The Global Story: Citizen Vigilante and Elon Musk’s war on ‘woke’ films

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1:26Hi there, it's Tristan Redman, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. And as a bonus for your feed, we're bringing you one of our best episodes of the week. You might have seen shots of the publicity tour for one of the biggest movies of the year all over your socials this week. Christopher Nolan's latest epic, The Odyssey, features many of Hollywood's most bankable stars. and early reviews have been glowing. But this week, we looked at the phenomenon around a movie that's had a much harder time finding a platform and how it became a lightning rod in Elon Musk's war on so-called woke culture.

2:06And if you enjoy this episode, every weekday we tell one story where the world and America meet. You could find more by searching for the global story wherever you get your podcasts. Now, enjoy the show. You might remember a few months ago that Elon Musk got quite upset about the director Christopher Nolan's new movie adaptation of The Odyssey. Musk published a string of posts criticizing Nolan for casting Lupita Nyong 'o, a black actor, as one of the central characters. He said that role should have been given to a white actor and that Nolan was afraid of being accused of racism. Musk wanted to take down the Odyssey for being part of Hollywood culture, which some on the right believe is dominated by the left.

3:00Fast forward to now, and Musk has been posting about a film that's been firmly rejected by some people on the left. It's a violent thriller called Citizen Vigilante. It features the murder of multiple immigrants in Europe, and it stars a disgraced former Hollywood A-lister who's trying to make a comeback. From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redman in London. And today on The Global Story, is the right seeking a political rebalance of the movie industry? And is a film like Citizen Vigilante the way to go about it?

3:45My name is Mike Wendling. I'm a journalist. I specialize in looking at the far right in the US and beyond. Well, we're delighted to have you here with us, Mike. I waded through most of Citizen Vigilante, the new Army Hammer thriller, and it was a hard watch. It was a hard watch. How did you first hear about it? I first heard about it in the usual places where these kinds of things pop up, which is right-wing, hard-right, far-right social media. And these days, that generally means X. What we used to know is Twitter, owned by Elon Musk. There was chatter about the film. And then, you know, a few news articles appeared.

4:25And I realized that Elon Musk had made the film available for free for a limited period of time on that network. I think I actually came across memes of the film before I actually came across the film itself. Can you give us an overview of what the film is about? Yeah, sure. So the former famous Hollywood actor Armie Hammer plays an ex-U.S. Army soldier who inherits a property empire in an unnamed European country.

4:57The truth is this. You are all being used. Armie Hammer's character, Michael Sanders, he has inherited this property empire, but he moonlights as a vigilante. He is the titular citizen vigilante. I'm here to help you take that control back. The state, court, police. See, you think that they've failed you, but they haven't. No, they only exist to control you. It paints a dark, dystopian view of Europe as being completely overrun by migrant gangs, criminals, where women are afraid to go out at night. You walk down the street and you get stabbed or robbed. He's a real hero. We need more guys like this.

5:48And there's only one man who can stop it all because the elites and the justice system are completely ignoring the problems on the ground. And it's our hero, Michael Sanders. He proceeds to go on a rampage, killing gangsters, killing migrants, killing the families of migrants, killing judges. Do you want justice? Yes. A whole load of police officers also get killed by the hero. And ironically, for a film that is supposed to be highlighting the dangers of out-of-control, violent, illegal migrants, The hero is a violent, illegal migrant. It's made very clear that he is in the country without proper legal permission and his body count is high.

6:36Yes, the body count is high. And Armie Hammer in the film, the main actor, you may remember him from such films as Call Me By Your Name. He was an A-list Hollywood star, one of the big ones, and he had a quite dramatic fall from grace. What's his story and how did he come to be this? Well, yeah, I mean, you named Call Me by Your Name. So what do you do around here? Read books, transcribe music, swim at the river, go out at night. Sounds fun. All right, later. He was in The Social Network, which is a fictionalized story of the early years of Facebook. He was playing both of the Winklevoss twins.

7:15Mark? You Mark Zuckerberg? Yeah. Cameron Winklevoss. Hi. Tyler Winklevoss. Are you guys related? That's good. Funny. I've never heard that before. He was a Hollywood star in Ascendance until a former partner had allegations of sexual assault and emotional abuse. Now, he denies all of those claims that several women have come out and made against him. He was never arrested. He was never charged with a crime. But since that happened roughly five to six years ago, he's been persona non grata in Hollywood. He has not starred in a film until this film came out just recently. I mean, the contrast between Call Me By Your Name and Citizen Vigilante could not be more striking.

