Civil War Explained | Movie Mastery

What is Civil War about?

Civil War is about inner turmoil. This is most obvious with the literal civil war going on within America between the Western Forces and the President. But most of the story focuses on war photographer Lee Smith and her loss of faith in journalism, struggles with PTSD, and mentorship of Jessie. But, at the core, she struggles with her humanity. War photography demands a certain emotional distance, but what happens if you close off your heart entirely? Lee’s existential crisis parallels the larger pandemonium and dehumanization within the country.  

Cast

• Lee Smith – Kirsten Dunst
• Joel – Wagner Moura
• Jessie – Cailee Spaeny
• Sammy – Stephen Mckinley Henderson
• Tony – Nelson Lee
• Unnamed soldier – Jesse Plemons
• President of the United States – Nick Offerman
• Written by – Alex Garland
• Directed by – Alex Garland

The ending of Civil War explained

Recap

The end of Civil War begins with Lee, Joel, and Jessie following the Western Forces into D.C. Initially, Lee struggles to keep up due to what seems to be a mix of grief over Sammy’s death and PTSD from her many warzone experiences. While Lee wanes, Jessie thrives, despite the danger and chaos of the WF’s clash with the President’s forces. She moves with the soldiers like a seasoned veteran and gathers dozens of spectacular photos of the battle. 

Just before the WF breaks through the gate of the White House, three cars try to escape from the residence. Initially, everyone thinks it’s the president, but Lee, snapping out of her swoon, realizes it wouldn’t be him. That he wouldn’t leave the White House. So she, Joel, and Jessie take off through the gate, onto the grounds, and into the House. A group of soldiers follow them. 

Inside, they come across a representative of the President. She tries to make a deal for the President’s surrender, but the soldiers gun her down. The group encounters a final few Secret Service agents defending the Oval Office. Once they’re eliminated, Jessie moves into the middle of the hallway, out of cover. Lee’s the first to see another agent. She leaps to cover Jessie and absorbs the fire. Jessie, on the ground, takes up her camera, and captures a series of photos that show Lee collapse. When she has the opportunity to take a photo of Lee’s corpse, Jessie opts to move on. Then follows Joel and the soldiers into the Oval Office. 

The President had been hiding under his desk. The WF soldiers drag him out. But before they execute him, Joel says “Wait, wait. I need a quote.” To which the President says, “Don’t let them kill me.” Joel: “Yeah, that’ll do.” The soldiers open fire and Jessie photographs the aftermath. The credits play over one of the pictures as it develops. It shows the soldiers around the fallen leader, smiling. 

Meaning

The main narrative focus of Civil War is the mentor relationship that Lee has with Jessie. Lee is the grizzled war photographer. Jessie’s the kid who wants to do what Lee does. Pretty much every scene involves some deepening of their dynamic. Whether it’s Lee’s begrudging acceptance of Jessie joining the group, or demonstrating a growing protectiveness over Jessie’s well-being, or Jessie’s growth as a photographer based on observing Lee, etc. etc.  

When you have a mentor-mentee dynamic between the main characters, it makes sense to, at the end, reverse that dynamic. The first scene between Lee and Jessie was at the protest in New York City. Lee’s cool, calm, and collected, while Jessie’s uncertain and wide-eyed. A bomb goes off and Jessie’s absolutely rattled but observes Lee casually taking photos of the casualties. Compare that to the end. Lee’s the one who is unsteady, almost non-functional, relying on Joel to guide her through D.C. Meanwhile, Jessie looks like a pro. None of the crazy combat concerns her. She seizes every opportunity to take another picture. 

In that way, the final scene brings us full-circle and really shows Jessie’s growth. This culminates with Lee sacrificing herself to save Jessie. It’s a literal and symbolic passing of the torch. She lets go of her dream of photographing the President to protect Jessie. Who then stands back up, enters the Oval Office, and photographs the President (what’s left of him). This completes the mentor-mentee plot arc. 

