i just thought it's kind of funny you know i'm in a movie about hamlet i'm playing ophelia i can't believe i'm not getting paid as much as hamlet i'm.

Team:
[13:30] Playing hamlet's father's ghost.

Stefan:
[13:32] Yeah literally the play is called hamlet the movie's called spider-man anyway i just thought it was kind of funny but so so she she just looks like a normal woman in her 40s to me i don't know i don't think they did anything to age her particularly she.

Team:
[13:46] Wasn't wearing much makeup was she i i didn't well.

Stefan:
[13:49] You have to wear some because the lighting i mean I mean, unless you're outdoors, right? The lighting makes you look kind of weird.

Team:
[13:54] But she wasn't done up, is my point.

Stefan:
[13:55] She wasn't done up. So, you know, it's funny how we get so used to all of this plastic Photoshop, massive amounts of foreskin makeup cream nonsense that, you know, here's a woman in full sunlight.
Oh my God, she looks terrible. It's like, no, no, she looks like a woman.
I mean, and I've noticed this myself, right? If I'm in the studio, the lighting is, I guess, fairly flattering and all of that.
But you know when I break into laughter if I'm doing an outside podcast, it's like hello crater face It's just you know how you look with that kind of lighting But what if there's a couple of things I found absolutely wild about her um, The isolation, the atomization, no history, no friends, no family. And what's the point?
What's the point? It seems weirdly anachronistic to think that you need professional photojournalists in a place where everyone has a cell phone.
And, you know, isn't that how we get all of this kind of stuff?
Like, I was trying to think of the last time I saw breaking news, you know, where it wasn't someone's cell phone footage.
I mean, it's always someone's cell phone footage. So the idea that you need these professional photographers to go and document everything seemed a bit odd to me. War photography doesn't seem to be much of a thing.
It seems to be mostly homegrown and cell phones because it's way more efficient, right? Right.

Team:
[15:14] You have to be there.

Stefan:
[15:15] Go ahead.

Team:
[15:16] There was also this thing, just a minor detail, but the girl, the young girl, her photographer, she's actually using a film camera as opposed to Kirsten Dunst's character, Lee.
Uh, using a digital camera. So it's like this sort of going back to develop all.

Stefan:
[15:35] Of these in a.

Team:
[15:36] Dark room and then print them and then upload them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I think, uh, I think when they were in the stadium, uh, the, uh, Jesse, the young girl mentioned that they had no service at all.
So I don't know if that was throughout the movie or if it was just in the stadium itself.
Um, yeah.

Stefan:
[15:55] Okay. But if they have no service, how is she going to get her photos anywhere?

Team:
[16:00] Everywhere that's a good well wi-fi in the hotel which has power outages.

Stefan:
[16:03] Well but if you have wi-fi in the hotel you don't need a dark room to develop your photographs and and and none of them shot any movies because all they had oh right right all they had was clicks right they had they had like click click still images and i mean these cameras of course on sd cards and all of that can all do movies and they don't right so it just seemed a bit anachronistic to me but what it allowed them to do i guess was to put the cool stills which they kept jamming in uh into the movie but it just seemed like that to me wasn't explained like why why would you actually use a physical camera, rather than live streaming i guess they can't live stream if there's no cell service, but even when they get to the wi-fi at the hotel they have to do something with

Anachronistic Photography Methods
Stefan:
[16:50] their images right Where are they putting, where are they posting their images?
Nobody's writing anything.

Team:
[16:54] Yeah.

Stefan:
[16:55] Where are they posting their images? Well, how are they making any money to do these things?
You'd have to sell these images to newspapers who would then have to write articles and there's, and you've got a writer with you.
So why isn't he writing everything up, including your photos and sharpen it around?

Team:
[17:09] Hmm. Well, no, maybe they had a budget going into it because they, they did claim they're working for Reuters.
Who's who knows if that was just a cover, but maybe they had a working budget to, to go out on this, you know, this adventure. venture.

Stefan:
[17:21] Well, but what did the writer do? He smoked some drugs and he cried by a helicopter.

Team:
[17:27] I mean, that's my understanding of a writer, a journalist.

Stefan:
[17:31] I guess so. Maybe he's having a bit of a writer's block. But yeah, I mean, like they're literally taking photos.
If there's a contract, they should find a place to upload them, which they never do.
The writer should be writing about it, which he never does. Now, again, you can say, well, all of this is implied and so on.
But I'm willing to give movies a lot, right? Okay, it's the Matrix, you know, or whatever it is.
Star Trek, they're in space. Okay, I get that.
I'll give movies a lot. But if stuff just starts to make no sense at all, then I'm like, okay, then I'm willing to suspend disbelief, but not sanity, if that makes sense. So some of this stuff didn't make much sense.
So there's no particular character arc other than, I don't know, maybe the young ingenue photographer then becomes a hardened, battle veteran photographer like who cares right so she gets better at her job the idea that she's worships this woman right so she worships the young girl jesse worships the older photojournalist lee she worships this woman and has studied everything she's ever done but apparently doesn't even know that you're supposed to wear a flak jacket when you go to combat you know this makes no sense to me at all my hero is arnold schwarzenegger i have no idea that you need to lift weights to get muscular it's like what are you talking like it didn't make any sense well i And I.

