September is traditionally the month when Hollywood segues from action films to awards-season prestige fare. But what if a movie could be both?
In fact, what if a September movie could be a whole lot of things — not just an Oscar contender with car chases, but an up-to-the-minute political satire and a father-daughter buddy picture, too?
Enter “One Battle After Another,” the ambitious new film from the director Paul Thomas Anderson (“There Will Be Blood,” “Phantom Thread”), which Warner Bros. will release in theaters on Sept. 26. The studio has delivered original hits this year like “Sinners” and “Weapons,” but Hollywood is watching closely to see if that hot streak will extend to this pricey auteur project, which reportedly cost more than $140 million.
Loosely inspired by the novel “Vineland,” by Thomas Pynchon, “One Battle After Another” stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob, an explosives expert with the radical revolutionary group the French 75. As he embarks on covert missions alongside the fiery Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) and the more measured Deandra (Regina Hall), Bob and Perfidia fall in love and have a daughter, Willa. But Perfidia’s entanglement with the ruthless Col. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) puts the French 75 in jeopardy and forces Bob to go on the run with his infant.
Many years later, Bob is living under an assumed name in the sleepy town of Baktan Cross, raising a now teenage Willa (Chase Infiniti, in her film debut). Paranoid and often stoned, Bob warns a skeptical Willa to stay alert in case of attack, and he’s right to worry: Lockjaw is still hunting them, convinced that their capture could gain him entry into a secretive, well-heeled group of white supremacists who improbably call themselves the Christmas Adventurers. When the colonel does eventually bring all his firepower to bear on Baktan Cross, Bob must save Willa with the help of her resourceful karate instructor (Benicio Del Toro) as well as the reappeared Deandra.
In mid-August, the six primary cast members gathered on a video call to discuss the film with me. (Taylor, who was on vocal rest for a noncancerous growth on her vocal cord, sat in but sent responses via email.)
Penn said that even at the script stage, “One Battle After Another” caught him by surprise for Anderson’s willingness to push more than a few societal hot buttons.
“When I read it, I read it blind — Paul hadn’t told me anything about what it was about,” Penn said. “I had just come out of a shower and I was going to just grab a couple of page views before I got dressed and I ended up slinking to the floor naked and dripping, laughing, because he went there.”
But at such a politically polarized time, can a movie that touches on white supremacy, countercultural Black revolution and empathy for immigrants strike a chord with audiences? DiCaprio emphasized that despite its politically fraught trappings, the real heart of Anderson’s film is its father-daughter story, as Bob and Willa must bridge their generation gap in order to survive.
“If there are any politics in this movie, I think it’s about how some people are still stuck in their ways and others have embraced the future,” DiCaprio said.
Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.
What makes 2025 the right time for “One Battle After Another”?
LEONARDO DICAPRIO This movie, it’s politically charged, but I think it has a lot to do with how tribal we’ve all become. It’s about how we define who we love or tolerate. The pivotal two forces in this movie are part of Paul’s imagination, but I think they’re an analogy of where we’ve become as a society and how we have stopped listening to one another, and how these characters thinking or acting in these extremes can bring a lot of hurt.
SEAN PENN It’s going to be very, very interesting to see how many audiences it taps into. I think that it might be one of those times where you get to work on a movie and it really becomes a gift for audiences in the way that the best things are.
BENICIO DEL TORO When I read the script, it was emotional. It made you think and it made you laugh. I hope that people will look at this and see the sense of humor, but also the reality of it all.
There is definitely a sense of humor to the movie, though so many of the most ludicrous elements, like the Christmas Adventurers club, are played with a straight face.
PENN Well, they became less ludicrous even since we’ve shot the film. I see the culture adapting to take it all straight.
REGINA HALL What Paul did that was incredibly smart is if you take what is real and you write it in the most extreme way, then people can see how actually absurd it is. So if you take a group like the Christmas Adventurers but you don’t play them broad — you play them so straight and so authentic — then it allows an audience to really see how incredulous some of the things they say and do are.
Leo, you’ve been hovering around Paul’s movies for a while. He originally pursued you to star in “Boogie Nights,” but what people may not know is that your father was in Paul’s last film, “Licorice Pizza.”
DICAPRIO Yeah, probably the cutest moment ever was when I asked my father to do it. He’s a hippie — not an extreme revolutionary, more of a comic-salesman hippie that is incredibly wise and peaceful. During Covid, his hair became half-white and half-black because he couldn’t have anyone dye it, and Paul saw a picture of him and said, “This is the man that I want to play this character.” And I got to tell him, “Dad, Paul Thomas Anderson wants you to do a cameo in his movie.” He was so excited.
Is there anything of your father in your performance as Bob?
DICAPRIO I think in some ways, but my father was much more of a pacifist and would obviously never go to these extremes. My character was so scarred by the trauma of what happened to him in becoming a revolutionary that he almost shifts into this meld of both political parties: He’s a don’t-tread-on-me character that is paranoid and anti-government, but also cannot stand and cannot relate to the new generation.
We meet Bob when he is part of a revolutionary group, but when he’s older and a parent, every rebellious thing his daughter does gives him pause.
DICAPRIO Yeah, because then it becomes about love and family. I think that when you’re young you tend to fight and risk your life for your beliefs, but then he’s got something at stake.
