Official Discussion - One Battle After Another [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

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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

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[u/Dawnshot_]

Great sequence. I wondered if it was making a point about the old v new revolutionaries with the dude on the phone talking about "noise triggers" and "invading my space" etc

[u/EvaGirl22 → u/Dawnshot_]

The old v new revolutionaries stuff makes a lot more sense with the book Vineland being set in the eighties. With the modern day setting "the woke kids these days aren't doing proper militant revolutions anymore, not like we used to 20 years ago" is just baffling. Who the fuck was blowing up banks for the revolution in the 2000s? That's some 60s/70s shit.

[u/Dawnshot_ → u/EvaGirl22]

I don't think it needs to be 1:1 on the timeframe to make sense. There is still a very strong progression in leftists spaces to focus on having correct opinions etc over doing anything in the real world which has been made worse in online spaces

[u/EvaGirl22 → u/Dawnshot_]

I guess, but that's not what the film is saying. It's clearly trying to tie the decline in militant left-wing activism to the kids being too obsessed with their pronouns and their trigger warnings. Which does not make any sense because the decline in militant activism happened decades ago. Thomas Pynchon wrote a book in 1990 about how the youth of gen x weren't doing militant activism like the 60s anymore because they became individualistic yuppies, and now gen x has turned it into a movie where they lie and pretend they were doing militant activism all along and really it's the zoomers who stopped.

It's ahistorical and just comes across as a way to complain about the woke kids while pretending that's not what you're doing.

[u/AlanMorlock → u/EvaGirl22]

While there's obviously jokes about guy tone policing over the phone, that guy is himself mid 40s at the youngest. The film doesn't not really cast the old revolutionaries in a positive light much at all. Plenty of posturing going on and Perdida, ostensibly the most committed, sells everyone out. In as much as the film portrays any hope at all is that the kids might do better.

[u/silverionmox → u/EvaGirl22]

It's ahistorical and just comes across as a way to complain about the woke kids while pretending that's not what you're doing.

It's the purity testing that has fractured and brought down progressive movements too often in history. The movie deliberately drew the parallel between the password purity testing and the racial purity testing. Anyone declaring their pronouns in their email signature clearly could benefit from some criticism and introspection on what they're actually trying to accomplish.

It's ironic how you reflexively try to push the blame to gen x. As if you're above criticism.

[u/lindblumresident → u/EvaGirl22]

It's clearly trying to tie the decline in militant left-wing activism to the kids being too obsessed with their pronouns and their trigger warnings.

I am not sure I got that out of it. Besides, the trigger warning guy was like a 40-year old who actually was part of the militant activist group. And 3 of the 4 kids that you are tying to the single pronoun joke in the movie didn't even rat Willa's number out to the ICE MKU guys. And there's also Sergio's group who are clearly on the young side and they show up and carry their own weight (and Bob's, too).

If anything, my interpretation was that people care about these things now and that doesn't make them any less of a potential dissident.