Team:
[18:48] Thought it was really, oh, sorry, go ahead. I thought it was really weird that the opening scene, you see this bomb, this explosion, there's dead bodies everywhere and they don't hide a thing.
And this young woman's there and she's not like, and you could say it's like shell shock, you know, but she's not like responding.
She's not traumatized to that scene in a moment. Okay, cool. Grant it. All right.
Now, but then the very next day, she, and the next day she's, she's talks to Jesse. So it's not like she was just shell-shocked in the moment and then it hits her the next day.
She's fine the next day because she returns the yellow vest.
Or sorry, she talks to Lee.

Stefan:
[19:24] And she's chatty and charming and all that, right?

Team:
[19:26] Yeah. And then later on, there's this experience where the guy's tortured or something like that.
And that's when all of a sudden, she's like, oh, you know, it has kind of a breakdown. And it's like, what?
So the explosion of people didn't hit you. But just seeing someone tortured was the thing that did it?

Stefan:
[19:44] I can never, ever, ever get over the fact that writers never deal with PTSD.
You could say you know maybe like born on the 4th of july right the whole movie's about in a sense ptsd but people in in every show i i i've ever watched again maybe there's some if it's specifically about you know john voight coming home or if it's specifically about a soldier's trauma post-war but the only reason they deal with trauma is if it's leftist saying well if you if you fight communists you're gonna your soul will be destroyed forever like it's a curse they put put on people who fight communists right but or i suppose there was the crying scene from tom hanks in saving private ryan but then people go through the most absolutely appalling stuff like you've literally seen people blown to bits you've been showered with blood and and you're fine like they just don't well because i think that they're writing to escape their own trauma but they just don't process what trauma does to people which is kind of weird right because they're saying look look, civil war is really bad.
This is anti-war, anti-violence. It's like, well, but if nobody suffers any trauma, what are you trying to say? It's really bad. Do you suffer trauma from it?
No. Well, then how bad can it be?

Team:
[21:02] I think that hits the nail on the head. This is politics. This is bread and circuses. And it's all about avoid trauma.
Because if people actually dealt with trauma, they'd be uninterested in politics.

Lack of Character Arc and Trauma Exploration
Stefan:
[21:13] So Lee goes through the movie, barely taking any photographs.
The older woman yep okay that's number one oh yeah number two um the sorry for the profanity but it's in the movie it's in the movie man it's not my fault so at one point jesse tells lee to fuck off and it's kind of half joking or whatever but like fuck off or the fuck you are or whatever, something like that, right?
So this is a girl, she looks again, she looks 16, this is a girl who hero-worships this older woman.

Stefan:
[21:53] There's just no way that she's just going to tell her to fuck off within a couple of days of beating her.
Like, she hero-worships this woman to the point where she can barely breathe in her presence, she's not going to swear at her. It's just things like that just really bothered me.
Just really, really bothered me. Because don't set up this whole hero-worship thing, first of all make the girl retarded to the point where she doesn't even know she needs a flak jacket and then tell her glorious mentor that she's modeled her entire life after and that she's willing to risk her life to spend time with, she's just going to tell her to fuck off like that doesn't make any sense, makes no sense, and I, you know, at some point I can say well I guess it's a quirk of human nature or whatever but at some point it's just like no it's just shitty writing, it's just terrible writing as a whole.
So she they go through all of this stuff, she barely takes any photographs, then she's supposed to be this battle-hardened woman with all this experience and cynicism and objectivity and so on. And then she has a complete mental breakdown.

Stefan:
[22:49] When they're not even in any particular danger, like towards the end when they're going into the White House, she has this total, she's sobbing up against it.
She's like literally behind a concrete barricade.
She's in the least danger. She doesn't have a breakdown when the guy with the orange sunglasses is shooting everyone around, right? And they're pretty fine after that.
But then, so why? Like, this makes no sense.
If she's this battle-hardened, then she's dealt with it however she's dealt with it.
And so the idea that when it's almost over and she's safe at least in that moment right she's obviously in a dangerous environment but she's like she's behind a bulletproof concrete barrier and then she has this breakdown and and she cries and and the young girl is fine it just didn't make uh really any sense to me and then the very end again spoiler blah blah blah so So, the young girl who we're supposed to, you know, she's come along, she's become wise.
So, they're shooting down the hallways in the White House, right?
And the young girl, Jessie, what does she do?
She jumps right into the middle of the hallway.

Team:
[23:56] Right.

Stefan:
[23:57] To take photographs. Why? She can just put her camera around the corner and take photographs.
But when there's active shooting up and down the corridor, the young girl jumps into the middle of the corridor to take a photo.
Now, that's a straight up death wish, right?
And then, of course, the older character, Lee, jumps in front and takes the bullet and so on, right?