You could also view Lee’s death as a changing of the guard. She was part of how things were. While Jessie’s the next generation. The new era. Through that lens, you could connect the two women to the version of America depicted in the film. The same way Lee’s burdened by a history full of conflict, so too is the country. Lee’s first appearance in Civil War shows her watching the President give a speech and there’s the shot of her taking a photo of him on the TV. That scene links Lee to the President. Plus, her goal in the film is to get to D.C. in order to photograph him. So Garland visually and narratively connects the two. They even die within minutes of one another. It’s not a stretch to say that the President represents the nation. His death ends the civil war. What happens next is a new chapter. Which is what we see with Lee’s death and what it represents for Jessie’s coming of age. 

What can we take away from that? I’d argue that it gets at the idea of squeezing out the sponge, so to speak. A refresh. 

It’s not dwelled upon but Lee clearly had PTSD. A few times, we bear witness to some of her memories, and they’re horrible. She’s burdened by those experiences. They add up and have left her worn, jaded, and faithless. In the film, the United States is in a similar existential state. The civil war isn’t something that came out of nowhere. It’s the byproduct of centuries of political strife galvanized by ideological conflict between traditional and progressive views that finally devolved into tragedy. 

At one point, Sammy says that Jessie reminds him of Lee when Lee was young. So when Lee sacrifices herself for Jessie, you can make the connection that she’s doing it to save Jessie from experiencing all the pain that Lee had absorbed through the years. Jessie might get to lead a life Lee never could. One that will be, hopefully, much happier and innocent. In that way, Lee’s saving herself. 

Likewise, the President was the figurehead for an ideology. His demise marks the defeat of that doctrine and clears the way for a fresh start, one where the country may not be so at odds with itself because the vanquished side no longer has any political clout. Things won’t be perfect, the same way that Jessie’s life won’t become some magical fairy tale, but there’s hope. Potential for a tomorrow that is better than yesterday, even if only slightly. Slightly is enough. Slightly is progress.   

To reinforce this positive, glass-half-full reading, I’d point to the subplot that starts near the beginning of Jessie and Lee’s relationship, when Jessie asks Lee “Would you photograph that moment, if I got shot?” And Lee says, “What do you think?” That’s a “yes” without being a “yes”. Something that’s confirmed later in the film after Sammy dies. Sammy was a mentor and friend of Lee’s. When he bleeds out from a bullet wound, Lee takes his picture. But a few scenes later, we watch Lee contemplate the photo. After a brief hesitation, she deletes it. 

That’s an important shift. As it signals Lee’s turn from “war photographer who doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t feel anything” to “normal person who has normal emotional reactions”.  That’s supported by how sad and vulnerable Lee is for the rest of the film. Especially after Joel tells her that the WF is moving on Washington so that Joel and Lee are “too late” and “missed the story” and that “Sammy didn’t even die for anything good.” On the ground in D.C., Lee isn’t cool, calm, and professional. She’s battling PTSD and grief and fear. She’s much closer to who Jessie was at the protest in New York City. 

Even when Lee gets it together and is back in photographer mode in the White House, her choice to save Jessie is a huge one. So many times, Lee was the fly on the wall, the documentarian who doesn’t get involved as people burn alive or writhe in pain after an explosion. But she makes a conscious choice to take action and save Jessie. And that brings us to the final beat of the subplot. Jessie has the opportunity to photograph Lee’s body. 

Initially, she kind of does. She snaps Lee standing over her, absorbing the gunfire, then falling. It’s the moment Lee was shot. But there’s a few minutes where Jessie could photograph Lee dead on the floor. The way she saw Lee photograph the bodies of others who had fallen. Or the way Lee photographed Sammy. We saw that, ultimately, Lee decided the photo of Sammy crossed a line. She chose being his friend rather than being the photographer. Jessie has a similar choice. If she were to shoot Lee in that moment, it would be a sign that the cold dehumanization demanded by war photography had taken hold. That now nothing was off-limits for Jessie because she didn’t have the same empathy she had previously possessed. That lack of empathy is why Lee had taken the photo of Sammy. And her return of empathy is why she deleted it. 

