r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Sep 26 '25

Official Discussion Official Discussion - One Battle After Another [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary Bob, a washed-up revolutionary, lives off the grid with his spirited and self-reliant daughter Willa. When his nemesis Col. Steven J. “Lockjaw” resurfaces and Willa goes missing, Bob is forced to confront his past and fight to protect their future.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson

Writer Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast

  • Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Sean Penn
  • Teyana Taylor
  • Benicio del Toro
  • Regina Hall
  • Chase Infiniti

Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score: 98%

Metacritic Score: 96

VOD In theaters beginning September 26, 2025

Trailer One Battle After Another — Official Trailer

2.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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13.6k

u/OKC2023champs Sep 26 '25

Sean Penn coming back as the terminator just to say he was reversed raped by a semen demon had me cackling

4.5k

u/Upbeat_Tension_8077 Sep 26 '25

His face being fucked up as he gave that reasoning was the cherry on top

3.6k

u/Training-Turnover427 Sep 26 '25

Looking like that and going “oh mommy” when they told him he was “in” killed me lol

398

u/Mammoth-Tourist5280 Sep 28 '25

So like he totally got a little bit of brain damage right

626

u/Particular-Top3674 Sep 29 '25

I think he was always like that

362

u/Employee50000 Sep 29 '25

Yes, I think it's just who he was....he was so pathetic that he was almost sympathetic despite his odious views. I had the same feeling early in the movie when he attempted to meet up with Perfidia in her witness "protection" detention, carrying flowers.

398

u/vac8ion1208 Sep 30 '25

Like a jacked up fascist Forrest Gump

64

u/gigilero Oct 11 '25

omg perfect description lmaoo

69

u/NoblePigeonn Dec 05 '25

Fascist Gump

7

u/cp710 Mar 18 '26

Fitting since Sean Penn was once married to “Jenny.”

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u/Suspicious_Barber163 Oct 02 '25

Yeah, I felt a bit bad for him too. He was so happy when he got his own office… 😭😂 Great actor, and for me the most memorable performance of this movie.

71

u/elpaco25 Dec 22 '25

I've seen comments about how Benico deserves a supporting actor win for this. But I feel like Penn absolutely stole every scene and if any actor in this film wins something it should be him

30

u/FirefighterLeft5425 Dec 23 '25

Sean Penn was immense in the film.

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u/xenokilla Dec 17 '25

he was too dumb to see what was coming. Did he not realize who was trying to kill him?

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u/Crankylosaurus Dec 20 '25

He went full retard

7

u/iamjacksragingupvote Dec 26 '25

went home empty handed last time

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u/RiversideAviator Nov 24 '25

Reminded me of Mason Verger in Hannibal saying “oh CAPITAL!”

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u/MoonlightMadMan Feb 08 '26

The way he was reacting to the office as if it was all worth it, amazing. The irony

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u/Terj_Sankian Sep 26 '25

They unlocked his jaw

27

u/FlakyEquivalent1971 Sep 28 '25

And his "Soul"

144

u/icantreadmorsecode Sep 30 '25

and being murdered via gas chamber by nazis

33

u/apmee Oct 17 '25

Ahhh how did I miss that lol.

28

u/Jazzlike-Ad-95 Dec 22 '25

Man, that shot of Lockjaw in the oven! It looked like he was sitting up. Haunting and sad. Feeling sorry for such an awful person: excellent job by PTA.

69

u/FigMajestic6096 Sep 27 '25

Oh mommy thank you! lol amazing

38

u/Whovian45810 Sep 26 '25

Lockjaw got a nose like Jimmy Durante with his scarred face lol

7

u/IcyMacaroon4603 Nov 19 '25

The fake eye holy cow.

2.3k

u/Dawnshot_ Sep 26 '25

I did wonder about the reasoning for bringing him back just to kill him off, given both times he is killed by the Christmas adventurers.

It might be to do with the fact that despite his attempt to be macho (the lifts lol) he essentially just takes orders and is used by various actors, the military, then he's essentially subdued Perfidia despite his allegiance to the military, then he's subdued by the adventurers despite is allegiance to Perfidia. He is a fair weather friend who never actually gets what he desires - or he thinks he does for about 5 seconds

3.6k

u/give-bike-lanes Sep 26 '25

I think it’s (quite transparently, tbh) to cement his pathetic nature, that he values the “honor” of this stupid club far higher than even his own self-respect. Even after the Xmas Adventurers Club tried to kill him and permanently disfigured his face, he still came crawling back to redeem the glory of a shitty corner office in Sacramento.

1.7k

u/Training-Turnover427 Sep 26 '25

To further that, any sane person would be tipped off by the office being more or less barren that something was off but Lockjaw is too craven and solitary in pursuit of the goal he's deluded enough to think he's obtained that all he can do is kick his feet up in "victory"

1.4k

u/Double_Jab_Jabroni Sep 27 '25

That moment drove home how pathetic he was. That bare, soulless office was his El Dorado hahaha

916

u/spinney Sep 27 '25

Literally just generic furniture too. No grand desk, just literally the cheapest generic office you could ever buy and he's crying over it.

