History Film / CivilWar2024

* VillainBall: [[spoiler:Although he would still lose power, the President would probably have been able to survive in exile had he been even slightly rational. Instead of fleeing Washington, D.C. once the majority of his Generals and Loyalist soldiers surrender to the Western Forces, he decides to hole up in the White House with only a handful of die-hard soldiers and Secret Service agents to protect him [[LastStand against overwhelming odds of losing]]. He doesn't even utilise the White House's underground command bunker or various tunnels leading out of the complex once WF soldiers breach the perimeter. Only when they are inside does he attempt to negotiate surrender and extraction to a "neutral territory", which obviously fails with no leverage and allows the secessionists to shoot through his remaining bodyguards and execute him in the Oval Office]].

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Sammy and Lee are killed during their trek from New York to Washington D.C., with the former being mortally wounded by a nationalist extremist and the latter being killed by Secret Service agents (right in front of Jessie no less) during the shootout in the White House. The group ultimately fails in their objective to get an interview with the President. Western Forces successfully invade D.C, but rather than accept a surrender, they storm the White House and kill everyone inside; Joel gets only a brief quote before the President is summarily executed, and a hardened Jessie takes a photo of the soldiers posing with his dead body. Furthermore, it is left ambiguous on what happens to the overall state of the nation and whether the conflict will end. Given the [[CrapsackWorld state of things in America]] and how [[HumansAreBastards all factions involved in the war have displayed little to no redeeming qualities]], it is highly likely that the United States will become a failed state; Sammy is certain from the outset that all the secessionists will turn on each other once the President is dead, just as the Allies did after World War II.]]

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Sammy and Lee are killed during their trek from New York to Washington DC, with the former being mortally wounded by a nationalist extremist and the latter being killed by Secret Service agents (right in front of Jessie no less) during the shootout in the White House. Western Forces have successfully invaded Washington D.C, murdered a woman implied to be the First Lady, an unarmed Secret Service agent negotiating surrender, and finally the President himself, with Joel getting only a brief quote from the President (rather than a full interview) before he is summarily executed, all while a hardened Jessie takes a photo.]] [[spoiler: Furthermore, it is left ambiguous on what happens to the overall state of the civil war as a whole, and whether or not the death of the President means that the war finally ends if at all. But given the [[CrapsackWorld state of things shown throughout America]], and how [[HumansAreBastards all factions involved in the war have little to no redeeming qualities]], it is highly likely that the United States will be destined to become a failed state; one journalist is certain that all the secessionists will turn on each other once the President is dead.]]

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: [[NaiveNewcomer Jessie]] assumes that she could handle herself on the battlefield, thinking that taking photos of the civil war as it rages on will be a walk in a park. But when she encounters two heavily tortured men at a gas station, she is (understandably) shocked and disgusted that she didn't even take a photo of it, much to her chagrin afterwards when she complains that she didn't take a single shot. Lee remarks that she needs to get used to it first. [[spoiler: By the end of the film (a few days later), she has become so emotionally battered that she's swung hard the other way, and is essentially addicted to the thrill of danger just like Joel, but without his long experience and recovery times in between, leaving her the most reckless of the journalists by far]].

* KnowWhenToToldEm: Two counts toward the end of the film. [[spoiler: With inevitable defeat looming for the remaining Loyalist forces, their generals and the vast majority of their number surrender when the Western Forces advance on Washington DC. Joel invokes this when he tells the group that they'll never make it to the President before he flees or is killed, but Lee defies this and insists they press on anyways.]]

* CasualDangerDialogue: A sniper and a spotter exchange this with Joel while they are trying to take out an enemy sniper which shot the journalists' vehicle at an abandoned Christmas themed fair.

* FriendlySniper: Downplayed with the pair of snipers that the group meet at the abandoned Christmas fair; while they aren't exactly friendly and openly mock Joel several times, they are nice enough to let the group take shelter with them, are willing to put up and answer Joel's questions while they're in the middle of a SniperDuel, and have the courtesy to inform the group when they've killed the enemy sniper. And while neither of them are morally scrupulous in the slightest, they're much nicer compared to the many {{Sociopathic Soldier}}s that the group encounters.

* {{Trumplica}}: Downplayed. The unnamed President's has a speech patterns similar to Obama while his broadcast indicates some of Trump's tendency towards exaggeration and blatant lies ("The greatest military strike ever made") and it's said that he has a major and violent anti-journalist policy. He's also dissolved Federal and ''likely'' State agencies before, as Trump has repeatedly threatened to do. However, he has more of a [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy Kennedy-esque]] appearance in dark hair with some grey streaks, and since the film deliberately averts any defining details about the politics of any side of the war, it's unclear whether he shares any of Trump's business background or political stances.

* {{Trumplica}}: Downplayed. The unnamed President's news broadcast indicates some of Trump's tendency towards exaggeration and blatant lies ("The greatest military strike ever made") and it's said that he has a major and violent anti-journalist policy. He's also dissolved Federal and ''likely'' State agencies before, as Trump has repeatedly threatened to do. However, he has more of a [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy Kennedy-esque]] appearance in dark hair with some grey streaks, and since the film deliberately averts any defining details about the politics of any side of the war, it's unclear whether he shares any of Trump's business background or political stances.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The film takes place at some point in the future, but precisely when is left unclear. There is no futuristic technology, and even the internet and smartphones are more or less a non-presence. However, see ModernStasis for more details on this.