8:03The first is a sort of quite subtle and nuanced coming of age film set in an Italian summer. And this one is, I mean, how would you describe it? It's one of the most blunt films that I've ever seen. There is no subtlety. And I would also say that the films that we've been talking about that Armie Hammer's starred in are terrific films, and he's a very good actor. None of those talents seem to be on display in this one, though. Do we know anything about how he actually ended up in this role? Like, when did he get the cool? Well, you know, Uwe Boll, the German director who directed this film, called him up and Armie Hammer cried when he got the call because he thought that he had been completely abandoned.

8:43I got an email from Uwe that had the script in it, and he said, look, I'm making this movie. I want you to do it. And he was the first person to ask in a long time. I just started crying. I was so happy that someone was going to give me a chance to do what I love to do. He was doing something in real estate in the Cayman Islands. I mean, this is a guy who was well on his way to being an A-list Hollywood star, and he was just trying to scrape together a living. And for whatever reason, the director thought that he would be perfect for this role. And I read the script and I was like, I don't care what this is about.

9:15Let's go do this. And And then we went to Croatia and made a really fun movie. I think that's a symbol of how desperate he might be to actually get back into the acting game. Let's talk about the director. He's not exactly a household name. Who is he? He's known for sort of, how to put this politely, schlock. Pretty sort of bad, low-budget, independent films. Several of his films are sort of, you know, highly ranking on lists of worst films of all time. He does sort of video game adaptations. I mean, first of all, to these reviewers, I can say they always trashed my movies. He sort of wears it as a badge of honor.

9:50They just hate me because I'm not like this kind of filmmaker who bends over to this system, to the Hollywood system. They don't like me. That establishment doesn't like me because I make movies like straight in your face. Okay. Well, so Army Hammer, there's a whole kind of genre of films based around on vigilantes who are out there. Taxi driver. Yeah. Death Wish, The Joker, all sorts. So he's out there trying to perform acts of sort of citizen justice. What does he actually do? And what's the kind of message that comes across from the film? To tell it in sequence, it starts with a very sort of vicious murder of what looks like a mother who's standing next to her son doing some grocery shopping.

10:36It's interspersed with news reports and social media clips illustrating how the situation in Europe, this unnamed European country, is completely out of control and migrants roam the streets. We see the Armie Hammer character go after gangs. An Interpol police officer shows up in a very interesting sort of scene where he claims that Michael Sanders, the character that Armie Hammer plays, is connected to Russia or China or terrorist groups when really he's really a lone wolf. And the Interpol chief is sort of the baddie of the whole thing, corners Michael Sanders and then loses several SWAT teams worth of police to this in his absolute bloodbath.

11:22Michael Sanders escapes. He goes on to sort of kill some more people. Some of them are just random civilians, at least one of them. And then a climactic scene happens where he confronts a rapist, a gang of rapists actually, in a home and kills not only the gang but the whole family of one of the gang members. So the director, Uwe Boll, he went on Piers Morgan's show and he explained why he made the film. He said that he was inspired by a case that happened in Hamburg in 2016, where a group of Syrian teenagers gang raped a girl. And this is one of the incidents that he says inspired him to make this film.

12:03I'm against like this uncontrolled migration where people, for example, in Germany are not even allowed to work. Then the resentment in the population grows. Then you have also people just being bored because they're not working. So the integration sucks. Now they're turning into crime and also random crime, as we see with this rapes, with the knife stabbings. that's not like individual little cases. They're all over Europe into the thousands every year. And if all of this was not absolutely clear as to where the motivation was coming from to make this film, the film ends with a title card. And essentially it says that it's dedicated to the thousands of rape and murder victims who have been let down by the justice system in Europe.

12:57There is very little subtlety here. it really kind of hits you over the head. Well, I'm going to put it to you, Mike, that there is one bit of subtlety. And I wonder what you make of this. So there is a scene where our hero, played by Armie Hammer, is on a bus. And he confronts a group of kids, teenagers who have not paid their bus fare. He actually pulls a gun on one of the teenagers and gives the kids a lecture about why it's a good idea to pay bus fares. And this scene stood out to me because I thought it's very odd that this wealthy American property owner is moving around Croatia on this kind of local municipal bus.

13:38It seems to be at odds with his kind of role in the community. It's not the only plot hole in this film by any means. You're suggesting it's not watertight. So, and it struck me that this seemed to be a sort of projection, perhaps on behalf of the director, who is also the writer, as I understand, that they're just kind of annoyed by people who don't pay their bus fares. And it seemed unfair. So he thought maybe he just whack in a scene about that in the film. It's hard to tell what that scene actually means, but I think that you're probably right. It has to do with the low-level sort of social disorder that, interestingly, is also a very key obsession of the far-right and the right wing.