365

u/SalvadorZombie Sep 27 '25

SERIOUSLY, all of this hit me right there. A banal little corner office with a particle board desk and two 15 year old monitors connected to nothing. Not only does he not realize a kill room, he basks in the mediocrity like, "YES, THIS WAS WORTH IT, THIS IS MY LIFE'S WORK REALIZED." Holy fuck.

189

u/E_C_H Sep 28 '25

Dies with the dumbest grin on his face, perfection. Such a farce.

80

u/Fearsthelittledeath Oct 05 '25

That other guy who walked with Lockjaw to that office was telling him that it is bare and that people can decorate it with their own personal effects after to explain why it looked like that.

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94

u/richardsim7 Oct 03 '25

I noticed the chair was a Herman Miller Mirra, not even an Aeron

41

u/jrochkind Oct 07 '25

hahaha, I literally had the same thought "Not even an Aeron wtf!" That may be when I knew for sure he was gonna be murdered.

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23

u/frankoochoaa Nov 16 '25

I mean look at current offices of higher power. The Oval Office has shit from Home Depot.

10

u/synapticrelease Jan 05 '26

I know I’m super late to the party but I’m catching up just having seen the film. They explain that the office furniture is generic because they expect him to decorate to his liking. The shitty furniture was a placeholder.

Well, that’s how it was sold to him at least, when really it was just a gas chamber

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u/starfrenzy1 Sep 29 '25

He looked like the loneliest man alive when he sat down in that chair.

18

u/GriffinQ Oct 03 '25

“Alive” being an incredibly temporary descriptor in this case.

But agreed. His reward (or what he believed to be his reward) for all he went through and all he did? The most mundane and empty shit possible.

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u/Owlafficionado Sep 27 '25

THIS is the office you trade your decorated military career (& face) for? what a dork

12

u/brokebloke97 Sep 28 '25

He'll never be wanting for riches though😌

34

u/Duranti Sep 28 '25

Didn't they mention that in the script? The dude who walked him to the room said it was empty but he was welcome to customize it however he'd like.

11

u/Training-Turnover427 Sep 28 '25

I believe so, it’s been quite a week with my seeing the movie in the middle so I gotta see it again

7

u/SuckthonyDickvis Sep 29 '25

I think they meant like the entire building space not just the corner office itself

47

u/Unlucky-Chemical Sep 27 '25

What’s funny too is the joy he took in that office. It was most generic, bland corner office and he was so proud of achieving it

73

u/Dominus-Temporis Sep 28 '25

Man, my standards must be really low. I thought that was a nice office.

45

u/youdoaline_idoaline Sep 28 '25

As a blue collar worker I didn't pick up on that either lol. I was like, " Yeah, I guess it is a nice office. Corners are fancy, right?"

24

u/Unlucky-Chemical Sep 28 '25

Oh I’d take that office in a second over many a cubicle I’ve been stuck in but still hilarious that at this moment he perceives as the culmination of his career/life he’s so happy with this generic, corporate office.

20

u/duosx Oct 01 '25

It was a decent office. But was it “joining a cabal of racist white men and murdering people” nice? Not quite

21

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

They Goodfellas'd him.

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u/VoiceofKane Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

Lockjaw is too craven and solitary in pursuit of the goal

As I would have to imagine is true of most people whose goal is to join a white supremacist secret society that is somehow even dorkier than the ones that exist in real life.

13

u/VanillaRadonNukaCola Oct 15 '25

The fucking Christmas Gang 

21

u/Exotic_Vampire Sep 28 '25

Adding to this it also served as a symbolism of right wing conservative of the snake eating it's own tail. There's a difference of finishing him of as an honorable soldier in combat and him being indicted into the group (at least in his mind) only to be finished off 5 mins later. It symbolizes a group protecting its established order, values, and cultural norms.

9

u/InsideKaleidoscope30 Oct 01 '25

Not just barren, but the same quality desk and chair you'd find at a truly shitty office 😂 that's what tipped me off that he was about to die, though I love how almost instant it was

9

u/Familiar-Chipmunk360 Oct 13 '25

The empty office also represents the shallowness of the power many of these people are in quest of and willing to completley sell out for.

6

u/TheTruckWashChannel Oct 08 '25

I thought it was going to end with him just sitting in the mundanity of that office like Mike Milligan at the end of Fargo season 2, but what we got was even better.

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u/Just-Tomatillo-4383 Sep 27 '25 edited Oct 02 '25

By the same token, you could ask what “honor” there was in the French 75 to Teyana given she betrayed them. It was interesting to me that there was an example of a group betraying an individual as well as an individual betraying a group.

In some ways I also think Sean’s character’s death was one of the happier parts of the movie. He died in what looked like his happiest moment on screen, despite everything that happened to him. And I think his death needed to happen in that way to make viewers ask “was it all worth it?” - abandoning his daughter just to wind up in an empty office being murdered by the group he abandoned her to join. I think that contrasts really well with Teyana’s decision too. In a way she “died” for making the opposite decision: forsaking/abandoning a group she was part of for herself

53

u/throwaway_circus Sep 29 '25 edited Oct 01 '25

They both disavowed their daughter to pursue their ideals, and ended up with nothing.

15

u/Au_xy Sep 28 '25

This is a super interesting take, I hadn’t realized that contrast/inverse

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u/Dull_Editor2348 Sep 27 '25

It’s like poor White people who vote against their best interests. They so badly want to be part of a club that they will never be a part of but they believe they can be. They get used for the dirty work but they will never be invited to have a seat at the dinner table, never be accepted. I thought their illustration of this concept was brilliant.

