S1E117 - Inmn and Margaret on "Civil War"

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn and Margaret review the new film Civil War. Spoiler alert, it's all kinda of weird.

Host Info

Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Inmn and Margaret on Civil War

**Inmn ** 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts today Inmn Neruin and with me is the always lovely. . . [trails off inviting Margaret to speak]

**Margaret ** 00:28 Margaret. You should do the [intro] as if I'm Garth. You should be like "And with me as always is Margaret." Like...because Wayne's World. Because I'm an elder millennial. Nevermind. Hi, I'm Margaret, I'm your other host.

**Inmn ** 00:43 And today we're going to be talking about...we're kinda going to be doing a movie review about-- [Interrupted]

**Margaret ** 00:49 Wayne's World.

**Inmn ** 00:50 About Wayne's World, the most important movie of our time.

**Margaret ** 00:53 I once...I changed my--actually I dropped out of school--but before I dropped out of school, I was gonna change my major to film because of Wayne's World. This is a true story.

**Inmn ** 01:03 I love that so much. [Laughing]

**Margaret ** 01:07 It's so well done. Woman-directed too. Anyway, what are we talking about?

**Inmn ** 01:15 We're talking about a much less joyful movie today. And that movie is Alex Garland's Civil War. And the reason we're kind of talking about this is that I think this movie feels very relevant to--or at least when I went to go see it, I thought it would be very relevant--to some themes on the podcast. And since then, I've been a little bit confused, but we'll get into that later. And I am told that me and Margaret might have some differing opinions about this movie. And so y'all will get to see us argue.

**Margaret ** 01:56 Yeah, I'm going to argue in favor of Wayne's World, and Inmn is going to argue against Civil War.

**Inmn ** 02:01 Yes. But first off, we are proud members of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts, and here's the jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [singing]

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**Margaret ** 02:54 [Mimicking a movie trailer voice] In a world... [stopes voice] That's all I got.

**Inmn ** 03:01 [Inmn takes up movie trailer voice] Where a vague civil war has gripped the nation for the last 14 years, we...

**Margaret ** 03:12 About literally nothing.

**Inmn ** 03:13 [continuing] we join a group of war correspondents and photographers who...are kind of shitbags.

**Margaret ** 03:26 Don't have any motivation besides art.

**Inmn ** 03:32 [Not movie trailer voice anymore] I don't really have to do a "Introduce yourself" to the thing because we all know who me and Margaret are. But to kind of get right into it, we're going to be talking about the movie Civil War today. And my hard take right now is if you haven't seen it, do NOT subject yourself to having to go see it. But, you know, make your own opinion. I'm not going to tell you what to do. But maybe we can kind of do a brief kind of like overview of the movie and then we'll get into what me and Margaret think--each separately think--about it. How's that sound?

**Margaret ** 04:17 Sounds great. Am I overviewing or are you overviewing?

**Inmn ** 04:20 Um, I can do it, you can do it. I don't care.

**Margaret ** 04:22 Are you prepared to.

**Margaret ** 04:24 I'm not. Let's do it.

**Inmn ** 04:24 I'm prepared to.

**Inmn ** 04:26 I'm gonna do it.

**Margaret ** 04:27 Go ahead. Great. Pew, pew, pew. [mimicking gunfire] I'm gonna make pew-pew-pew noises the whole time you're talking, though, so that people get into the head of the viewer, which is that whatever's happening there's also a lot of gunfire in the background.

**Inmn ** 04:39 So much gunfire. And I have something to say about that gunfire later.

**Margaret ** 04:44 Okay. Okay.

**Inmn ** 04:45 Yeah. Which will be very funny with the pew-pew-pews. [Margaret makes more gunfire noises] So, Civil War is a movie about a... [Margaret makes more gun and explosion noises]

**Margaret ** 04:57 Okay, I'm gonna stop now. This will get old. Go ahead.

**Inmn ** 05:03 The setup for Civil War is it's a movie about a Second American Civil War. And we have a few different sides in it. We have the Western Forces, which are made up of California and Texas. And they have formed a coalition of secessionist forces known as the Western Forces. And they are trying to.... All we really know is that they're trying to kill the president. And that--

**Margaret ** 05:39 Relatable.

**Inmn ** 05:40 Yeah, relatable. And then we have a couple other sides that never make it into the movie. There's.... The ones that do make it into the movie, we have Florida, who is attempting to join the Western Forces. And we have a few other players. The creator's that movie released a map of the US set in the time of the war. There's like the People's Army of the Northwest, or something. It's confusing. And when we join the narrative, it is...I think the war has been going on for about 14 or 15 years at this point. And the Western Forces are closing in on Washington DC and kind of like the East Coast. And we have a...we have a country that has been completely engulfed in in this war for, you know, over the last decade. And it follows a group of war photographers and journalists...correspondent people--I know words--who are out on a strange mission, which is to photograph and interview the president before he gets killed by the Western Forces. This is the setup for our protagonists' journey. And we have Kirsten Dunst as this middle-aged, jaded, war photographer, who is paired up with--I don't remember his name--

**Margaret ** 07:25 Some other guy.

**Inmn ** 07:26 Some other guy, who's a journalist. And as a tagalong they have this older journalist who's trying to tag along with them. He's like, old friend, co--

**Margaret ** 07:42 Wise, old, Black man archetype.

**Inmn ** 07:44 Wise, old, Black man archetype. And then we have a--I think she's 23 in the movie--younger, very excited, and naive photographer who is a fan of Lee (or Kirsten Dunsts' character), and they're all headed to DC to t