* BookEnds: Lee's first on-camera scene is of her getting her and Jessie behind a barricade before a suicide bombing. Her final action is [[spoiler:of her saving Jessie's life, taking a bullet for her.]]
** The President also makes his only personal appearances in the beginning and in the end of the movie. In between, he's only heard on the radio and TV in snippets.

* TheCavalry: The Western Forces are shown to have the strongest military might out the secessionist movements. This is driven home during the scenes at their Charlottesville forward operating base, with fighter jets flying overhead and large numbers of armoured vehicles, helicopters and soldiers gearing up for the final push to Washington, D.C. This makes sense in universe, given that they are backed mainly by Texas and California, each of whom are home to large numbers of military bases.

* DividedStatesOfAmerica: Obviously. The first trailer mentions that nineteen states, including Washington, Montana, Georgia, Louisiana, and Minnesota, have seceded from the union.
** According to [[https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fbxeabx94i7sc1.jpeg an official map shared on social media]], Texas and California are highlighted as the Western Forces. Otherwise, the states are divided accordingly:
*** '''The Florida Alliance:''' Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
*** '''Loyalist States:''' Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Washington DC, West Virginia & Wisconsin
*** '''New People's Army:''' Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington & Wyoming

--->[[spoiler: '''Special Agent Joy Butler''': "Can the President be entrusted into your safe care?"]]
--->[[spoiler: '''WF Sergeant''': "Yes ma'am, we'll take ''real good care of him'', just bring him out here. "]]

* MonumentalDamage: Inevitable with a film involving an armed conflict on American soil whose climax takes place in DC. When fighting federal Loyalist soldiers, Western Forces troops destroy part of the Lincoln Memorial with a javelin missile.

* RidiculousExchangeRates: The SecondAmericanCivilWar was devastating enough that it managed to tank one of the most valuable currencies on the planet. At one point when Lee was negotiating with one of the gas station attendants, she says that she'll offer $300 dollars for gas but they mentioned that $300 is barely enough for a sandwich -- ham ''or'' cheese. Lee then bluntly says that she's talking about Canadian dollars, leading to them closing the deal.

* SoundtrackDissonance: The second trailer is set to a slowed-down whistled rendition of "America the Beautiful", set to scenes showing a not-so-beautiful America and quite a bit of violence.

* StressVomit: Jessie has a particularly gnarly one after the encounter with [[spoiler: the racist soldiers that Sammy saves the crew from. She's so shaken up by the deaths she's witnessed that she doesn't even ''try'' to roll the window down and puke out the car window; she's an absolute mess that she just vomits in her lap on the spot in the back seat of the van, in a way that's less of an explosive clenching of muscles and more a complete slackening of them as the adrenaline wears off]].

* TheThreeFacesOfAdam: Sammy is the prophet. He's looking back on his life and highly respected by the other characters. The President is the lord; he only appears briefly but is implied to have committed vast OffstageVillainy at the moment that he's being deposed. Joel is the hunter, as a HotBlooded war photographer who undergoes a [=HeroicBSOD=] after witnessing violence and bloodshed.
* TooDumbToLive: It's unclear whether it's due to delusions of victory or just sheer hubris, but [[spoiler:the [[BigBad President]] doesn't bother fleeing the White House or Washington, D.C. even as separatist military forces are bearing down on it and the bulk of the defending Loyalist forces have surrendered, and all he achieves is getting himself and his remaining Secret Service agents trapped and then swiftly killed]]. See also VillainBall below.

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: It's heavily implied that, aside from [[MyCountryRightOrWrong soldiers and personnel who'll never stand for mutiny against the US]] and die-hard ultranationalists, ''no one'' likes the sitting American president -- the protagonists (and likely every other journalist in town) dismiss him as yet another dictator in the vein of [[UsefulNotes/NicolaeCeausescu Nicolae Ceaușescu]] and Joel and Lee banter about the fact that the President's actions (airstrikes on his own civilians, disbanding various Federal agencies including the FBI, dissolving the constitution, forcing a third term) will make it ''extremely'' hard to have a neutral interview. It's also implied that whatever caused the Western Forces to form had a lot of defecting military, with dialogue at the end saying that the ''last'' generals still allied with the US/the president only now defected. It's bad enough that it got ''deep blue California and deep red Texas to band together''.

* {{Trumplica}}: Downplayed in the extreme. His um and uh fumbles are identical to Obama and Biden without telepromters. Also the unnamed President has more of a [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy Kennedy-esque]] appearance in dark hair with some grey streaks, but it's a very distinctive, high volume hair style. His news broadcast indicates some of Trump's tendency to exaggerate ("The greatest military strike ever made") and it's said that he has a major and violent anti-journalist policy. He's also dissolved Federal and ''likely'' State agencies before, as Trump has repeatedly threatened to do.