Stefan:
[24:23] And so this is the death of the main character, who is the giant mentor for this young girl, whose death the young girl has totally caused, right?
I mean, if I caused the death of my foundational moral hero by being completely suicidal myself, if I caused the death of, I don't know, Aristotle or whoever's a core moral hero of mine, I mean, I would feel absolutely appalled.
What happens? So Lee goes down to the ground.
Dies. And they basically step on her face to run past her, and she's never mentioned again.
They don't even have much of a shot of her lying, smoking body lying in the hallway.
So they blow away that the young woman causes the absolute death of her mentor by being completely foolish and ridiculous and suicidal.

Sacrifice and Coldness in Relationships
Stefan:
[25:14] And then the hero woman gets blown away.
There's no death scene. There's no sorrow. There's no self-recrimination.
They just literally run down the hallway.
To get the next photo. Now that's interesting because this woman sacrificed her life for this young woman who doesn't care about her at all.

Team:
[25:33] Yeah. And she takes pictures of it. She's snapping as the bullets are flying through her.

Stefan:
[25:38] Right. Oh yeah, yeah. Because she's taking pictures as the girl falls, as Lee falls down towards her, right?

Team:
[25:43] And there was a bit of a premonition to that where earlier in the film, she's a young woman.

Stefan:
[25:48] Yes.

Team:
[25:48] She asked the older woman, if I were getting shot, would you take the picture? And she said, yes.

Stefan:
[25:52] Well, that's, you know, once you've seen a bunch of movies, you know that that's, I just, okay, so I'm going to set my watch here to the point where, you know, this scene's going to happen. That's just how it's going to be.

Team:
[26:02] Right?

Stefan:
[26:03] So, but this is, this to me was fascinating that she sacrificed her life.

Stefan:
[26:08] For this vapid, absolutely unintelligent young woman who didn't care about her at all.
There was no register of sorrow, upset, self-recrimination, horror.
She just scrambled through to take the next photo.
Self-sacrifice for someone who doesn't care about you at all.
And I bet you, if we would have asked the filmmaker, he would not have made that connection.
Now, because you could say, you could say, well no he's he's trying to make a point right i don't know what point he's trying to make, but it's not the point you could make a you could make a movie uh where the main character, sacrifices herself for a young woman who doesn't care about her at all and then that main character would be an absolute fool overly sentimental and ridiculous but they portray her as noble wise and heroic but then she sacrifices herself for this girl who doesn't care about her at all a complete sociopath as far as I would see the character, right? Because no emotion, no connection.
Do you get the next shot? Oh, look at the cool shots I'm taking of my mentor who I just caused to get blown away as falling down dead.
Like, oh my God. That's wild. The coldness and lack of any sense of human relationships is just wild to have in a movie maker. But that's why the movie is so technical and so brutal.
He's got no sense of human relationships at all that I can see.

Team:
[27:33] Mm-hmm.

Combat Realism and Weapon Source
Stefan:
[27:36] Uh so combat yes the combat being unrealistic that it would all be drones and and satellite images and so on and we talked about like where all the weapons coming from for the states right for the california texas florida axis we talk about covering all bases you got the left you got the middle you got the right california texas florida but the theory is jared you like because i'm like where are getting all these weapons from it's not like these states i mean they have They don't have outright armies in the way that the federal

Division in the US Military
Stefan:
[28:04] government does. So what was the, what was your view?

Team:
[28:06] I could, now given, given it some grace, I could see that a, like you, you can't, you don't have as much of the high-tech weaponry because if the organization of the U S has fallen apart to the point where you can't maintain that level of order, if, if the people all the way up to the top are divided, then you can't maintain the order to keep the, like the, the ships running the, uh, the aircraft carriers and things like that.
And not just running, but operating and on for one side and not the other, you know, um, it, it, maybe the same for like weird satellite stuff and drone.
So on a stretch, I could kind of give them that the thing that's unrealistic to me is that you get this, uh, this, this federal and rebel divide and it's, you know, the left and the right ostensibly like, uh, Texas and, uh, and California on one side.
And then like the evil, like the radical right wingers on the other.
That's totally unrealistic to me. If it were.

Loss of Communication
Stefan:
[29:05] Oh sorry jared we just lost you.

Team:
[29:07] So i had accidentally hit the space bar all right anyway so where are they getting the weapons i could see that the arc is let's say you have a military base in california california goes rebel who are the people that occupy that military base by and large yeah it's going to be people from around the country but it's largely going to be a lot of californians around there and there's going to be some compelling uh evidence given to side with us you know or get out of dodge no but we're taking sorry but before.

Stefan:
[29:32] I mean i'm just If this guy's a fascist, right, the president, well, as you mentioned, right, fascists are pretty good at using brutal violence to, quote, restore order, right?
This is the one thing that at least the fascists made the trains run on time, or whatever, using brutal violence to maintain order.
So if they were losing control of some military base and he was this evil fascist, wouldn't he just bomb it all?