CHASE INFINITI Willa and Bob are always clashing with their own personal beliefs, and the divide between them is so strong at times that it’s almost hilarious.
HALL People forget that when you’re young, you don’t realize your parents have been there, done that. You always think you’re the new generation doing something for the very first time.
Chase, you weren’t familiar with Paul’s work before this, right?
INFINITI I was not. My journey to get here was months of auditions, self-tapes, camera tests and then just waiting to hear from Paul. But yeah, I didn’t know much about him, which I think also made it a lot easier to just show up as my authentic self and take the pressure off.
Sean, you’re the only one in the cast who had worked with Paul before, in “Licorice Pizza.” But this is a much bigger role.
PENN I’ve known Paul well through the years, and I was waiting for the day when the one that seemed right would come. I had probably spent 15 years dreading being on movie sets, and then I had this “Daddio” movie and Paul’s movie in the same year, and it rejuvenated my sense of wanting to be an actor in film. Paul is this very genteel prince of the San Fernando Valley who understands really wicked things and can write about them beautifully. When he brings in people, he’s really listening and getting the best out of them. You don’t want Benicio Del Toro on set being restricted, for example.
DEL TORO There’s this uplifting thing that some people have where they can give you their attention and it lifts you. It makes you want to do better than the best you can do. It just happens, people inspire you.
PENN Paul is the exception to the rule: He is the one inspiring vegan.
Benicio, a lot of your dialogue is in unsubtitled Spanish. Did that directorial choice surprise you?
DEL TORO I thought that was cool. I remember asking Paul, “Are you going to put subtitles there?” And he goes, “No. Everybody gets it.”
Leo, how did you bring Teyana on board?
DICAPRIO I’ve known Teyana for a long time. Paul and I were talking about who would play this lightning rod of a character that was a radical but also somebody that was able to manipulate. The echoes of her character reverberate throughout the entire movie, and every character is emotionally scarred by Perfidia. So we knew we needed to get somebody that could be not only bold and outspoken, but bring that improvisational talent of truth in the moment.
And we just kept on talking about our girl Teyana. She just embodied that character in a way that I don’t think anyone else could. We’re all left as carnage after she comes onscreen, picking up the pieces of our lives.
TEYANA TAYLOR Funny thing: Me and Leo actually met at Diana Ross’s birthday party some years back and instantly became best buds. That’s my wingman, my partner in crime!
The latter half of “One Battle After Another” has a lot of action, including some unconventional car chases that even evoke “Mad Max.”
DEL TORO Yeah, and we were really driving the cars. That’s a lot of trust.
DICAPRIO Well, we had cameras tied up, but we were left out on our own like two kids in the middle of the locked-down street. Remember that turnabout, Benny? We hit that thing probably 50 times in a row. There’s action in it, but there’s something tactile that I feel as an audience member was much more refreshing. We’ve seen so much spectacular stuff in cinema nowadays it’s hard to pull off something that you feel is really realistic.
And with the action, Paul is open to making immediate changes if he feels like this might not be right for the character. We had a whole action sequence that was more traditional, but Benny came in and was like, “I just don’t feel that our characters would react in this manner if we did something that extreme.” And the whole movie flipped on its head after that. The trajectory of where our characters go, we rewrote it on the spot.
The film isn’t shy about tackling touchy topics, but it’s rare to get a big-budget studio film about charged political issues in a year like this one. Can you anticipate what the reaction will be when a movie like this lands in the marketplace?
DICAPRIO It’s an interesting question. Paul said, “Pushing your political agenda or your belief system onto an audience is like taking medicine.” Of course, you don’t say to yourself that a movie’s going to ultimately create a scenario where we’re all united, but it at its best, art and films like this hold a mirror up to society and the times that we’re living in. Like Sean said, it’s just gotten even more real and more exaggerated. It’s playing out right in front of us before our very eyes.
So how audiences are going to take this? It’s going to be very interesting. But I think to Paul’s credit, he pushed the envelope on absurdity and extremism on both sides of the spectrum, which was incredibly important because you don’t want to alienate your audience in any way. You want them to be invested in the characters.
HALL What I enjoy about a film like this is that people might walk away and talk about it. Sometimes I watch a movie and I don’t even think about it after I leave. But I think anything that could provoke discussion and self-reflection is great. It’s also incredibly entertaining. I walked away and was like, “Gosh. How did he make a car chase exciting with three cars and two of them are slow as [expletive]?”
Sean, can you predict how people will react to the film? Or does that even matter to you?
PENN Well, look, do I care? None of us want to feel alone in the world, and I would like to find that audiences and I share excitement about a film like this. I was at that prime moviegoing age in the early ’70s, and I remember that not only were there great films that were exciting and entertaining and had a few thoughts in them, but they were also the biggest hits of the time. And I think Paul embodies all of that.
This film, it’s ready to share all the dynamics that this storytelling can have. And like Leo was saying, nobody gets out of here alive. You can call it a political movie, but the only choice is a nonpolitical one, in the end.
Additional video camera operator: Celeste Barbosa.
Kyle Buchanan is a pop culture reporter and also serves as The Projectionist, the awards season columnist for The Times.
The post The Battle to Make ‘One Battle After Another’ appeared first on New York Times.