Lee’s response to her photo of Sammy foreshadows Jessie’s decision. Deleting the photo signals to the viewer that the “right” thing, the human thing, is not to photograph the corpse of someone you cared about. So when Jessie doesn’t take the picture, it’s important. As it signals something positive, something hopeful. Her innocence isn’t completely gone. Her humanity remains intact. And that matters. Because maybe the same can be said for the country itself and the next generation of Americans.

When we stop seeing the humanity in others, things fall apart. On the individual level and on the scale of nations. 

Glass half-empty

There is an argument to be made that what I previously wrote is too optimistic. It’s actually kind of sad and chilling that Jessie doesn’t react to Lee’s death (not to mention Joel ignoring it). You could say that she’s in shock and it will hit her later. But you could also make the case that she’s already become jaded like Lee. What did Lee say earlier in the film? “Once you start asking yourself those questions, you can’t stop. So we don’t ask. We record, so other people ask. Wanna be a journalist? That’s the job.” 

Even if we agree with Lee—that mindset demands an extreme detachment. Some would say an extreme cynicism. Over the course of Civil War, we see Jessie go from “someone with normal human reactions” to being like Lee—stoic in the face of horror. Not even stoic. Jessie’s downright excited about what she’s witnessing in D.C. Overeager. To the point where the soldiers have to keep pulling her back to safety because she’s stepping out, without any sense of self-preservation, to get a photo. One might say the desensitization is just Jessie coming-of-age and finding the strength to do a hard job, to be a real war photographer like Lee. But it’s also a sign of dehumanization. Which is a slippery slope.

It makes me think of the movie Nightcrawler. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a character named Lou Bloom who is this sociopath who embodies the worst aspects of American entrepreneurism. Namely, that drive to be successful no matter the cost. He accomplishes this by becoming a freelance videographer who sells footage of car crashes, crimes, etc. to a local news station. We see how predatory and gross it is. Lou benefits off the pain and sorrow of others. crosses more and more moral lines in order to get better and better footage. Footage that earns him a lot of money. Until he’s a successful small business owner who is, you can imagine, on his way to an empire. 

We’re not supposed to like Lou. He represents everything wrong with hustle culture and living to work. And how capitalism not only rewards such behavior but encourages it.

Jessie is a way better person than Louis Bloom and not so far gone. Plus, I don’t think Civil War is that cynical. But who Jessie is at the end feels a bit Nightcrawler-y. So it seems fair to me if someone wants to argue that the end of Civil War is actually far less hopeful than many might initially think. That it’s not as simple as “bad man gone, things are good now.”

Personally, I think Garland ended the movie too early. For example, imagine if The Shining simply ended with the shot of Jack frozen in the maze. Imagine if it didn’t have that last bit where we’re back in the hotel and zoom in on the wall of photos and see Jack in one of the pictures from decades earlier. That adds so many layers of complexity to the story and the themes. 

Or if Black Swan ended when Nina finally dances the Black Swan portion of the ballet and grows wings and the crowd roars with applause. It’s a climactic, cathartic moment that kind of wraps up the major plot arc. But Black Swan doesn’t end there. It has 10 more minutes. Which include important reveals about her psychology that cause us to have to rethink the entire story. The movie would have been good if it ended with the Black Swan dance. But it’s become a modern classic because of the additional 10 minutes. 

One last example. Inception ended with everyone waking up on the plane and we didn’t see Dom exit the plane, go home, then spin the top. Still a great movie. But it’s the moment with the top that elevated it to legendary status.  

Where and how Garland ends Civil War feels to me like a superficial and easy place to leave off. Speaking as a novelist and someone who was the head fiction editor for a literary journal for four years—endings are the hardest thing to write. Because of that, writers, including myself, tend to talk ourselves into what’s good enough rather than what’s best. I think there’s a version of Civil War that has 5, 10, or 15 more minutes and is much, much, much better off for it. I also feel that way about Ex Machina and Annihilation—both written by Garland.    

The themes, message, and meaning of Civil War

Humanity, sacrifice, and a better tomorrow

There’s a moment where Lee sits with Sammy. This is a bit of their conversation. 