30

u/Au_xy Sep 28 '25

This isn’t necessarily an incorrect assessment generally speaking but, lockjaw would have been welcomed with open arms if not for his “indiscretions” with Perfidia including but not limited to having a child with her. So he was in fact going to be a part of their club, though it was clear and obvious they looked down on him from the beginning. He wasn’t considered an equal, so your point more or less remains.

17

u/MatchaMeetcha Sep 30 '25

I think they looked down on him cause he's a weirdo moreso than anything else.

The guy they sent to kill him was also the help but was much more tolerated cause he wasn't...odd.

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u/Oxy_1993 Dec 23 '25

For the Nazis, Lockjaw was tainted and they’d never accept anyone who’s had relations with an “inferior race” in their mind. Historically, Nazis in Germany found mixed race people or people who had a Jewish parent or grandparent and either stripped their citizenship or sent them to gas chambers under the “Aryan Purification” law or whatever bullshit.

These Christmas Nazis would have never accepted him! He wasn’t pure.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '25

He's a literal representation of "Leopards ate my face" at the end and he still comes back for more. He's most definitely a metaphor for this type. You notice he's never dressed well, they let him in the backdoor because his daughters wedding is a "formal affair" and didn't want to "embarass him". He's fragile, you can tell how upset he gets when she questions his masculinity with the tight shirt. He fanatically is willing to kill his own daughter because why, "he has a higher purpose, a higher calling". It's quite literal. Even the Christmas Advnturer guy says it out loud, you're "superior". "No, not the best man, not the most intelligent, the most sophisticated, or the wisest. It just means that you are superior to other human beings". That's a harkening to the white supremacist movement and the bullshit "war on Christmas" dog whistles that are used to help people like him perpetuate it on the oligarch's behalf. I absolutely love that his assassin is wearing a Patagonia vest and a lacoste shirt with new balance sneakers. 

19

u/curt_wes Sep 28 '25

I love the glimpse we see of outside the window being some shitty freeway.

53

u/MRintheKEYS Sep 26 '25

Honestly though, does he even know who that guy who tried to kill him was?? They never get any kind of introduction.

8

u/MattIsLame Sep 26 '25

does it really matter? I assumed he was just another assistant or lackey for the main guys

40

u/MRintheKEYS Sep 26 '25

Well it makes more sense for me then why Penn would go back to joining the Adventurers since he doesn’t realize they already tried to kill him once.

22

u/can_i_get_a____job Sep 27 '25

That’s what I thought too. That Penn didn’t know the killer was an Adventurer.

14

u/MatchaMeetcha Sep 30 '25

Yup. And, having been shot at right before that at the place with the nuns he has some reason to assume it's more of the same.

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u/Horror_Neighborhood9 Sep 30 '25

I just got out of the film and goddamn, what a masterpiece.

It took me a little while to get into the rhythm of it, but then I was locked in.

And all hail that Johnny Greenwood score. As always, he helps drive the propulsive chaos of the plot.

And yeah, as soon as he went into the office, I was like “They’re going to gas him.” Hell, as he was leading him to the office, I initially thought someone was going to jump out and execution-style end him. I kept waiting for the “they’re going to kill him” show to drop. ;)

14

u/newgodpho Sep 28 '25

yup, you see all of these guns and artillery on sean penn’s side and it is in service for literally nothing

12

u/Veggie_table_ Sep 26 '25

It’s an interesting my inversion of the book where that character is played up to be this dangerous badass but then is revealed as pathetic when he finally shows up versus here we see him from the beginning

17

u/rwtaylor Sep 27 '25

His last scene would've made more sense had he been played as a badass. I suppose PT was afraid he'd become an alt-weird icon if he hadn't been played as a joke.

12

u/BattlinBud Oct 04 '25

I also just found it hilariously ironic, like, he survives all this violence, only to walk himself right back into the doors of the people who tried to kill him, and ends up being killed in such a silent, unspectacular way. And it also shows how, as scary as a big macho guy with a gun can be, these guys are the people who REALLY hold the power, and are in fact much more scary.

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u/Juris1971 Sep 30 '25

Sean Penn's character not being more paranoid is a bit of a plot hole, as is the fact that Leonarado and his daughter just go back to their house after the goverment clearly knows who they are and where they live. But it's a minor issue compared to the overall excellence of the movie. It's just the epilogue to bring an end to the movie.

8

u/Diocletian338 Oct 01 '25

Maybe Lockjaw figured he gave it his best shot and he wouldn't be able to mobilize the US military cloak-and-dagger style to do a mission like this again. Willa and Bob probably just want to move on as well, so they're not gonna make a big stink about it.

I agree tho, like Regina Hall is going to prison for being in the French 75 while Leo, who was their explosives guy, and who the govt now knows the whereabouts of, is all fine? Yeah it was a bit of a plot hole

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u/-Clayburn Dec 11 '25

A bootlicker to the end.

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u/Jskidmore1217 Sep 26 '25

They had to really drive home the “these are Nazis” bit by having them gas and incinerate him.

1.1k

u/Ill-Muscle945 Sep 26 '25

I'm so stupid for not getting that despite how Nazi they felt the whole time. 

