Can Alex Garland’s Civil War somehow be apolitical?

polygon.com:

Ex Machina director Alex Garland looks like he will try to do the impossible when his new film Civil War hits theaters in 2024: depict a second civil war in the United States without directly engaging with the politics of why that war is taking place. It’s not hard to see why Garland might want to avoid thorny connections between the movie and the very real politicians and political groups openly calling for succession and open conflict in the United States. Maybe he believes there’s enough value in the arresting visuals of a modern America under siege.

That said, it’s still audacious to try to remove the politics from even a fictional civil war, a fight typically born out of a political disagreement that can’t be resolved by any other means besides open conflict. Whatever disagreement is at the heart of the conflict, which the first trailer carefully avoids pinning down, puts California and Texas in the same boat, which sounds unthinkable at the present moment. And for that reason, a map graphic created based on the trailer has obviously gone viral.

You obviously want to live in the Florida Alliance. pic.twitter.com/3EGQ6cpqkK

It’s not that I’m not open to a movie depicting a bipartisan internecine war in the United States — I just want to know how we got there. Wars start for material reasons, which is why, not to be pedantic, they’re typically political.

Yes, we’ve seen attempts to abstract politics in fictional wars, by fans and creatives alike. Often the politics of fantasy and science fiction warfare are more metaphorical or allegorical. Sometimes war movies focus on the intimate, interpersonal effects that wars have on people with the politics staying more abstract. Sometimes there’s a Godzilla.

But Garland’s