Joel walks up and asks why Sammy’s worried about Lee. Sammy says: “Lee’s lost her faith in the power of journalism. The state of the nation is Q.E.D.” Q.E.D. is shorthand for quod erat demonstrandum. It’s Latin and essentially means that something has been demonstrated or proven. Joel’s response to Sammy is to point out the not-so-distant battle that lights up the night sky with rockets and other munitions. That’s Q.E.D. 

You can think of Lee as a sponge that has absorbed a lot of grime. It has left her outwardly hardened and inwardly haunted. America’s in a similar place. Centuries of ideological tension have finally crescendoed with the civil war. While Garland doesn’t spend a lot of time on what specifically led to the war (the President’s third term is part of it), he lets us fill in the blanks, especially with the President’s similarities to Donald Trump and moments like the scene with Jesse Plemons. As we approach D.C., every scene reinforces how broken and dehumanized the country has become. Which brings us back to Lee’s disappointment. 

Within the world of the film, Garland sets up the death of Nick Offerman’s President character as a starting-over point. With the leader gone, the movement will, for all intents and purposes, crumble. The clouds give way to the sun. The rains return to drought-stricken lands. The sponge gets squeezed out. Pick a metaphor. The journey of Civil War is essentially about finding that tipping point that points an end to the conflict. 

Lee’s story isn’t an exact parallel to the United States but both are saturated with negativity. Jessie is the antithesis. The innocent, youthful perspective. When Lee sacrifices herself, there’s a redemptive aspect to it. For so long, she had been someone who stood by and watched, like those nature documentarians who refuse to intervene to save an animal from some cruel fate. And we see how, in D.C., Lee’s at her lowest. All of that trauma she’s experienced comes to the surface and leaves her suddenly vulnerable and emotional and human. When she steps out to save Jessie, it’s as Lee Smith, the person. Not the war photographer. There’s something redemptive in her sacrifice. As if she were saving herself by making sure someone as innocent as Jessie, someone already described as a younger Lee, has a future.

Lee’s sacrifice dovetails with the soldiers of the Western Forces who fought to take down a corrupt president. Now, both Jessie and the country have an opportunity for a better tomorrow. 

Though, it’s fair to wonder if it’s already too late. Especially given the way that Jessie doesn’t react to Lee’s demise but moves forward as a good war photographer should.    

Take no prisoners

Civil War has a series of scenes where two sides are in opposition. First, it’s the police and the protestors. They clash but it’s not deadly. Until one person indiscriminately sets off a bomb. Next, it’s the encounter at the gas station. That could have turned bad but economics wins out. Then it’s a skirmish between the soldiers from the U.S. military and resistance forces. This is mortal combat, true battlefield conflict between opposing sides. Following that, it’s the sniper showdown at the checkpoint. 

Previously, the sides had always been clearly defined. Cops and protestors. Gas station goons and outsiders. U.S. loyalists and militia fighters. But, here? The distinction is gone. Ideology is non-existent. Who? Why? What for? None of that matters. The situation has boiled down to “someone’s trying to kill us. We are trying to kill them.” It’s as simple as that.  

Philosophically, this sequence opens a lot of doors. Is it that simple? Should one side have tried to communicate? Or de-escalate? Or are some situations that straightforward? If so, where is the line?

Keep that in mind as we discuss the film’s final two conflicts. 

We have the scene with Jesse Plemons where a group of rogue soldiers have decided to systematically eliminate people they deem non-American. We see a mass grave filled with bodies we can assume are from people the soldiers had judged. Part of this insane morality, that feels akin to Anton Chighur from No Country For Old Men, is on display when Plemons’s soldier accepts Jessie and Lee because they have clearly American roots, being from Missouri and Colorado, and pale white skin. But the soldier shoots Tony because Tony’s from Hong Kong. Then is skeptical of Joel because Joel has a darker complexion and is from Florida. 

Viewers should be disgusted by the soldier. Judging someone’s worth and right to live based on something as uncontrollable as where they were born is one of the dumbest things a person can do. It’s evil. In this case, the sides are arbitrary, made up. Which is one of the reasons these guys feel like the most villainous figures in the movie.  

