The following contains spoilers for “One Battle After Another”.
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of our best directors. He is at the origin of incredible psychological dramas featuring dysfunctional characters confronted with great inner disturbances. What Anderson didn’t do, however, was make a great genre film. Although he shares some initials with “Resident Evil” filmmaker Paul WS Anderson, PTA has never made a science fiction film – until now? Maybe?
“One Battle After Another,” Anderson’s new epic, is a fiercely political action comedy-thriller and the best film of 2025 so far. The film tells the story of revolutionaries who are forced to watch time slip through their fingers and the dream they fought for is crushed before their eyes, while the promise of a better future is stolen and buried in the ground. But all is not lost. 16 years later, there are still those who fight against tyranny to make things better, including those who fight less flashy battles but still risk everything to advance the revolution before disappearing from the film’s plot (much like the Choctaw vampire hunters in “Sinners”).
Anderson has made one of the most impactful films of 2025, as it captures the feeling of anger and despair prevalent today. And yet, “One Battle After Another” is rather vague when it comes to its timeline. Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” the film definitely shifts the action away from the source material’s timeline of 1960s to 1984, but to where? Although the prevailing sentiment seems to be that the film begins in the late 2000s and then cuts to the present day, some details suggest that Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film actually begins in the present before moving forward to the future. It’s true: Anderson may have made his very first science fiction film in stealth.
One Battle After Another could be a slightly futuristic film
The first clue is more thematic than anything else. “One Battle After Another” begins with the French revolutionary group 75, attacking a migrant detention center somewhere in California. If the film actually took place 16 years ago, in 2009, and followed a failed revolutionary movement, then it would make more sense for it to be inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement rather than immigration. Certainly, detention centers were important during the Obama years, but they only became the center of this conversation in the Trump era.
Shortly after this raid, when Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is captured by the police following a botched bank robbery (during which members of the French 75 specifically wear the type of surgical masks widely used since COVID-19 lockdowns), one of the revolutionaries takes a selfie with what looks a lot like a modern three-person smartphone goals. This seems to imply that the first act of the film takes place in the present day, not before.
When “One Battle After Another” jumps 16 years into the future, little has changed, reflecting the way police states attempt to create an eternal present where the regime is eternal and unshakable (as the film argues). There is only one obvious example of technological change after this: the DNA testing kit. Indeed, when Sean Penn’s Lockjaw (the best movie villain of 2025) prepares to determine if Willa Ferguson (Chase Infiniti) is his daughter, he uses a futuristic-looking briefcase equipped with an instant DNA testing device. This doesn’t seem like something that exists in the real world today, and while the film doesn’t dwell on it, it’s noticeably different from anything we see in the film.
Why the timeline of One Battle After Another is important
Pynchon’s “Vineland” is about how revolutions fail and leave things to the next generation. The timeline of the book is very specific as it comments on how the spirit of change and revolution of the 1960s died down, giving rise to the oppression and consumerism of the 1980s. “One Battle After Another” makes several changes to its source material, but the timeline is perhaps the most important.
While the film actually begins in our present before jumping forward in time, it offers a rather dark and cynical view of our current situation – but not an entirely hopeless one. No, Paul Thomas Anderson is not saying that resisting fascism in 2025 is a futile endeavor and that we should just leave it to the next generation. Instead, the film specifically depicts different types of revolutionary movements and acts of resistance. Twice it shows people directly confronting the authorities to fight for justice – initially, when the French 75 launch their raid on the detention centers, and later when the residents of Baktan Cross protest in the streets against Lockjaw’s troops – and twice it ends badly and in favor of the authorities. The 75 French are all betrayed and captured or killed, while the Baktan demonstration is infiltrated by Lockjaw’s forces and its participants are beaten. But the clandestine resistance of Benicio del Toro’s Sensei Carlos is much more successful and very widespread.
“One Battle After Another” finished filming well before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, so the film is not explicitly about our current situation. Yet the timing of its release adds a layer of urgency to its message of resisting, taking action, and building a community-based revolution that creates sanctuaries like Baktan Cross and rightfully helps people, even when everything seems dire. And of course, we could also have portable, instant briefcases for DNA testing by the 2030s.
“One Battle After Another” is currently playing in theaters.