Team:
[29:57] No, I absolutely agree. And that's something that I think is unrealistic in the movie.

Unrealistic Unification of Left and Right
Team:
[30:01] I totally agree with that. But let's set that aside and say that it's a left-wing guy or whatever.
I could see a situation where, not in this movie, because I don't think it's realistic that you get the right-wing bad guy as the one that unifies the left and the right.
I don't think that's realistic at all. But I can see, like, okay, just overlook that and say, okay, where are they getting these weapons?
It would be under by going into these military bases and grabbing them and converting the people there or telling you to leave, you know, essentially. Yeah.

Stefan:
[30:33] It also bothers me that armies are functional when the roads are destroyed.
That is so, you know, I mean, the roads were kind of wrecked and bombed and they kind of had they wove their way through. It's always that convenient path.
Look at all the bombed out cars. Oh, look, there's a convenient path for us

Lack of Realism in Combat Scenes
Stefan:
[30:53] to drive through, you know, and that's not how.
This kind of stuff works if there are bombed and burned out cars then the road would be destroyed and of course if the roads are destroyed um how are you getting gasoline for yeah all the helicopters and the trucks and like these big convoys and everything and it's like well maybe it's airlifted it's like well that's a lot of gas to get gas and like because you got to airlift it in and it so just things like that i just i don't get the sense that he went and studied say if i I were writing a civil war movie, then I would look at the most contemporaneous civil wars, that would be going on and try and sort of study them.
Right. And I mean, it's not that contemporaneous, but you know, Lebanon and so on, there were all these factions fighting.
And so you would, you'd go and study all of that and maybe go over and try and really understand how that kind of combat works because he's just like, well, there's a war. So there's just people shooting at each other.
And then there are these helicopters because it's a a cool scene and it just felt it was just sort of grabbed together for cinema for uh sort of cinna.

Stefan:
[31:59] For the coolness of the shots, if that makes sense, rather than, okay, here's how civil war would work in this kind of environment.
And just a bunch of people shooting at each other just didn't make much sense to me, so I couldn't understand the fighting and the battle.
Like, you know, I think it was the first big battle scene, and I also get kind of annoyed that, oh, it's a really, really quiet scene. Everyone's murmuring.

Team:
[32:28] Oh, everyone's murmuring.

Stefan:
[32:29] And why cannot anybody, there's no male in movies today who has a normal voice that I can hear. It drives me mad.
It's so, everybody is just talking with this half voice. It's just become a thing.
And it's like, can you not just, like, clear your throat, talk like a human being.
Because I don't meet people in the world who talk like this all the time.
And it's just become this weird half whisper dramatic crap.
They actually made fun of it many years ago in 30 Rock, a tough guy voice.
You know and it's just maybe it was alec baldwin's influence or whatever right but it just drives me nuts the guy's kind of you got to talk like this the whole time and it's like no no just use your voice use your natural voice i mean you've all taken voice training because you're actors so i just yeah.

Team:
[33:11] That was i found that really funny uh during the movie i was watching uh and joel would have these parts where he'd be talking and.

Stefan:
[33:17] I just.

Team:
[33:17] Like miss out a couple of words like in the sentence and i was like am i going deaf what's what's going on here.

Stefan:
[33:22] Oh dialogue Dialogue in movies, I half give up.
I half give up. And I turn into people like, hey, can you hear that?
And I'm like, not really.
Okay, good. Because, you know, I'm down half an ear on one side.
But it was, yeah, that kind of stuff drives me.
Drives me kind of nuts. But, you know, on the plus side, I didn't really think I was missing much when I couldn't hear the dialogue.
But, yeah, so you got, it's a really quiet scene. It's quiet and it's calm.
And you know what's coming next. Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.
You know, like this assault. default it's like please please do not use my ears as a weapon against me it's a form of audio abuse and that just seems to be uh really really unpleasant i i myself i don't go to see a movie, particularly an action movie and i don't watch a lot of them but i will not go to a movie theater without ear protection and then of course i have to take it out with the quiet scenes i gotta jam like just because it's it's it's harmful it's this i think i think i'm no expert i'm sure they to calibrate it, but I can't imagine it's great for your hearing.
So I just got, and I know he's like, it's a full on assault.
And it's like, yeah, but not on the audience, you know, it's not the audience.
So, yeah, the whole combat thing, you know, he's like, for him, combat was just guys shooting at each other.
And I didn't understand it. Now, the other thing, too, I couldn't help, I'm not going to accuse the director of glorifying political violence, but I'm not going to accuse him of the opposite of that either, if that makes any sense.

Stefan:
[34:47] So, I look for the moral lessons in the movies, right?
What is moral lessons in the movies? Now, in the very first major combat scene, where there's a black guy behind a pillar getting shot at, and they're basically, it's like a building in a, looked like a car park or something like that, that they were shooting back and forth in, right? Right.
First of all, that kind of combat doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me in that.
What are they trying to take a particular position? Why wouldn't they just go behind and cut off their supply route? Like.
If you look at resistance movements and so on, they're incredibly sneaky.

