Column Alex Garland’s Civil War Captures What Journalists Do, Like It or Not Reporting the facts, and challenging the narrative those in power want to convey. By Dan Persons | Published on March 25, 2026 Credit: A24 Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: A24 I started writing this piece on Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024) knowing it’d be a stretch. The SF Path to Higher Consciousness is supposed to be about how genre film helps us look at ourselves and how we relate to our world and the universe. Civil War isn’t really about introspection, even though it presents a daunting set of moral challenges. Maybe it’s more that I wanted to use it to look into where I came from, what I seek from myself and my craft. After all, while my route to journalism wasn’t a straight line, the passion for it was always there, even from childhood. Times being what they are, I thought maybe the things I discovered about myself while looking into the film would somehow be beneficial to others. (Maybe you?) I got into covering genre film by writing for Cinefantastique, starting in the late Eighties. A long, long time ago—when dinosaurs ruled the Earth—CFQ was deemed one of the most influential fan magazines in the field. Its coverage of film and TV was so in-depth and clear-eyed that it was read by industry professionals. Its issue on Forbidden Planet was so comprehensive—to the extent that it included a piece on the rough cut of the film—that it is still considered a definitive history of that SF classic. Credit long-time publisher and editor Fred Clarke for making the magazine what it was. From the get-go, he wanted to offer genre fans something beyond the superficial enthusiasm of other fan mags. CFQ was established in the wake of Watergate, and Clarke openly admitted that the magazine not only took its tip from the influential, French film journal Cahiers du Cinéma, but also from the standard championed by Woodward and Bernstein. I came to the fold late in the magazine’s history, after some of Cinefantastique’s most infamous efforts (including, most notoriously, an article featuring photos of the Twilight Zone helicopter disaster, something which Fred later expressed regret over publishing), but I was still inculcated into Fred’s philosophy that we may have been a fan magazine, but that didn’t mean we needed to treat the art with any less gravity and candor than a journalist would afford any other subject. There is a caveat to this: Much as we at CFQ reveled in our outsider notoriety (once, during a press junket, a writer for one of the other magazines said to me, “You guys over at Cinefantastique take yourselves way too seriously,” to which I had to constrain myself from replying, “Yes, so what’s your point?”), there was only so far we could go with the righteous-seekers-of-truth thing. It’s called “access journalism,” a nice way of saying that both reporter and subject have to kiss each others’ asses to at least some extent if there’s going to be any story. Fred learned that lesson the hard way when Spielberg and his cohort cut the magazine off after Twilight Zone, and George Lucas did the same after the mag disclosed the big reveal of The Empire Strikes Back before the film’s opening. Relationships would be patched up later, but it would never be the same. Much as I tried to deal honestly and fairly with the films I covered, there was a line I knew I could not cross. I was neither Woodward, Bernstein, Cronkite, nor Murrow. I was a writer for a fan magazine, and in terms of rep, that and $3.25 would get you a Venti at Starbucks. Which is why Civil War hit me so profoundly. Journalists in general get a bad rap. Sometimes that’s deserved—there are some so-called “journalists” too willing to slant a story to fit their biases, and there are certain outlets, which will not be named here, whose whole business model is to repackage propaganda as legitimate news. But very often journalists get knocked because that’s not what they do; because they dare to convey events as honestly as they can, and challenge the narrative that those in power want to convey. They’ll still have their biases, they’ll still make mistakes, and there will be times when their zeal to get a story will lead them into morally gray areas—they’re only human, after all. But the best of them know they work to a higher purpose: Bringing the truth to people who need to know. Civil War is a controversial film. Set in the near future, when a coalition between Texas and California—called the Western Forces—have seceded from the Union and are waging war against the U.S. government, it follows photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and reporter Joel (Wagner Moura) as they endeavor to reach Washington, D.C. before the city falls, in the hopes of getting an exclusive with the embattled President (Nick Offerman). Joining them on a circuitous route that takes them from New York through Western Pennsylvania and into the Virginias are veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) a novice photographer not yet tested in the crucible of war, whom Lee reluctantly takes under her wing. Alex Garland’s father worked as a cartoonist for a newspaper, and Civil War bears the markings of a person who from a young age has been deeply immersed in the culture of the newsroom. While the mise-en-scène is distinctly American—along their odyssey the reporters encounter a stand-off at a weird, Christmas-themed roadside attraction and a group of heavily armed gas station attendants who string up and torture looters back behind their garage—the action overall bears more than a few echoes of civil wars waged elsewhere around the world. Lee, Joel, and Sammy have all covered conflict overseas—their alcohol-infused interactions while holed up at a New York hotel suggest they must have had the same exchanges countless times in countless foreign lodgings. But now war has come home—while the context is different, the brutality and terror stay the same. [Put on your Kevlar vest—we’re venturing into spoiler territory.] Civil War caught criticism for having the journalists embedding with the secessionist Western Forces and for showing the rebels vanquishing the U.S. army, as if the film was meant to be an alt-universe rewrite of our actual Civil War. But Alex Garland is British, has never evinced any zeal to see Dixie rise again, goes out of his way to point out that the politics of our world are not necessarily the politics of the film—I mean, Texas and California falling on the same side of the divide is as likely as KFC being declared heart-healthy—and notes that other Southern states have refused to join the alliance. Even so, what some people have misread as the protagonists’ sympathy to the rebel forces is better interpreted, as the saying goes, as journalists going to where the story is. In this case, the U.S. forces are portrayed as more hostile to the press than the secessionists—numerous people warn Joel that even attempting to get a one-on-one with the president is tantamount to a death sentence—and while the Western Forces are more amenable to letting the reporters tag along, their atrocities—including the summary execution of prisoners of war—are only slightly less horrific than what the U.S. forces, let off their leash, are committing. Garland may be taking sides, but he is neither unfairly stacking the deck nor relitigating our real past. Nor does he ennoble Lee and company. Civil War doesn’t turn a blind eye to the cost journalists pay to serve as witnesses to history. In the end, Lee sacrifices her life to save Jessie, and Jessie’s thanks is to snap Lee’s picture as she falls. Joel gets his one-on-one with the president: A gasped, “Don’t let them kill me,” just before the soon-to-be ex-Commander in Chief is executed. The film ends on the photo of secessionist soldiers arrayed over the slaughtered leader, smiling. Nothing is triumphal about this—if Pulitzers are bestowed on the witnesses to an overthrow, the victory will be a bitter one, indeed. Journalists are not saints. But they are by and large neither enemies of the people for asking uncomfortable questions, nor targets worthy of prosecution merely for bearing witness. Alex Garland has done them a service by taking full measure of them, celebrating what drives them but also appreciating what’s lost in that drive. Civil War brings us uncomfortably close to a future we’re seeing played out in real time. It allows us to appreciate the value of those who make us aware of the peril, so we can better avoid it. For the record, war has never been “woke” nor “politically correct.” If anyone characterizes it as so, and proclaims that all stops are now off, you are justified in wondering what atrocities may follow. Civil War serves as both a rumination and a warning on the true nature of war, and Alex Garland presents it with the unromanticized clarity of a real journalist, cementing the writer/director’s reputation for being one of film’s most incisive and challenging auteurs. If, as he says, he is intending to step back from directing (he also says he will continue to write), it will be a profound loss. But what do you think? Is Civil War prophecy or fantasy? Does it play fair with its fictional journalists and combatants? You can give your feedback in the comments section below. And keep in mind things are tense enough right now—let’s be kind and cordial with each other.[end-mark] The post Alex Garland’s <i>Civil War</i> Captures What Journalists Do, Like It or Not appeared first on Reactor.