Lastly, there’s D.C. In storming the White House, the Western Forces take no prisoners. Even when people want to surrender. You have the group that tries to drive away from the White House but are gunned down. Granted, a Secret Service Agent jumps out of one car, firing, but there’s an unarmed woman who begs “No, no, no”. There’s the woman who wants to negotiate the surrender of the president. Also unarmed. They kill her. And, lastly, the president himself. Defeated. Completely at the mercy of the WF. They could bring him in for a trial. Instead, they execute him. 

In the former scene with Plemons, we disagree with the soldiers and why they’re killing. But in the latter scene, showing no mercy is almost positioned as something we should cheer for. After all, aren’t the people in D.C. the enemy? Didn’t they start a civil war? Aren’t the WF the good guys? Shouldn’t we cheer them on? Joel’s one of our main, heroic characters. He says he needs a quote and crouches in front of the whimpering President who begs “Don’t let them kill me” and responds “That’ll do.” Isn’t Joel’s line presented as cool? Doesn’t the cinematography, music, and Jessie’s photo seem like the film is formally celebrating the demise of the President?

There’s something to unpack there. You could say that the main difference between the hateful soldiers and WF in D.C. is that the President and his people were actively engaged in combat with the WF. Meaning that it’s closer to the sniper fight. It’s clearly a “kill or be killed” situation, right? But that’s not the case with Plemons. No one was trying to attack him or his group. It seems pretty cut and dry. Except you can imagine Plemons disagreeing then saying some nationalistic rhetoric about preserving American culture and traditions, that the country is “under attack” from outsiders. To him and his crew, it is a “kill or be killed” situation. Even if the “be killed” is a fear of marginalization rather than literal doom. An existential demise that they believe is worth fighting back against.  

So where is the line? As viewers, there are times in Civil War when our perspective character, Jessie, finds violence fascinating. Times when it’s terrifying and we hope it can be avoided. But also moments when the film asks us to actively relish someone’s demise. 

It doesn’t seem like the movie picks a side. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In the words of Lee: We record, so other people ask.

The value of journalism

Lee says to Sammy, quote, “Everytime I survived a war zone and got the photo, I thought I was sending a warning home, ‘Don’t do this’. But here we are.” Sammy then tells Joel that Lee has “lost her faith in the power of journalism”. 

Even though the film raises the question about the value of journalism, it doesn’t necessarily provide an answer. Did any of the photos Lee and Jessie took matter? Maybe the photo of the deceased President? It’s an important moment, but is it an important picture? We don’t even know how it’s used and what it does for Jessie’s career. If the photos do matter, we don’t see that. And if they don’t matter, we don’t see that either. 

So even though this thematic point is brought up and somewhat developed through Lee, it’s arguable if it goes anywhere meaningful. Rather, it seems up to us to provide the conversion and meaning. 

Why is the movie called Civil War?

The title is pretty straightforward. There’s a civil war in the United States. So the movie is called Civil War. You can make an argument that the title also applies to Lee and the existential crisis she’s having as it relates to journalism. This existential tension also comes through when Jessie tells Lee “These last few days, I’ve never been scared like that before, and I’ve never felt more alive.” So the idea of “civil war” isn’t just the political and military battle unfolding across the country. But gets at these warring emotions we have within ourselves. 

Important motifs in Civil War

Soldiers telling Jessie to “get back”

This is probably my favorite detail in the movie. During the D.C. sequence, Jessie feels confident as a war photographer. But she’s so eager that she’s often stepping out too soon or too far. But a soldier is always there to pull her back or caution her. It happens at least a dozen times. And you could easily think nothing of it. But it actually sets up what happens outside the Oval Office. Jessie leaves cover too early and puts herself in the middle of the firefight. Which causes Lee to sacrifice herself to save Jessie. 

There’s a version of the scene where Jessie is a lot more cautious. In that situation, her leaving cover would feel disingenuous or forced. Why would she suddenly do that? Having her keep pushing boundaries and needing the soldiers to reign her in over and over again means that it’s only a matter of time until she puts herself in a bad position. Which is what happens. Instead of feeling forced, it feels inevitable. Tragic. Her inexperience and arrogance resulted in Lee’s demise. 