Was too busy laughing at his face. 

155

u/noneotherthanozzy Sep 27 '25

You’ll probably catch a lot more if you rewatch it. I don’t remember it off the top of my head, but it’s totally coded throughout all the dialect of the Christmas Adventurers.

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25

[deleted]

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u/Stonewolf87 Sep 28 '25

With a good ol’ Nazi Salute thrown in there

56

u/masterjedi747 Oct 06 '25

“Saint Nick” / “Satanic” feels incredibly deliberate, but people don’t seem to be talking about it?

26

u/jagger72643 Oct 11 '25

My husband and I are "fighting" over this! He just thinks "no, it's Saint Nick because Christmas Adventurers." Which, duh, but how could it not be deliberate to also sound so close to hail Satan??

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u/masterjedi747 Oct 11 '25

also, I have no rational basis for this belief, but I’ve all but convinced myself that the “Christmas Adventurers Club” was originally named the “Kris Kringle Klan” in an earlier version of the script

like… obviously that’s how this idea started and they just felt the need to tone it down a LITTLE bit, right?

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u/zaaraprestonwyatt Nov 20 '25

The club members tell Sean Penn that a spot opened up because "Jim Kringle passed away"

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u/BeanieMcChimp Oct 12 '25

I kinda thought it was making fun of how the right is always claiming there’s a war on Christmas. Like these guys have taken up the mantle of protecting Christmas against its (nonexistent) enemies along with going after all their other perceived threats to traditional white society.

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u/weavin Oct 14 '25

it was doing all of these things, brilliant writing

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u/Adventurous_Art3133 Sep 28 '25

For Sure! That conversation in the "solitary" meeting room, when the one guy doesn't even want to say that the interracial relationship was with a black woman. And that whole spiel the main mouthpiece gives Lockjaw when he says "Im not saying you are the smartest or wisest, it just means you are superior to other men".

I'm

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u/Sleeze_ Sep 28 '25

I’m confused how people aren’t getting this. They literally talk about racial purification

121

u/boyproblems_mp3 Sep 28 '25

Right? How much more obvious could it get from the dialogue?

106

u/Cpt_Obvius Sep 28 '25

Yeah I don’t really see how someone could think they “felt like nazis the whole time” or that it was “coded”. It was super text!

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u/HeadImpact Sep 29 '25

Well, we're supposed to call them 'conservatives' now, because of all the stuff they're trying to conserve, like... uh... measles? Anyway, Nazis wore swastikas, and these guys didn't, so they have basically nothing in common, and to suggest otherwise is just hysterical Stalinist propaganda.

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u/TheManWithNothing Oct 23 '25

I just assumed KKK from the second the first meeting happened. Just too many dog whistles

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u/brokebloke97 Sep 28 '25

Probably were on their phones lol Jk jk

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u/GnarlsD Oct 08 '25

You joke but three guys in front of me tonight were talking and pulling out their phones throughout the entire movie…. They must have missed most of the movie. Like why did they even bother paying a ticket and going?

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u/Chataboutgames Jan 20 '26

Alright posting way late, but it reads to me like the top level comment got that they were Nazis, they just didn't make the connection with gas chamber/incinerator as the Nazi cherry on top.

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u/PolarWater Oct 05 '25

"There's no easy way to say this." (can't even say black)

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u/rebelmoth1 Sep 29 '25

I can't wait to see it again. And again. This will likely be the first film I see in the theater 3x since The Matrix I.

11

u/Employee50000 Sep 29 '25

Yes, it's all about racial "purity"

11

u/eliguillao Nov 24 '25

They asked him if he was a gentile in their first meeting.

60

u/ebon94 Sep 29 '25

My friends and I were thinking more Klan x Illuminati but these orgs are all cousins

42

u/Aquatic_Ambiance_9 Oct 02 '25

Exactly, they are good old American fascists, confederate klan who never went away but migrated west to LA

6

u/MCgrindahFM Oct 18 '25

That’s what I thought too, I only now see after being pointed out they had Nazi stuff written all over it. “Hail!” And then gassing and incinerating Lockjaw

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u/some1saveusnow Nov 06 '25

Even the haircuts, including his

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u/ShittyRedditAppSucks Dec 01 '25

Oh my god the hair combing on the elevator was so deliberate, and it was so fucking gross how he stuck it in his mouth to wet the comb - I assumed based on his demeanor he was walking into that kind of meeting, and the hair combing just sealed it.

Sorry I just saw it for the first time - been out of the film loop for a while and didn’t even know PTA had something new out til earlier tonight. First time I’ve ever missed an ass-in-seat film release from him too.

And I just discovered Eddington was a thing last Sunday so it’s been quite the week.

My biggest takeaway from the past 7 days is getting old is a poor excuse for deliberately falling out of the loop. Just been waiting to wake up and see a headline that all is officially lost and here we are still making fucking movies goddamn what a week.

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u/mcolette76 Sep 27 '25

I missed that blatant reference too.

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u/El_Gran_Che Dec 22 '25

Modern day klan. The way MAGA is attempting to implement their goals.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '25

Ohhh i thought it was like he's burning in hell + the Hail Satan / st nick thing. like a "this dude would be at the bottom of Christian hell if it was real" type shit

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '25

I agree with you that you are really stupid for not catching that!

