Trivia / Civil War (2024)

• Actor-Shared Background: Wagner Moura studied journalism in college and briefly worked for a local newspaper in his hometown after he graduated, though his career obviously never went as far as Joel's did.
• California Doubling: The film is set in New York City, Washington D.C., and the several hundreds of miles between the two cities, but was primarily filmed in Atlanta.
• Cast the Expert: Many of the soldiers on either side of the conflict were played by actual former military veterans to give a sense of added realism.
• Creator Breakdown: The creation of this film took a pretty massive emotional toll on Alex Garland due to its heavy subject matter, to the point where he said that he would never direct another film for the foreseeable future^note Though being a novelist-turned-screenwriter who'd only stumbled into directing out of necessity probably also helped with this decision too. His next film, Warfare, will only be co-directed by him and he has said that he'll focus exclusively on writing afterwards.
• Creator-Driven Successor: Alex Garland has described it as a "companion piece" to his own previous film Men.
• Creator's Oddball:
  • For A24, at least, who are well-known for their artsy, mid-budget independent films that run the gamut of genres and styles. Civil War, however, marks their first outright action movie and their first foray into blockbuster filmmaking, though its $50 million budget and decidedly hot-button subject matter do differentiate it from a normal action blockbuster.
  • It's also one for writer-director Alex Garland, whose work has previously been supernatural and/or science-fiction.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • On his single day of filming for his one scene in the movie, Jesse Plemons intentionally avoided interacting with the rest of the cast beforehand and stayed in-character the entire time they were on location.
  • The four lead actors spent most of their time in a car that had been rigged with hidden cameras and received as little interference from the camera crew as possible, meaning that they were forced to get to know each other and form a camaraderie very quickly. As a result, the dynamic between the central four journalists was very much real and shared by their actors as well.
• Fake American: The Brazilian Wagner Moura plays Joel, an American who's stated to be from Florida.
• Meaningful Release Date: The movie was initially set to be released on April 28, but the date was moved to April 12, 2024, the 163rd anniversary of the shelling of Fort Sumter, the beginning of the historical American Civil War.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Nick Offerman plays an authoritarian and dictatorial President Evil, in contrast to his most famous role as staunch libertarian Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation and an anti-government survivalist in The Last of Us.
  • Kirsten Dunst rose to prominence from and is best-known for her wholesome Girl Next Door-type roles, to the point where she named the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. Here, she plays Lee, a stoic and hardened anti-heroic photojournalist whose experiences covering war zones has left her deeply traumatized.
• Production Posse: Alex Garland has previously worked with Nick Offerman, Stephen McKinley-Henderson, and Cailee Spaeny in Devs, while Sonoya Mizuno, a regular cast member of his who has been in all of his directorial efforts, once again has a supporting role here.
• Promoted Fanboy: Cailee Spaeny is a massive fan of Kirsten Dunst, citing her as one of her chief influences as an actress and having followed Dunst's career since the Raimi Spider-Man movies. Civil War gives her the chance to work with Dunst onscreen, and Spaeny's admiration of her very much mirrors Jessie's own idolization of Lee.
• Real-Life Relative: Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons are married in real life, the latter being cast at Dunst's suggestion when the original actor meant to play Plemons's character backed out a week before filming began.
• Write What You Know: Alex Garland comes from a family of journalists, with his grandfather having been a foreign correspondent while his father was a political cartoonist, and made the film in part to harken back to the old-school style of journalism that he observed growing up.

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