Leonardo DiCaprio is unrecognisable (he’s wearing big glasses) in our first real look at Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest. Check out the One Battle After Another trailer below:
After slowing down a little bit to make the deeply personal Licorice Pizza, it seems Paul Thomas Anderson is bringing us something a little more action-heavy with his next film.
Based on Thomas Pynchon’s acclaimed 1990 novel, Vineland, One Battle After Another reportedly shifts the action from the 1960s and 1980s into the modern day. Leonardo DiCaprio seems to be wearing a pair of Sega 3-D Glasses at one stage – either a nod to the original setting, a flashback, or he just got an absolute bargain from that sunglasses stand.
Check out the One Battle After Another trailer below:
It’s always seemed unlikely we’d ever get a full-fledged action movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, but the trailer suggests the director might be getting pretty darn close. We’ve got plenty of guns, Leo falling out of a car, and what looks like a small army going to war on skateboards.
The book follows an ageing hippie, Zoyd Wheeler, as he and his daughter come up against the military might of a newly re-elected Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs. Names of people and organisations seem to have been changed for the film adaptation, with the 60s anti-fascist People’s Republic of Rock and Roll potentially re-christened “the French ’75” – a more militaristic, overtly revolutionary-sounding movement which doesn’t seem quite as interested in drugs. Leo’s character, presumably a Zoyd-analogue, introduces himself as Bob Ferguson.
This is Anderson’s second adaptation of a Pynchon novel after 2014’s Inherent Vice, and his sixth collaboration with composer Johnny Greenwood, who seems on fine form with a pulsing, electronic piano score over the back of this trailer. It’s also Anderson’s most-expensive film to date, with a budget somewhere between $115-$140m – which would certainly second the reports of its action-packedness coming out of an early test screening.
More on this when we get it – One Battle After Another is heading to cinemas (including IMAX) in September 2025.
