15 years of 'Call Of Duty' campaigns didn't prepare me for 'Civil War'

Call of Duty has dipped in and out of modern-day warzone campaigns for nearly 20 years now since the original Modern Warfare was released in 2007. Among those games are recurring stories in which battles take place within the United States, including the White House . The same in the Whiskey Hotel mission in Modern Warfare 2.

I kept thinking of Call of Duty and The Division-adjacent as I watched Alex Garland Civil war Last Night, which brings the concept of a war-torn America to the big screen. I know we always debate the validity of video games as an art form versus film, but sometimes things don't translate with the same intensity. I've played dozens of missions that mimic the kind of frenetic battles seen in Civil War, but there's no comparison. I left the movie with my nerves frayed and my ears ringing in a way I've never experienced in any shooter I've played.

Garland's Civil War is fascinating because unlike those games and, by and large, most war-based media, there's no actual explanation as to why any of this happened. The film puzzled some before its release by presenting an alliance between Texas and California against the remaining United States. What do these two states have in common? But that's not the point. There's no exploration of this at all, other than a xenophobic soldier killing those he doesn't consider “American” enough (I'm still not clear which side he's even on).

This puzzle is not the point. It can still serve as a cautionary tale about our current divisions in real life without getting into specific political points. The president, the closest thing the film has to a single villain, is seen for about 45 seconds and is not labeled as Republican or Democrat.

The conflicts in the film are relatively small in scale at first. Get creeped out by some armed gas station owners. Being shot by an invisible sniper. But then the movie gets to Washington, D.C., and it's probably one of the most terrifying battles I've ever seen on film. This is where Call of Duty happens, where it happens Feel Like the level of Call of Duty, but a hundred times more immersive, even if we are walking through the streets of the capital or the halls of the virtual White House in previous campaigns.

And here's the other thing, the movie's heroes are unarmed, unlike our Call of Duty super-soldiers who shoot enemy soldiers by the hundreds. There is exactly one instance in the entire film where a single journalist is “involved” in harming enemy combatants, and things do not go well for them. The rest are just observers, shooting with a camera, not a gun, and this increases the stakes because there is simply no way for them to react, so we, the audience, are trapped with them. The agency you get in campaigns in similar settings has completely disappeared. This is terrifying.

It's an excellent film, but it's so brutal and intense I don't know if I can recommend it to some. Gamers may be familiar with stories like this from modern shooters, but I guarantee they've never seen or played anything like this as hard hitting as Civil War.

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