Stefan:
[35:22] Right. So what they don't usually just blaze guns at each other these days. Right.
I mean, obviously, there's psychological warfare, there's propaganda, but there's also, you know, like dressing up as the enemy and going to poison

Lack of Strategic Warfare
Stefan:
[35:34] their food. Like there's a whole bunch of things that are done.
I guess they're not that dramatic cinematographically. Sorry, from a movie making standpoint, they're not overly dramatic.
But I think that's how a lot of this kind of combat works is with propaganda and and sabotage and misdirection.
And and it just like all we can do is blast at each other. And it's like, but that's not really how war works that much in the, like in civil war would work, I think, that much in the modern world.
Again, I'm not a military expert, but it just didn't make much sense.
But here's the thing. So they capture, right?
They capture the government soldiers, right? The rebels, right?
They capture the government soldiers and they put the black hoods on them.
Never a good sign, right?
And then they take the government soldiers.

Stefan:
[36:22] And I think it's this Hispanic guy is just like glee, having a blast, blazing the guns and destroying the government soldiers, like the Fed soldiers.
Do I remember that rightly? I think I got that pretty correct because they won that battle.

Team:
[36:39] No, that was overt.

Stefan:
[36:40] So that is overt. Now, that guy seemed to be having a blast and a joy and like a virtual wargasm, right, to be blowing away these disarmed prisoners, right?
And when I think about, there was the black woman at the end of the movie who shot the president and was thrilled about it. And there was trophy posing.
It's all you bring him out. We'll take care of him. It was all kind of cool and that kind of stuff. Right.
And so it's saying that if you slaughter people who are fascists, that's a great day.
Now, if that's not the glorification of political violence, I'd like to see another case that would be stronger, because they all seem to have a lot of fun, and they all seem to be pretty happy about doing it, and it wasn't like the guy later on who blew away the disarmed soldiers.
It wasn't like that guy was, like, really feeling bad about it later.
I don't think he ever showed up again.
So they just, hey, he's having a blast, man.
Blowing away these unarmed soldiers. Well, they're not soldiers anymore because they're captured, right? So they're prisoners of war.
So they've got these prisoners of war. They're just gunning them down.
And he's having a blast. And there's never any negative repercussions that are shown.
And that's pretty wild because that means there's no more Geneva Convention.

Stefan:
[38:04] As you were asking, Jared, earlier, like there's no UN. There's no war standards.
There's no standards of war or combat or battle. And you can see this in the last part of the movie massively in that, you know, they shoot.
Is she the press secretary or something like that?

Team:
[38:24] Oh, no, no. She's a remaining Secret Service agent.

Stefan:
[38:28] But she looked like she was in the press room or something like that.

Team:
[38:31] She was in the press room. Yes.

Stefan:
[38:33] Okay. But she looked unarmed. Yep. And she was trying to negotiate. And what happened?

Team:
[38:38] Oh, blast away.

Moral Ambiguity in Political Violence
Stefan:
[38:39] It blew her away.

Team:
[38:40] Blasted. Yeah.

Stefan:
[38:40] And then the president is disarmed, poses absolutely no threat, is obviously negotiating, trying to negotiate his surrender. And they blow him away.
So there's no rules of war. There's no laws of war. There's no respect for prisoners.
There's no respect for surrender.
There's no, they don't put him on trial, right?
They just kill him.

Team:
[39:06] Now i think uh joel so joel even got like uh he asked him like hey do you have any last quotes for me and the president was like please don't let them kill me or something along those lines and joel was like yep thanks that'll do that'll do right and so there's this cool.

Stefan:
[39:18] Funny satisfaction about it all right.

Team:
[39:20] So i'm gonna say this is something they got right in that uh if you got just to me it's like go look at what people say online in these political divides who is it a okay okay to like punch a fascist or whatever yeah punch a fat like okay good no and this is even more more of a confession that the rebels were on the left well.

Stefan:
[39:42] I i think so because what i find what i found surprising so i grew up and sorry to flash the age card here however wrinkled it might be but when i grew up war crimes, We're bad. No, I mean, I don't mean to go out on too much of a limb here, but when I grew up, gunning down unarmed prisoners was a war crime that got you killed.
Like you would get the death penalty for that.

Team:
[40:12] Right.

Stefan:
[40:13] So I grew up on things like the My Lai Massacre, right, where these men in Vietnam gunned down a whole bunch of villagers and so on.
And you know the the murder of prisoners of war was a massive crime and what the japanese did to the australians prisoners of war was brutal and evil and so i grew up in a world where war crimes were bad now of course in general this would be war crimes against communist so maybe that's the whole thing they're only bad war crimes are only bad when they're against communist not when they're They're against fascists, which means that there's no principle at all.
But I was a little bit surprised because of my ancient moral instruction, but I was a little bit surprised when the soldiers who were kind of committing war crimes left, right, and center were like, yeah, come along, photograph it all.

Team:
[41:07] Yeah. Yep.