Questions & answers about Civil War

Why did Lee sacrifice herself to save Jessie? 

Lee tells Jessie: “It may sound f***ed up. But there are so many ways that it could have ended for him. And a lot of them were worse. He didn’t wanna quit.”

I think that line is more about foreshadowing Lee’s death than it is about Sammy. But both Lee and Sammy had spent a lot of time in bad places, around bad people, where things could have gone awfully wrong for them. There’s some future where Sammy lives another 20 years and is surrounded by friends and loved ones. But there are futures where his insistence on being in the thick of it means he’s captured, tortured, blown up, whatever awful thing you want to think of. In this situation, he got to save people he cared about and take out an evil man (the soldier played by Plemons). 

You can say the same thing about Lee. There are a lot of ways she could have gone. Imagine if she and Joel had gotten to D.C. before the WF. We were told that the President had executed every journalist for the last few years. How bad would that have been for them? How pointless and empty? What if the guys at the gas station decided to hang her from the ceiling of a nearby car wash? Or put a tire around her neck and lit it on fire? Lee didn’t want to quit. Which meant a horrible death was always a possibility. Getting to save Jessie is, relatively speaking, not as bad. She got to go out on her terms, doing something she felt so much conviction about that it was worth her life. 

What was the real reason for the civil war?

We only get bits and pieces. The big one seems to be the President seizing a third term in office. The U.S. Constitution is pretty clear about a two-term limit. George Washington, the first president, set the precedent. Many respected his choice and followed in his footsteps by not seeking re-election after two terms. But it wasn’t codified into an amendment until 1951, after FDR had three terms. In FDR’s defense, World War II had started and he stayed on because of that. 

From an article on History: [FDR] “didn’t think that the U.S. should ‘change horses in midstream’ as this war was building towards what he knew would eventually be our full-fledged intervention in both the European and Pacific theaters.” 

Outside of such a situation, term limits exist because it ensures a democratic transition of power after only 8 years. Someone seeking more than that may have more dictatorial interests. Which is what we see in Civil War. Aside from the third-term, we hear that the President has ordered airstrikes on U.S. citizens, has executed members of the press who try to cover him, and hasn’t done an interview in years. 

You can imagine there were already tensions (much like in real life) but as soon as the President got a third term, people freaked out. Both conservatives in Texas and liberals in California felt this was a huge abuse of power. So they united. You can imagine it went from “We demand you step down” to escalating to bloodshed and then a full-blown war. 

Or another version is that Texas and California didn’t team up right away. But after the air strikes on U.S. citizens, the two states put their political differences aside as they both agreed that was too far. 

What outlet did Lee and Joel work for?

Reuters. They’re pretty neutral and respected.

What’s in Charlottesville?   

Seems to be the staging ground for the WF. It’s about 120 miles from D.C. So 2-3 hours driving. Far enough to build up a defensive position but close enough to not be under fire all the time. 

You could argue there was intention in using Charlottesville as opposed to Richmond or Baltimore. In 2017, Charlottesville was the staging ground for the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally. The collision between those rallying and the counter-protestors caused a major schism in the country’s identity, after one of the ralliers, James Alex Fields Jr., drove his car into the crowd of protestors. 35 people were injured and Heather Heyer died. There was also the brutal assault of DeAndre Harris. It was essentially ground zero for an identity war that churned throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. 

You could take the symbolism further, if you wanted, but that might be reaching a bit. For example, Charlottesville was this place where we saw the first embers of a potential civil war. Having the WF control that area can feel like a repudiation of the ideology behind Unite the Right. Especially since the President in Civil War feels like someone who would have cheered on that side. 

Now it’s your turn

Have more unanswered questions about Civil War? Are there themes or motifs we missed? Is there more to explain about the ending? Please post your questions and thoughts in the comments section! We’ll do our best to address every one of them. If we like what you have to say, you could become part of our movie guide!