Alex Garland's Confused Anti-War Thesis

On Monday A24 released the trailer for ‘Warfare,’ Alex Garland’s newest project scheduled to come out in 2025. The announcement came just 9 months since he released ‘Civil War’ this past March, also with A24.

The British filmmakers newest project follows Navy SEALs throughout their experiences during the 2006 U.S. invasion of Iraq and is “based on the memory of the people who lived it.” It intends to tell the story from a boots-on-the-ground perspective as it implants audiences within a platoon of the US Navy inside the home of an Iraqi family and follows them as they carry out their missions.

The trailer comes out at a time when there are deep tensions between the Middle East and United States. The film will serve as a reminder of the continued atrocities committed by the United States as we endlessly fund Israels genocide. The film and its sentiments will not stand on their own, rather they are to be deeply embedded within the current political contexts. All of this raises the question of what Garland’s intended thesis for his upcoming project might be? Obviously, the movie hasn’t come out yet so answers to this are only speculative, but an immediate place to look is his last movie ‘Civil War.’

It follows a group of war journalists as they look to objectively document the militia ridden divisions in America as a civil war has begun. The group, consisting of two photographers two reporters, is making the drive from New York City to Washington D.C. where they hope to question authoritative president Nick Offerman. The film is devoid of any heroes on either side of the war, rather (as Garland states) it intends to make the journalists the heroes. Their ‘heroics’ can only be realized if they fulfill the goal of the fourth estate: objectivity. I’m not interested in debating whether this is achieved successfully. I’m more so intrigued by considering its thesis, especially in light of the upcoming ‘Warfare.’

So, what is the thesis? While Garland purposefully leaves much up to interpretation, this much is clear: the movie is a reminder war is mostly terror and devastation. Garland states, “extremism encourages extremism, and extremism is dangerous.” This danger isn’t superficial or purely ideological, Garland finds it to be concrete.

All of this begs the question, is the very concept of an anti-war film counterintuitive? Can a $50 million movie with constant, yet futile, attempts at being badass truly develop the thesis of war is bad? When considering ‘Civil War’ I see some hope, because the war is being fought by Americans against Americans which is, I hope, objectively bad. Given this underlying agreement in the badness of the war at hand, there was more room to develop his heroic journalist story. Immediately upon releasing his trailer for ‘Warfare’, however, Garland lost all credibility.

Instead, it seems Garland has fetishized his own enemy. He claims to care about the implications of war on people but has dedicated his career to spending half a million dollars once a year showing people how cool the United States army can be. Sure, he acknowledges the atrocities, but painting a war journalist as the hero undermines the very thesis he purports. The journalist is only as heroic as their images are devastating.

If you think Civil War isn’t what I’m claiming it is, then look at ‘Warfare’, a movie following around a SEAL platoon with one goal, to kill. Sure, these sorts of things are sometimes necessary for the protection of innocent people, but I fear Garland has bought into the same right-wing American masochism that he’s afraid of. Namely, the unchecked global power of the American military is not only fascinating but…cool?

I want to be clear; I don’t take issue with war movies in and of themselves. Rather, in Garland’s case, the dissonance that arises with the purported anti-war thesis and the reality of what his movies leave you feeling. Instead, Garland ought to commit to making great war movies for the sake of war movies, but pretending he has some underlying anti-war depth to his movies is hilariously dishonest. He’s merely a cog in the American military industrial complex machine.