Stefan:
[41:08] So that to me is really interesting. Now, if the soldiers had been like, listen, guys, we're going to do some pretty bad stuff. We don't want you around because, you know, in general, in general, when soldiers are committing war crimes, they don't want to be photographed.

Consequences of War Crimes
Team:
[41:24] Right.

Stefan:
[41:25] Well, because that's bad because you're going to get tried and you're probably going to get hung or a lot of time in Leavenworth. Sorry, go ahead.

Team:
[41:34] They did acknowledge that because there's the the racists out in the backwoods that are burying civilian bodies. So they acknowledge that there's this war crime factor, that you don't want to get seen doing things.
They explicitly said that, like, these guys don't want to be seen doing what they're doing.

Stefan:
[41:49] Well and we're not entirely sure like so they were racist but there were also white people in the body so i don't know yeah i don't know i should say like some.

Team:
[41:58] Kind of nationalist or something like.

Stefan:
[42:00] That there and i don't know they never explained where those bodies came from i mean they could have been a cleanup crew right who were just trying to get rid of the bodies to stop the spread of disease i'm not saying that would be the case but i don't think it was ever explained was it that like where what they had done or where the bodies came from it.

Team:
[42:15] Was implied that they had just kind of got rid of some inconvenient people.

Stefan:
[42:20] Right. Okay. So that's really bad, right? That's really terrible.
And yet the soldiers who are blowing away unarmed people, people who have already surrendered, people who they've actually disarmed, they're just destroying, they're just murdering them.
That's never, ever pointed out as a bad thing.
And in fact, the trophy woman who shot the president, like during the credits, she's like, big smile, big thumbs up, yay, fantastic, right?

Team:
[42:55] Yes, yeah.

Stefan:
[42:56] I really, really, really, really have a problem with people who praise political violence.
I mean, it's more than a problem. I think it's monstrous. I think it's monstrous.
So yeah that was a that was a thing for me i mean so.

Team:
[43:12] Going into the movie for me like i um i with modern movies these days they're so contrived that i've got to find some way to have interest in it and i'm like no this is this is an anthropological uh exploration of the people that made this movie what's going on in their heads their worlds their lives what are their thoughts beliefs blah blah blah blah blah about the world.

Stefan:
[43:32] And what's normal to them this is a central this is a centrist position for them yeah.

Team:
[43:36] Exactly no thank you great point like in their head they were being fair and centrist right at that or at least some part of them you know i.

Stefan:
[43:45] Mean basically it was a whole series of executing unarmed people yeah right and and no trial right no protection from prisoners of war you know i at some point i wasn't hugely expecting it but you know that meme of the fat nazi like are we the baddies are we the bad guys like at some point i'm like isn't someone gonna say maybe we shouldn't be gunning down people we've disarmed you know maybe that's just murder but.

Team:
[44:14] The absolute lack of pause and reflection again.

Stefan:
[44:17] Oh celebration it's cool it's fun you get a great quip out of it and you get to thumbs up grinning sorry go ahead it's.

Team:
[44:24] Just it's more of a confession that this is the the left identity you know.

Stefan:
[44:28] It's wild uh yeah and and like i was sort of picturing so at the end of the movie when the woman who shot the president is given the big grin and the thumbs up and you know they're basically posing there like like uh trophy hunters and i was like okay so if this was some other war crime, right then what would happen right i mean if if this was i mean not that it's directly equivalent right but if it was like because this guy you know is portrayed as the bad guy who started the war or whatever right but you know even the nazis got tried it was the whole nuremberg thing right because the rule of law and we don't want to be worse than our enemies and it's like okay so if this was if there were soldiers who had you know gunned down unarmed people who were trying to surrender and like say the my life thing or whatever right um although that was a lot of women and kids or whatever right but it would be like okay so if if you made a movie where it was like thumbs up over the bodies of the people you've gunned down who are unarmed and there's peppy music playing and like it's like wouldn't that be weird yeah wouldn't that be kind of a justification for this kind of kind of stuff.

Team:
[45:42] It would be beyond farcical as a thing.

Stefan:
[45:47] Well, also, you'd be completely toasted from a moral standpoint, right?

Team:
[45:51] Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm sorry. Yeah, you meant real life. I was thinking like cinematically.

Stefan:
[45:54] Well, no, if you did it cinematically about a real event, like a real war crime.

Team:
[45:57] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Stefan:
[46:00] So I did find that disturbing because there were no negative consequences to murder. or in fact, it seemed to be kind of celebrated.
And that's not good.

Team:
[46:16] That reminds me of something like an overt experience I had watching this movie and coming away from the movie.
Like, just a knot in my gut.
Like, there was something about the movie that really disturbed the hell out of me.
And it took me a moment to reflect on it and be like, what's behind that?
What's going on with that?
And it was about the realism of the movie. you know that uh but it was that uh i mean this is like this is where we're headed.

