I’m going to be completely transparent right out of the gate and say that you’re probably not going to find an answer to that question unless you watch the movie yourself. The reason for that is because “woke,” as a word, has been utilized ad nauseum in so many nebulous ways at this point that everyone effectively has their own, individual definition for it. To that end, you might say that wokeness is in the eye of the beholder.
Behold Civil War, then; Alex Garland‘s latest feature that just might be the single most important movie we get all year, and which would likely be equal parts severely interested and passionately dispassionate about the nuances of this conversation.
Is Civil War woke?
Civil War‘s political bias does not swing one way or the other; it is instead towards politics itself. And when I say “politics,” I mean actual politics; the kind where everyone is asked “How are we going to spend this amount of money to help this group of people, solve this problem, or improve this part of society?” and then everyone goes and gives a different answer while still aiming for that shared goal. Contrast this with the barbarically myopic left-wing versus right-wing situation where the same question is asked, everybody says “no,” then blames poor outcomes on someone else, and then we all get mad at each other for a stupider and stupider reason with every passing day.
So, the question of whether Civil War is “woke” or not boils down to something else entirely, and that’s if the phrase “I am completely insecure about who I am and what I believe in, and rather than face that insecurity and do the work to figure out why I feel that way so I can subsequently remedy it healthily, I’m going to make sure/convince myself that every other experience that isn’t like my own is invalidated in some way, shape or form” makes you uncomfortable. If it does, you’re probably going to conclude that Civil War is propaganda, regardless of how the word “woke” fits into that train of thought. If it doesn’t, then you won’t be concerned with that question in the slightest, and you will probably love this movie as much as I did.
Civil War is now playing in theaters.