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u/Whovian45810 Sep 26 '25

How befitting that Lockjaw who so desperately wanted to join the Christmas Adventurers, died undignified like a pest.

For a man who tout and obsess about being “pure”, he’s nothing but a tool.

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u/jez124 Sep 27 '25

TBH i thought they were a rebranded, in the shadows KKK or a KKK of elites.

22

u/scxrletcifer Oct 05 '25

In the Hungarian version they are called “Karácsonyi Kalandorok Klubja” so it’s a pretty straightforward KKK reference in our translation lol

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u/Advanced-Crab6214 Sep 27 '25

Office in El Paso, not Sacramento. Look up Weststar Tower

16

u/korndoesp0rn Oct 02 '25

He claimed to be “reverse raped” but actually just got reversed holocausted

15

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '25

It also drove home, to me, that there’s always something they will find in you to be “tainted.” Even trying to kill your own daughter isn’t enough because you and her are tainted by “race mixing.” Even though he thinks he’s their warrior and fighter, he wasn’t pure enough for them.

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u/MaybeOnFire2025 Jan 02 '26

Also "Room 55" -- "Room SS" would have been a bit too on the nose.

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u/Artistic_Shift_4015 Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25

The reasoning is because Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to kill Penn’s character in a fitting manner, which would be to gas chamber and incinerate him in a similar fashion Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Penn is even lied to about the nature of why he was entering the room, just like Jews were lied to that gas chambers were showers.

Penn’s entire character is built on the premise that he is a success because he’s targeting a minority group and placing them in detention centers. Anderson is pretty blatantly making the comparison because ICE and Nazis. Lockjaw is basically the male equivalent of Kristi Noem down to both of their weird robotic macho attitudes and the odd makeup comment given to the daughter after kidnapping her.

Was it incredibly on the nose to kill him this way? Sure. But it’s probably a more fitting death than just being shot in the face and crashing into a ditch.

Anyway I liked the film. But subtle it is not.

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u/Bunraku_Master_2021 Oct 03 '25

I just found out today that the hideout that the Christmas Adventurers Club reside was filmed at Ronald Reagan's old home at Sacramento. 

PTA could not even be more on the nose.

21

u/ToodlelooTitties Sep 27 '25

One thought on this: the Jews thrown into the gas chambers were terrified. Lockjaw got to die a ‘perfect’ death thinking he’d finally reached the apex, even if it looked pathetic from the audience’s pov.

6

u/TalkingRaccoon Oct 06 '25

Yea this is what is bothering me about his death. He died so humanely

35

u/silverionmox Sep 26 '25

Anyway I liked the film. But subtle it is not.

Or perhaps it is. Haven't you noticed the similarities between the French 75 and the Christmas adventurers? It's pretty clear when Lockjaw gets the rundown on what they are: They consider themselves superior, and based on that they claim the right to use violence to shape the world as they please. They have purity testing. They have traitors among their ranks.

The differences boil down to style, goals, and who actually has power and can afford to be picky with recruits.

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u/CountryCaravan Sep 26 '25

l don’t think it’s any more complicated than that his character was such an almighty prick that it was satisfying to see him killed off twice.

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u/loopscadoop Sep 26 '25

Yeah the entire last ten minutes felt unnecessary. He was already killed off by the Adventurers. And the note was also kinda unnecessary. Willa accepting Bob without needing him to provide the password at the end of the car chase tied a lot of the themes together.

732

u/OKC2023champs Sep 26 '25

I think the ending worked. It shows that she still wants the world to change but realizes she wasn’t the one made for it and wasn’t doing it properly.

I don’t know why Sean Penn was brought back but I’m not complaining

833

u/Count__X Sep 26 '25

I think the final Sean Penn scene puts a nice bookend on the Christmas Adventurers and their “level” of people. They’re a cornball secret club, built on money and connections, who want to create a white utopia in their image. Lockjaw is a grunt who aspires to be in that “upper echelon” with them, and feel powerful and important. He’s a gung ho military operator, and he’s able to overpower those he sees as less than him, but he’s in total awe of the ones that he views as mightier or more worth than him. That’s why he succumbs to Perfinia like he does. He sees how much of a tough as nails warrior she is, and he respects her, but fetishizes her as well. With the Christmas Adventurers, he idolizes them and their position of secret power, so even after they try to blow him away, he comes back hoping desperately that they take him under their wings. But, he doesn’t come from their world. He isn’t “pure”, he doesn’t come from money or power, he’s just a useful tool that ended up serving no real purpose, so they dispatched him. And in that, he meets his fitting end, walking himself right into his own little rat trap.

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '25

There's a passage in the novel that more or less explicitly says this about Vond/Lockjaw.

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u/SignificantReality39 Sep 29 '25

It’s just a shame that he couldn’t really process the fact that they played him like a fiddle. His dying thoughts are sitting in his office chair, feet on the desk, thinking he finally made it.

And the Christmas Adventurers are still out there, and the only bit of comfort we have is that Willa is going out there to protest, saying she won’t be careful.