14:22A lot of people are worried about this. I don't want to sort of put it exclusively on the far right. But in terms of when the American far right, the international far right look at society, this is one of the things that they sort of point to. Lack of respect. People are getting away with this kind of thing all the time. And then the diagnosis in the film is obviously to go on murderous rampages and pull guns on teenagers in buses. It's pretty extreme. it comes out without much hype. They probably haven't got a massive marketing budget, but it does seem to take off. How has that actually happened?

14:55So in Germany, initially, it was not given a rating. It's various systems and elsewhere in the world use this. If you don't have an age rating, you can't be shown in theatres. So the German authorities refused to initially give it a rating. And so this led to claims of censorship by the filmmaker. And he started, you know, shouting about it on social media. Somehow this got the attention of Elon Musk.

15:24And Musk said, this film is astounding, wonderful, and it deserves to be seen and it's being censored by the German government. And so I'm going to make it free on X for 48 hours. This happened about a week ago. That got a huge amount of publicity. One of the most controversial movies I've ever seen before. If you've seen it, you already know what happens to your emotions. Rage, mixture of feelings of, what is wrong with this guy? I'm siding with him. He's a good guy. No, he's a bad guy. Why did he do this? The question now is whether the citizen vigilante is a legitimate expression of social anxiety and a rallying call for change, or simply racist slop written specifically to get Elon Musk's attention.

16:05And from there, it has climbed the charts, at least on streaming, at least in some countries, very temporarily. But it definitely has sort of shifted units in terms of rentals and sales on things like Amazon Prime and other sort of streaming services. OK, so there are plenty of critics, Mike, who are saying that this film promotes violence against migrants and government officials even. As we've heard, Elon Musk has been actively promoting it on X. He has shared on his ex account a post by another user which described the vigilante murder of migrant criminals and their families as the moderate response.

16:46That's a quote, the moderate response. I can't keep up with Elon Musk's social media output. He's pretty prolific. But where does he stand on things? What's he saying at the moment? So, you know, Elon Musk has been very involved in politics in the United States and around the world. He was obviously a big supporter of Donald Trump during the 2024 election. He's been sort of a free speech warrior, anti-woke warrior, conservative on some issues. He talks a lot about migration. He has retweeted people who spread what is known as the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory, which posits that white people are becoming extinct because non-white people from other countries are being secretly or not so secretly being brought into European countries and North America and whatnot.

17:35This has become more explicit in his social media output. It's become a little bit more extreme. Obviously, something like along the lines that you just read out where a slaughter of a family being considered moderate is pretty out there. You know, it is rhetoric. It's online rhetoric. A lot of people around him or defenders of him would say, you know, don't take it super seriously. But it's a constant drumbeat. And it's not just sort of, I suppose, me sticking my finger in the air and seeing which way the wind blows in terms of what he's saying. There's been some research done by folks at the Washington Post and the Guardian and other sort of news agencies and think tanks analyzing the messages that he's putting out, and they sort of back up that conclusion.

18:20At the same time, he's also become much, much more wealthy with the floating of his companies and the business that they're doing. And he suggested that he might fund a sequel to this film or perhaps other films with, one would assume, a similar message. It's a very sort of curious political development that The World's Richest Man has undergone.

18:53Is the American Dream still possible? I'm Asma Khalid, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. One of the most successful exports the United States has ever sold the world is the American Dream, that tantalizing promise of a better, freer, richer life. But is it still attainable? I feel like the American Dream is alive but not well. For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:24You touched on earlier the genre of vigilante films, which include Taxi Driver. Yeah. Now, this year's Oscar winner, One Battle After Another, is arguably another vigilante film film and was widely praised for Leonardo DiCaprio's performance. Yeah, absolutely. What's the difference? Yeah, I think the difference is pretty clear. Well, OK, so there's an artistic difference for sure, because that's a good film, I think. Just as Taxi Driver is a good film. But, you know, politically, I think it's a much more sort of subtle film. Take the Leonardo DiCaprio revolutionary character in that film, right?

20:08He's kind of an oaf. We see him after his revolutionary days. And one of the most hilarious scenes in that film is he can't remember the password for the revolutionary group. And he gets all frustrated and he starts smashing a phone because he's just constantly high on marijuana. I don't think that anybody goes into that film and comes out saying, you know what, I need to be killing some Antifa soldiers or we need to be raiding an ICE immigration facility in the United States. But I think that if you're so inclined, it might be that you see Citizen Vigilante and you think, gosh, this is a problem that is out of control and I need to do something.

