How Civil War destroyed Washington D.C. in its deafening, violent climax
culture film
Jack King Ben Allen Owen Gough Tom Ward Adam Cheung Aaron Toumazou Finlay Renwick Heidi Quill Jessie Atkinson Robert Leedham
The capital, which becomes an explosive war zone in the final act of Alex Garland's button-pressing new thriller, was recreated on a “very, very large car park” outside of Atlanta. And planning the assault on the White House? “We used a map from Wikipedia,” the director says
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British GQ
The following article contains spoilers for Civil War.

Alex Garland's Civil War is a road movie with an explosive twist. In the film, America has been torn asunder by a bloody, barbaric conflict which rages between what remains of the U.S. federal government and a faction of seceded states, led by the unlikely coalition of California and Texas. We follow a group of war photojournalists, including embittered journo veteran Lee (Kirsten Dunst), into the dark heart of Washington D.C.

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As Civil War draws to its explosive climax, the armies of the California-Texas coalition — called, aptly, the Western Forces — converge on D.C. The federal military has all but surrendered, leaving a defence force of ideological ride-or-dies and the President's Secret Service to protect the capital. It's like Berlin in the dying embers of the Second World War. Collapse is inevitable.

Setting aside the provocations of Civil War, which has taken some flak from critics for its apolitical approach in fictionalising a barbaric American civil conflict on the eve of a hugely consequential U.S. election, its final act is technically astounding. Such is Hollywood tradition, famous landmarks are blown to pieces. The streets of D.C. become a war zone not unlike a newsreel from Iraq or a scene out of a Vietnam flick; indeed, Garland pointedly films his fictionalised war-torn America with the visual language we're used to seeing depict the war-torn Middle East.

As you might expect, the film's production didn't actually shoot those scenes in the real-life D.C. Instead, a set built on a “very, very large car park” in a national park an hour's drive from Atlanta stood in for the capital, according to Garland. “It was just a big, flat space that they let us hire. And then what Caty Maxey, the production designer, did, working with [VFX supervisor] David Simpson, was make a plan of which sections of buildings we needed to construct,” he says.

Their reproduction of D.C. was a combination of blue screens, for visual effects placements, and practical sets. “So you would walk onto a street, but around the street, there'd be these huge slabs of blue. Or the production design people built these huge, high perimeter walls, and gun placements, and HESCO barriers, with an intersection of the corners of the street opposite. But then the extensions were blue screens,” Garland recalls. “It was a very close coordination between those two departments.”

In one scene, we see combatants of the Western Forces lay siege to the Lincoln Memorial, which is seemingly being used as a base of operations by forces loyal to the President. “That was pure VFX,” Garland remembers, though they did shoot the soldier actors attacking the landmark. “We had a barrier, and behind that barrier was just a massive blue screen with a cross on it. And the cross was… the Lincoln Memorial. So all of the soldiers knew where to aim their [weapons]. That was one of those moments where everybody is taking a big leap of faith. It's the visual effects supervisor, they're saying: No, don't worry, jump, we'll catch you.”

The film's final scenes see the Western Forces skirmishing with the President's loyalists in the halls of the White House, on their way to capturing — or, rather, killing — Nick Offerman's POTUS. “We used a map from Wikipedia, of the West Wing,” Garland recalls of planning the White House-set action. “It was a little plan view that we printed and discussed.”

The production didn't rebuild the White House from scratch, but borrowed an existing set used for a variety of films and TV shows. “There is a standing set in Atlanta, which is of the White House, [but] 25% smaller. Because of the funny way film works, and lenses work, 25% is essentially invisible. The White House itself is not a very big building, if you stand in front of it,” Garland says. “For the exterior of the White House, we used a standing set… and when you walk into the White House, the set continues. So corridors, rooms, rather sort-of grand, ballroom type spaces, and a section of West Wing with some rooms off it.”

Because the Civil War production team couldn't damage the standing set, they did have to build one section of the White House, which would be all but destroyed in an intense gunfight. “We built that section ourselves on a different soundstage,” Garland says.

Civil War is now in cinemas.