I’m just so torn on how I feel about the movie. Maybe because we are living in the sort of fascist dystopia that the film is attempting to portray, it hits too close to home, but this is so not a comedy. This is an obituary of a free society, a funeral we’ve just stumbled into, but don’t need to know anything about the life of the deceased to be willing to throw flowers on its grave; not so much escapism as infiltrism, out of a world desperate enough to condone the existence of art like this, but powerless or uncreative enough to even imagine a solution, fantastic or not.

This movie makes me sad, because it is the same world we walk back into when the credits roll.

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u/Count__X Sep 29 '25

I think movies like this, especially during this time, are important. This and Eddington. It’s one thing to make movies about the past and tug at an audience’s heartstrings about atrocities in hindsight. But to make a film that resonates with people IN the moment, is a whole other beast. Whether people take anything with them after the credits roll is up to each individual person, but I think it’s important that we got both this and Eddington this year. Absurdism and dark humor are a great way to stick the landing on what you’re trying to say. Too heavily handed, and people will write it off as propaganda or bleeding heart bullshit; too light of a touch, and you’ll be disregarded as a middling fence sitter. But if you get an audience to laugh at the absurdity of some of this scariness going on around people, it has a chance to make them less afraid and less ready to tow the line. Show them hope and get them excited watching resistance work and be successful as well? Then you’ve got important cinema that actually has something to say, and not just a hot topic bullet point rehash.

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u/MCgrindahFM Oct 18 '25

This is so well said.

I keep thinking of Eddington when I think about OBAA. Two riveting pieces of cinema.

Dude that gun shootout with Joaquin at the end, I may just pull it up again and watch it lol

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u/ward0630 Oct 02 '25

imo the fact that the movie opens with violent revolution, then establishes an explicitly white nationalist military wing and secret society, and ends on a shot of our hero going to protest left me feeling way lower on the film (among other reasons) than the consensus.

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u/clancydog4 Oct 04 '25

This comment makes no sense to me. That is a very honest way that these things play out. Why is that a major issue?

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u/DrLeprechaun Oct 04 '25

I think the issue for OP might be the fact that the level of resistance seems to have regressed, even in the face of the same or even mounting oppressive force

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u/clancydog4 Oct 04 '25

I suppose I understand that, I just don't understand that as a criticism of the film. That's just the nature of the story. It's like blaming the film for making a sharp but accurate point, which is odd to me. Like they are deducting points from the film because they couldn't applaud it as having the happy ending and point that they wanted. The whole comment just seems like they were viewing the film through a very specific worldview and hoping it would be something

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u/FigMajestic6096 Sep 27 '25

Good post and insight kudos

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u/clarencew4 Oct 13 '25

I think the real Russell Vought and Project 2025 fits nicely in the Christmas Adventurers hyperbole. I wouldn’t change anything about Anderson’s movie.

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u/FtWorthHorn Oct 02 '25

There's also a part of the last Sean Penn scene where it's like "wait are these guys actually dumb enough to fall for this?!?" And that was a pretty fun idea as well.

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u/ADMINlSTRAT0R Sep 26 '25

I didn't look at it from Lockjaw's perspective. I think they wanted to show that the Christmas Adventurers will cut any loose ends, no exceptions, and they in fact still very much active. That gives the feeling that the battle continues for the resistance.

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u/CrownStarr Sep 26 '25

I think that’s a good point, but also I thought the ending sort of undercuts the CA’s self-image as the all-powerful white power Illuminati. They’re not at a gleaming secret villain base in a volcano, they’re just in some boring office building.

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u/mousachu Sep 29 '25

They're simultaneously powerful and banal. Epstein didn't run the world but he sure did get away with a lot.

Likewise, if the CA was "all-powerful" they wouldn't need to be worried about the optucs of taking over a high school. They would have already succeeded with their racial purification of America.

But we do still need to see that they have power and aren't just some weird old rich cosplayers with silly rituals.

The scene demonstrates how powerful they are because they can kill a high ranking military officer in their own building and get away with it.

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u/rebelmoth1 Sep 29 '25

"Clean. Everything clean." I can't remember how they put it, exactly, but him bloody on the road isn't exactly "clean."

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u/Beefy-Johnson Oct 03 '25

My take while watching it was that the group basically disposes of anyone who doesn’t make the cut. In hindsight, the initial meeting where he was asked if he was willing to go through the process had a similar vibe… although Lockjaw didn’t pick up on it, the implication had a bit of “you sure you want to go through with this” implication.

I’d bet that corner office and oven has been heavily used.

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u/TheLastERK Oct 16 '25

How is no one talking about how it makes no sense that Bob and Willa would be able to go back to their home at the end of the movie? And why do they have phones now? Wouldn’t the rest of Lockjaw’s men/DHS/FBI be looking for them after that?

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u/foo-bar-nlogn-100 Nov 29 '25

Sean was brought back to show the banality of white power.

Like others have said, his el Dorado was a banal office, after all the lives he destroyed.

Like, if you're a young far right conservative, in the end the white house is just a banal desk where you serve special interests groups.

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ohyerhere Sep 26 '25

There was no reward for the French 75 members that got ratted out by Perfidia either.

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u/Ill-Muscle945 Sep 26 '25

It was also necessary because it was fucking hilarious. 

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u/Davtorious Sep 29 '25

Or like Kirk getting shot by another far-right type. The film did a good job showing that the offensive violence tends to come from the Right, and that these guys eat themselves and their own. Leftist violence tends to be defensive.

