The first trailer for A24 and director Alex Garland's (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men) latest film, Civil War, is now online, and it outlines a terrifying scenario as the United States is plunged into conflict.
The teaser begins with Nick Offerman's (The Last of Us, Parks and Recreation) U.S. President declaring: "Citizens of America, the so-called Western forces of Texas and California have suffered a very great defeat at the hands of the United States military.”
From there, we see Kirsten Dunst's (Spider-Man, Melancholia) photojournalist attempting to make her way to the White House while air strikes are used against civilians and journalists are shot on sight in the capital.
On her journey, Dunst's character joins forces with a group consisting of Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny, Karl Glusman, Sonoya Mizuno, and Jonica T. Gibbs, who we see running into Jesse Plemon's (Killers of the Flower Moon) trigger-happy soldier ("what kind of American are you?").
The official logline doesn't tell us much ("A race to the White House in a near-future America balanced on the razor's edge. The United States stands on the brink of civil war in a near-future setting"), but Garland did give us a little more to go on during a 2022 interview.
"In the same way that you could say Ex Machina is sci fi, Devs is a tech thriller, and Men is a horror film, Civil War is a war movie – a contemporary war movie,” Garland told Screen Daily. “It was a staggeringly difficult film to shoot. I wrapped five weeks ago, and I’ve been in the edit for the last five weeks. We’re trying to get the film in a rough cut state where everything is broadly what one is intending. But, as well as that, there’s a lot of visual effects in the movie so we’re having to decide which shots were turning over as VFX shots. It’s a very technical, non-stop process at the moment. There’s a lot going on.”
The trailer has stirred up a bit of controversy online, with some questioning the need for thi particular movie right now when there is already so much real political tension in the United States.
Have a look at the trailer below, along with some stills and a recently released poster, and let us know what you think in the comments section.
Civil War is Rated R for strong violent content, bloody/disturbing images, and language throughout. The movie arrives in theaters next spring.