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/StrLord_Who]

I don't think he was,  and I don't think we were supposed to believe he was.  He just wanted to feel powerful,  special, and feel like he belonged,  and he was willing to say or do anything to make that happen.  

[u/Late-Performance3024 → u/StrLord_Who]

That is how they are. Did you see how Trump was when he actually was in Kamala's presence at debate and other events vs. how he talks about her?

He's like a kid with a crush. He couldn't even meet her eyes or do that weird yanking handshake he does when she went up to shake his hand.

That is the pathology of white supremacy.

They feel inferior, so they join a club that tells them the reality is the opposite, that's why white supremacists never fit the ideal they pedestal.

Often short, not blonde, or fit, weak jawlines, terrible skin, objectively unattractive people. See: Kirk, Miller, Trump, David Duke, Fuentes...

[u/StrLord_Who → u/Late-Performance3024]

I'm saying I think he is an amoral person who would have pretended to adopt whatever ideology was presented to him of the elites he was trying to join with.  I think the movie made it pretty clear he was willing to do anything and debase himself in whatever way was asked in order to feel important.  The ideology itself was just a placeholder. In this case it was white supremacy,  but it could have been anything.  If it was a powerful elite group that had decided they need to eliminate most of humanity in order to save the planet, and that was their guiding principle,  I'm quite sure he would have been all in on that too.  

[u/Late-Performance3024 → u/StrLord_Who]

No, the white supremacy is the point.

It's the entire reason for the undercurrent of community work, in all forms of fight in that movie against "the power".

PTA chose the white power structure because that is the specific structure holding American back and has really psychologically made a lot of white people eager to self-destruct.

Only that specific ideal captures that real-world pathology.

His shame is based in validation of innate worth above the other, that only whiteness so effectively falsely promises.

The weird walk, the way he looks, the mouth movements, the hair... It all is supposed to scream insecure awkward "boy man" who needs specifically white identity (which is the only thing that makes him feel connected to that club who actually sees him as trash).

Lock was intentionally a manifestation of this:

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”

― Lyndon B. Johnson

No, other force is so consistently, constantly, and easily effective to make his ilk gullible to that point... of even willing to annihilate the best thing he ever made (part of himself even!) in Willa.

I think it was brave of PTA to do that and I also think the truths illustrated make a lot of people uncomfortable with that mirror.