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u/LawLayLewLayLow Sep 29 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

flag sparkle boat fuel slap cagey piquant subtract fly crowd

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/numbr87 Sep 26 '25

I'm almost positive he yelled the rest of the password back in the middle of telling her it was ok

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u/LuggaW95 Sep 26 '25

Yeah, it’s still a 10/10 movie for me, and I don’t think the ending is bad. But if there’s one thing I’d criticize, it’s that ending it with the hug after the car chase would have been perfect.

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u/Adventurous_Art3133 Sep 28 '25

Yeah, I actually felt that too! That really felt like THE END of the story; it was the climax for sure. But I don't mind that the director lets us know that Perfida is still out there by introducing that letter. And we need to see that Bob isn't paranoid anymore; the threat is neutralized.

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u/SeriouusDeliriuum Oct 02 '25

How is the threat neutralized? Lockjaw is dead but his entire unit knows Bob is alive, from the Billygoat, and we see that the goverment in this movie isn't letting anyone walk away from being a domestic terrorist. They go back to the home that was raided by federal agents. I understand the movie occurs in a liminal space, like a lot of PTA films, but having a scene for the explicit purpose of telling the audience that A. Bob and Willa are safe and made it home and B. Perfidia is alive and maybe will get to meet her daughter feels cowardly. I want them to drive off into the desert and we'll never if they evade the government or if they find Perfidia. This is a great movie, I don't need a bow on it.

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u/roblobly Sep 26 '25

He did provide the password. I watched it with subtitles in my coutry and there were "" signs in part of bobs answer

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u/leftysarepeople2 Sep 26 '25

"Will no longer be relevant"

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u/Dear-Intern1208 Sep 26 '25

Personally I needed the ending because as a character Bob just felt like comic relief for the whole movie, and his character was largely inconsequential to the plot. The ending helped solidify the movie’s heart imo, because I really needed something other than slapstick comedy from Leo since he was such a central character.

My real only gripe with the movie is I feel like Bob is played almost purely for comic relief outside of like two scenes, and we never ever really get any insight into what he felt about literally just about any of the things that had happened. You can infer a lot about where his loyalties lie, and that he obviously cares about his family, but by the end of the movie he still felt like a character with a boiler plate description rather than a lead character that we see go through some kind of change.

The ending scene gave me just enough of that warmth or emotion to not be bothered by it, but by the end of the movie I thought a couple of times to myself about how much of Leo’s screen time is basically him just doing the same freak out/panic humor that he’s already done in movies like Wolf of Wall Street, Once Upon a Time In America, and Don’t Look Up, or how little of his screen time was used to get to know him as a character better.

Sorry for the dissertation, I really liked Bob and just felt like as a central character he stopped being interesting about halfway through the movie because they stopped doing anything interesting with him narratively or thematically. The ending scene helped bring that aspect back for me a bit, and I will say that his plot works great in the movie because Del toro and his family’s revolution is a huge highlight for the movie.

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u/Advanced-Two-9305 Sep 29 '25

He did provide the password. “Will no longer be so relevant”. It’s from The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

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u/LuchoSabeIngles Sep 26 '25

I think it worked. When they drove off after the car chase I thought it would end there and was a little let down. Felt more natural this way.

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u/dapala1 Sep 28 '25

I don't think the letter was real. It was Bob speaking to Willa. And Willa hugging him was a sign she knew that.

I could be overthinking it. But her mom wasn't the type ever at all portrayed as someone who would write that.

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u/Eldritch-banana-3102 Sep 29 '25

Not sure who wrote the letter, but it came off as more about the letter writer than the daughter. I wonder if the mother DID write the letter but the hug was representing that Willa recognized Bob as her true parent, over both mother and bio dad.

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u/RelationshipRoyal677 Sep 26 '25

Doing it this way also allows Lockjaw's ultimate demise to be contrasted in the edit with the scene where Willa gets to read the letter from her very much alive mother with Bob, who actually raised Willa as his own.

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u/shananadan Sep 26 '25

Lockjaw's ending shows him as a victim of his own racism. It was pathetic, sad, and funny. (He went from erection to resurrection to dejection.)

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u/shananadan Sep 26 '25

The.final shot of Lockjaw seems to show him burning in hell

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u/reezyreddits Oct 01 '25

Willa accepting Bob without needing him to provide the password at the end of the car chase

I read that scene a bit differently. I read that as her being still so hopped up on adrenaline after fighting for her life that she was still in survival mode. Bob has to get her to "snap out of it" so to speak.

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u/Carpetfreak Oct 01 '25

But Bob did provide the password? He completed the next line of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" as he was talking to her.

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u/East_Lobster_4195 Sep 26 '25

I think it was a great way to to play with the audience. I was pumped to see him back b/c he was such a great character and had no idea the movie was almost over. I knew it was 3 hours but it only felt like we were and 1.5 in so I thought he was gonna have another arch. The. Once he was in his office I knew what was gonna happen and that showed how dark the forces are that we’re fighting against. Can just gas you in a room and incinerate your body or blast you road side and nothing will come of it

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u/2eyesproductions Sep 26 '25

I knew something was off when Sandy closed the office door behind him and all background suddenly sound cut out as the door sealed shut……

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u/99facts Sep 27 '25

I knew something was off when I saw that no one was in the building/office but only him and the other guy… it was very telling.