20:50Now, of course, the defenders of the film will say, listen, that is a bit ridiculous. And I think we should all be skeptical about the power of, you know, films or video games or whatever it is to actually sort of motivate behavior. But Citizen Vigilante is very, very clearly a political project. It's very clearly in the category of propaganda. Like it fits the definition of propaganda in a way that all these other films that we've been discussing don't just because they have subtlety, humanity. They make people maybe think, yes, they have violence. Yes, maybe that they glorify violence, but they're just not in the same category.

21:27So Citizen Vigilante was considered for a ban in Germany. But we should point out that the German film authorities have actually changed course on that and they have approved it for theatrical release. It begs the question, is it the right decision to ban a film like that? Or is it just better to let audiences decide whether a film is worth seeing or not? Yeah, I think that the ban led to the, essentially what we call the Streisand effect, right? Named after Barbara Streisand, who'd wanted pictures of her house taken down from the internet and went to great lengths to do that, but ended up getting more attention on it.

22:07So the ban operated in the same way. This film would, if it was sort of given a license right away by the German government and sort of shown in half a dozen theaters around Germany, probably wouldn't have made the splash that it had. I mean, look, generally, I would say we have to be very, very skeptical of censorship. Rating systems are a form of censorship. It's for each individual country to sort of decide what it shows children. I mean, that's the point of rating systems. But clearly here, the initial censorship of the film, because it's just been given an 18 plus rating in Germany, definitely drove people to watch it more so than they would if it wasn't censored.

22:49Is this film showing a new kind of funding model for breakout low budget films? I mean, for one, getting big on streaming services, but also could it be a route to film funding to get the attention of the Elon Musk of this world and persuade them to start funding sequels and what have you? It's interesting, yes. There is a thriving alternative film scene out there of films with a conservative bent. I'll give you another example, one that was actually way, way more successful than this film. It was called Sound of Freedom. It came out about three years ago. It was put out by a studio called Angel Studios.

23:30They're very upfront about their Christian values, their conservative film studio. The film itself dealt with human trafficking, and it was a fictionalized story of a CIA agent who hunts human traffickers in Central America. It was very controversial for its conservative messages, and the lead actor in that film did some interviews with conservative podcasts, and he talked about the QAnon conspiracy and things like that at some point. But the film itself was not as stark as Citizen Vigilante. It certainly wasn't a pure propaganda film in the same way. That film made$250 million. Oh, wow. That's a lot of money.

24:06That is a lot of money. Yeah. It was on general theatrical release. You could see it in cinemas all across the United States, all across the world. It streamed. It was shown in churches. It shows that there's a viable model. There has always been a huge market, particularly in the United States, for Christian-centered, Christian-themed entertainment, right? So there are alternative distribution methods. Hollywood is not all powerful. There are niche markets out there. This particular film that we're talking about is a very specific niche, but there's certainly ways around Hollywood if you're a filmmaker and you're savvy and you want to sort of capitalize on different film-going audience.

24:45So there is a claim that the movie industry is overpopulated by liberals. Elon Musk has been taking potshots at Christopher Nolan's new adaptation of The Odyssey. Looks like it's going to be a huge film, one of the big blockbusters of the summer. Lupita Nyong 'o's in it, as we mentioned earlier on. Musk is basically claiming that that film is subject to quote-unquote woke casting. So we've got a situation where he's hyping this film Citizen Vigilante whilst dumping on The Odyssey. I just wonder if you could just analyze that for us a little bit. I mean, what's behind his argument and how common is that refrain when you're in the online world that there are too many woke people in Hollywood?

25:32Yeah, I mean, it doesn't really seem like a fair fight to compare these two films on any level. But that is a very common argument and it has some merit. So, you know, Hollywood is full of liberals, let's be honest. It just is. On the other hand, that doesn't necessarily mean that Citizen Vigilante is a good film and its message is a sort of mainstream message that should be broadcast throughout the world and except for the woke forces that are holding it back. There's really two different arguments here. You know, Elon Musk is saying, well, you know, wokeism and DEI and diversity has overtaken Hollywood.

26:12But really, it's more of a broader argument that you hear in these spaces. on X, by Musk, by the people that he's sort of following and the extremists that he's retweeting, they feel that messages like the ones that are shown in Citizen Vigilante should be shown to mainstream audiences, even though there's no real evidence that there's a huge market. Whereas a lot of people will argue that Odyssey is, and by all accounts, a lot of people will go and see it, you know, no matter what the politics of it are. I'm guessing that a lot of people are slain in the Odyssey. Yes, this is probably true. It's not necessarily, I think, even about the violence.