Critique of Government-Corporate Power
Stefan:
[46:45] Well because there's no moral condemnation of it yeah and and the other thing too like so i mean the label fascism is something that's just invented now to target you for violence right to target you for being the recipient of violence because i mean i'm sure we're all aware what is fascism or fascism is the union of corporate and state power communism is when the state controls the means of production directly fascism is when the state and nominally private corporations work together to control the population and so to me i mean covid was a pretty strong example of corporate government power right the governments pay the corporations ostensibly to develop the vaccine and then the corporations use the government power to force people to take it and it's all profited from the public purse so that's kind of a textbook example to me of a sort of fascist structure.

Stefan:
[47:42] But apparently all these people who are anti-fascist don't seem to notice that.
So it's just, it's a label for someone I hate.
And I'm willing to not only accept, but appreciate and enjoy violence against.
And that's a pretty cold moral universe. It's an amoral universe.
It's a will-to-power universe.
So I think that to me was, and I've read some reviews of it and, I mean, I don't know if you guys read any reviews. Did you see people talking about the, not quite glorification, but definitely acceptance of the need for shooting unarmed people in a political course?

Team:
[48:27] I didn't see that from anybody. Yeah. And I wasn't going to mainstream review outlets.
I'm looking at people like in Twitter who are just, you know, regular Joe blows. I'm more interested in what they have to say than a lot of outlets and places.
And yeah, nobody mentioned that.

Stefan:
[48:47] Yeah, it seems kind of odd to me. Is there anything else that, I mean, I think we stripped mine fairly well because it was a movie more notable in what it didn't have.

Stefan:
[48:57] Characterization, a plot, a storyline, a moral center, any consequences for evil actions and a praise of violence, particularly political violence.
So to me, it was notable in the absence, like what was not there was very interesting.
On the plus side, I thought the acting was pretty good.
And i thought that the cinematography was pretty good and some of the combat scenes were quite visceral and that was i mean the the i could i could have done without the graphic example of necklacing but you know and that seemed a bit i'm not sure how that serves in a civil war but you know i guess the civil war is saying it's a breakdown of all moral standards which i think it did yeah the breakdown of all moral standards but shouldn't you be criticizing that as opposed to say, yay, look at that with their trophy dead guy.
So, yeah, to me it was a film notable in its absences. I did think it was quite different from things that I've seen before.
And it did have a certain visceral energy to it that I kind of appreciated.
I wish, of course, it had been turned to slightly more moral ends, but it definitely had a kind of dark energy to it that was quite compelling.
And there was a lot to think about. Because I'm always interested by the dog that doesn't bark. You know, like, okay, so there's all this political violence.

Stefan:
[50:05] Is anybody suffering because of it? And And, you know, any movie that says, here's the fun part of sin and then stops before the backlash of sin is promoting sin.
So I thought there was sort of that aspect to it. But is there anything else you guys wanted to mention about it?
I really do appreciate that you all went to see it. And it's been, I think, a great convo about it.

Team:
[50:27] And you answered my question. I was going to say, like, we've spent this almost hour, like, tearing the movie apart. Why are you telling me to go see it?

Stefan:
[50:34] No, because this, as you say, this is an example of a centrist.
This is the mindset of a centrist, right?
This is the mindset of a centrist, that a third-term president- is infinitely worse than killing disarmed prisoners of war and civilians.

Stefan:
[50:59] And that's wild. That's wild.
And the orderly transfer of power would have been, let's say the president had done all these terrible things, right?
So the orderly transfer of power would have been to arrest the president and try him and all of that kind of stuff, right? not executing gangland style, right?
So they say, we are no longer going to have the orderly transfer of power.
Now it's going to be, because what happens going forward?
Like, if you get into a conflict with your citizens, they'll just come and shoot you.
Like, I always think about what happens next, right?

Escalation of Violence and Future Implications
Stefan:
[51:40] So what happens next? What happens next? Well, if people really don't like you politically, they'll just invade the white house or wherever and they'll just shoot you, and there won't be any trial and there won't be any self-defense so what happens going forward like what's the next thing what's what's who's the next president and and what's he going to do, if his power is challenged and the last guy didn't bomb the hell out of everyone because he was a bad fascist apparently what's he going to do like isn't this just a massive escalation to whatever ever comes next but i guess that's the point of the movie is nobody thinks about what comes next it's the whole point of violence is nobody thinks about what comes next no.

Team:
[52:22] No that's that's it like that's what we want we want the status quo we want democracy as usual and and that what comes next is you know we restored democracy pat ourselves on the back we ended the fascism like the whole thing it's like revolution is just turning the wheel keeping the same shit going.

Stefan:
[52:37] Right but you've also just murdered the political representative that at least half the country really likes No.

Team:
[52:44] No, no.

Stefan:
[52:45] No, and whether we like that or not, let's say he was the worst guy in the world, okay, but you didn't put him through the trial to expose his crimes, right? You just killed him. You made him a martyr.
So do you really think the fight is over? Like, this is one thing I loved about the novel The Hobbit when I was a kid, right?
It's like, hey, the dragon's dead. It's like, now the wars just begin over the dragon's treasure.
And what happens after the happily ever after, so to speak, is really, really interesting. So, what are the long-term consequences of killing somebody whose policies you massively disagree with?
Because, again, I don't know, because they don't really go into it, but the guy, the president, was popular enough to get elected.
And he can't have come from the establishment, right? So, whether it was a Trump-style figure or whatever, he can't have come from the establishment, because then he would have been easier to control, right? So, yeah.