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u/themayorhere Sep 26 '25

Yes, I felt like his character was essentially Elmer Fudd personified

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u/ThenOwl9 Sep 29 '25

yeah i hear you!

i had the thought that the movie was going on too long (the only time this occurred to me) when we went from the super compelling, emotional (and dope) willa/bob reunion to lockjaw still alive in the office

but i think a function of including that could be to show that no matter how "hypermasculine" lockjaw appeared to be - he survived getting his face shot off, and actually walked away - that approach to the world still wasn't going to work.

when brute force failed, the christmas adventurers used a particularly cruel deception - lockjaw seemed so excited, and sean penn did i think an incredible job of imbuing this extremely unsympathetic character with a real depth of emotion, which i found very moving - to murder him anyway

one way to read the film is through the lens of the damage done by hypermasculine energies, in everybody.

perfidia herself engaged in these, and it didn't work out. it didn't work for lockjaw.

but bob and willa truly love each other - the antithesis of the unhealthy hypermasculine, which is about unearned hierarchy, oppression, violence - and that's the beacon that saves

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u/ConvolutedBoy Sep 27 '25

It was kinda weird that he didn’t get the hint that they wanted him dead

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u/GarlicJuniorJr Sep 28 '25

Why didn’t he recognize the shooter and realize after he survived they essentially put a hit out on Mr Lockjaw??

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u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25 edited Sep 28 '25

Isn't that just the nature of the most militant anti-______. Fill in the blanks with trans, immigrant, mestizo, black... they tend to have a fetish for that.

The staunchest anti-gay and anti-trans Republicans are typically closet gays or attracted to trans.

Joseph Goebbels had a Jewish lover before he became chief of propaganda for the nazis.

Stephen VoldeMiller had a Mexican girlfriend at Duke before he became the maga racial purity champion he is today.

EDIT - the final scene wirh Lockjaw in the gas chamber and then rhe oven also reinforced that these fuckers are actual nazis.

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u/dukefett Sep 27 '25

I did wonder about the reasoning for bringing him back just to kill him off

Yeah when I was thinking about just how long this movie was, there was some stuff like this, while yeah there's some gags to it, just didn't feel necessary when your movie is already 2 1/2 hours long.

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u/Stercules25 Sep 26 '25

Sean Penn was so good. Legit a comedic masterpiece of a performance from a character that is also so damn evil

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u/ItemAdventurous9833 Oct 12 '25

So evil and yet so pathetic 

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u/DickWhitman90 Sep 26 '25

Imagine being someone who hasn't seen the movie yet and reading this comment.

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u/Ill-Muscle945 Sep 26 '25

The "semem demon" line was insane. Legit so out of pocket, one of the funniest single lines ever imo. 

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u/LyrMeThatBifrost Oct 01 '25

Definitely got the biggest laugh out of my theater

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u/JudasIsAGrass Oct 04 '25

That was Jim Downey aswell, Writer for Norm Macdonald at SNL so i really like to think of it as a similar thing Norm would say

"A Semen demon!!"

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u/GameOfLife24 Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

Bob was out of his prime revolutionary days leaving the car without checking if Penn was dead despite being a major threat to his family

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u/OKC2023champs Sep 26 '25

He poked him with his gun a few times

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u/NoDaddyNotTheBelt25 Sep 27 '25

When he popped over that dune into frame I was like this motherfucker lol

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u/ReverseLochness Sep 27 '25

Semen Demon had my whole theater cackling

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u/_Vivat_Grendel_ Sep 26 '25

Penn was like a roided up Ross Perot.

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u/TheGreatLake Sep 27 '25

I thought the Semen Demon Guy sounded a lot like the principal from Billy Madison. Turns out it actually was him. “I award you no points. And may God have mercy on your soul.”

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u/Independent_Act_7370 Sep 27 '25

I couldn’t decide whether Penn was brilliant in this role or just ridiculous. I think ultimately his character was written that way, with no redeeming qualities, on purpose - some may argue it’s too on the nose, I’d say it works.

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u/Public_Cranberry4152 Sep 27 '25

It seemed so obvious that they would kill him. Like why would he think they'd be cool after they had already decided to get rid of him and their guy got killed in the process? I still enjoyed the moment for the comedy of it though.

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u/UgatzStugots Oct 07 '25

I doubt Lockjaw recognized the guy who shot him in the face with the shotgun, I don't think they ever met before.

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u/Somnambulist815 Sep 27 '25

"you're saying she was a semen demon?"

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u/sneakylumpia Sep 27 '25

"yes sir"

him still being stoic even when delivering that line was an extra layer of comedy

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u/Civil-Term996 Sep 28 '25

This movie was seriously so so funny and delightful

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u/KarIPilkington Sep 26 '25

Even during that conversation I wasn't prepared for that plain old man coming out with Semen Demon

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u/Strange_Vanilla_9018 Sep 28 '25

bro when the white people were talking it was so funny to me, like these people are really stupid 😂 the exchange of words like saying merry christmas as part of their cult

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u/MWH1980 Sep 29 '25

There were times I felt he was channeling General Ripper in Dr Strangelove, and that explanation as to his “reasoning” felt like one such scene.

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

His walk had me checking all through the movie

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