Stefan:
[53:38] This is a populist president, and you just martyred him. Do you think that's, like, do they think that's going to end the war? I don't see how.
Because the new president is not going to be perceived as legitimate, because the last president was just executed.
He wasn't put on trial or anything like that. So it's always like, there's this weird thing, like, this is, oh, we've blown away our political enemy. We killed the bad guy.
And you think that, what, that just stops everything?
And everyone just is fine? No, I just, I find it kind of weird.
Weird it's this idea that massive amounts of violence are just going to solve everything but of course you know that's why we're sort of into the peaceful parenting stuff and the non-aggression principle because i don't like what happens okay what happens next you're going to hold another election okay well what if the people who elected the last guy elect the new guy because let's say all the people who elect the last guy are terrible bad and wrong okay well the way you solve that is you debate them you you argue with them you give them data reason evidence evidence, free speech, all that kind of stuff.
I don't know that executing the person they like is really going to solve the problem of resistance against the government. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Team:
[54:43] I think you're right, but not thinking forward is a feature of the left, not have that long-term, like, what's the next step?
What's the next step? Because if you had that view of things, you wouldn't arrive at the actions and conclusions that they do.

Lack of Trial for Political Enemies
Stefan:
[54:59] Yeah. I mean, now they're just saying that if something goes wrong, you can just kill people and that's how power is going to be transferred and not there's no rule of law there's no trial there's no this there's no that there's no examination of the evidence there's no witnesses there's no prosecution there's no defense it's just basically extrajudicial murder and it's like okay so what now everything's just the third world and it's just like kill your political opponents like that's and even if we say he was like the worst guy ever again even the nazis got their trials and and so yeah it's it's just to me uh it's just a whole different kind of thing And the fact that the soldiers were willing and happy to have the photojournalists coming along documenting their war crimes meant that they knew they were going to face no repercussions afterwards.
In fact, they'd be celebrated and praised. And that's also kind of chilling.

Team:
[55:46] To the overarching message of the movie, to me, it's like, okay, so why did this movie get allowed to be made?
Why was it made so? It was because, hey, if there's another Trump, we'll burn the fucking house down.

Stefan:
[55:59] Probably something like that. Or any kind of populist, right?
Anybody who's not from the sort of controlled establishment scenario.

Team:
[56:05] That's what it was. It's a whole, what's the, Lloyd DeMoss, you know, psycho history. That's the message.

Stefan:
[56:12] Yeah. Very, very sad. Anything else anybody wanted to mention at the end?

Casting and Character Analysis
Team:
[56:18] On the subject of the president, I thought it was very interesting that they used Nick Offerman as the president.
I don't know if you guys have ever watched The Perks of Creation.

Stefan:
[56:27] I'm so sorry to interrupt you right at the beginning. Yeah. The guy they killed is called Offerman?

Team:
[56:32] No.

Stefan:
[56:33] Really?

Team:
[56:33] That's his real life name, yeah.

Stefan:
[56:35] Don't make Scott Adams' simulation theory come to life. But anyway, go on.

Team:
[56:39] I thought it was really interesting that um the director and writer uh chose him because he's really known for his role in parks recreation where he is this libertarian guy that really wants as little government as possible and hates the government and um he's just kind of well known for that role and like really well liked that role and they chose him as the bad guy i thought about that as well yeah yeah but of course his his character is also curmudgeonly and unfriendly and kind of an asshole.
It's self-contradictory because he's supposed to be libertarian.
It works. He works in government. Yeah, yeah.

Stefan:
[57:15] Well, also, no matter what you think of your political opponents, they have to have some charisma, especially if they're coming from a populist standpoint.
A populist, by definition, has to have a lot of charisma, but then they have to make him as unlikable as possible, and that doesn't make any sense.

Team:
[57:31] Interesting.

Stefan:
[57:32] I didn't know that history about the guy. It's interesting.

Team:
[57:34] Yeah, I thought it was interesting that they chose him to play that, and I wasn't, I'm not sure what the message was behind that.
Or maybe it was just more of a ploy to be centrist.

Stefan:
[57:43] Or maybe Annoying Orange was taken. Hey, Apple! I don't know.
He's busy. He's shooting a documentary on saving the British Empire through opposing scurvy.
All right. Well, thanks, guys. I appreciate it. And thanks, everyone, for listening.
Let us know what you think. If you see the movie or what you think of our review and comments.
And it was great fun to do it with others. So thanks, everyone, for dropping by. Buy freedomain.com slash donate to help out this kind of incisive and deep analysis. freedomain.com slash donate. Thanks, everyone.

Team:
[58:12] Boys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.