Why One Battle After Another's Confusing Marketing Has Secretly Been Brilliant

This article contains spoilers for "One Battle After Another."

Few working filmmakers are making movies on the same level as Paul Thomas Anderson. With IMAX, 70mm and extremely rare Vistavision screenings in place all over the country, "One Battle After Another" has finally landed with unanimous critical acclaim across the board. /Film's Chris Evangelista heaps considerable praise upon the action-comedy-thriller as one of the best movies of the year in his review, and having seen it, I feel inclined to join the choir. It's that good, folks. So with all of the dividends paying off in Anderson's favor, why had Warner Bros. been having such a seemingly difficult time marketing "One Battle After Another?"

At its heart, "One Battle After Another" is a deeply and loudly political film about the decades-spanning struggle between a revolutionary group called the French 75 and the inhumane extensions of the United States government. Leonardo DiCaprio's Pat Calhoun leads the charge of the French 75's active contention with the war against immigrants, along with his partner Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and their network of freedom fighters. On the other end is Sean Penn's Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a violent racist who leads his own posse of governmental injustices by way of submitting himself to the white supremacist group known as the Christmas Adventurer's Club. As the film keeps revealing its many nuanced layers, it's easy to see why Warner Bros. would play it coy with the marketing.

In addition to the vague trailers, I remember being confused upon seeing the promotional tie-in with Fortnite, where you could play as a selection of characters from the movie even though no one really knew anything about them yet. There were also posts on X (formerly Twitter) that applied meme templates to out-of-context clips from the movie. Even stranger, DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro made their first ever podcast appearance on the Kelce brothers' predominately sports-focused show "New Heights" instead of a film-based one. All signs pointed to Warner Bros. not having any idea how to promote the new PTA, but it's pretty genius in retrospect.

Cinephiles are already primed to descend upon a new PTA picture like seagulls on a beachgoer's hot dog, but the general moviegoing public needs that extra boost. A good trailer is imperative for an unconventional blockbuster carrying a $130+ million price tag, and to Warner Bros.' credit, the ones they've released aren't untruthful. The bigger picture, however, has largely been omitted from the marketing material because the cultural climate this film is coming out in makes it ripe for controversy. We live in a significantly different cultural atmosphere than the one that gave the studio systems of the '60s and '70s room to promote their movies with a politically-charged bent as they were.

Amid the rise in political assassinations, government-sanctioned white supremacist talking points and an aggressive crackdown on immigration status, this marks "One Battle After Another" as both the best and worst time it could have possibly come out. The film's opening scene is a powder keg in and of itself, as it sees the French 75 liberating a San Diego Immigration Detention Center and imprisoning the armed guards in the very same cages. Although the words "Immigration and Customs Enforcement" (ICE), nor its symbols, appear in the film, it's not too difficult to draw parallels to the abysmal connections within their real-life holding facilities. It's incredibly bold to promote an IMAX release in which the format is used to magnify the terrifying scope of these holding centers.

At one point, Perfidia inaugurates the bombing of a senator's office by way of a pointed phone call that illustrates the French 75's disgust for their part in banning reproductive rights. To make matters even more contentious, Anderson delineates a clear conflict between an underground railroad network led by the people versus an armed white supremacist-led operation. The Christmas Adventurer's Club, whose members hilariously greet one another with "Hail St. Nick," are shown to be active agitators within the U.S. government making decisions based on their metric of racial purity.

While Anderson clearly shows sympathy towards the French 75's plight, especially in the wake of Lockjaw's extrajudicial killing spree, he doesn't make their lifestyle look all that glamorous. The life of a revolutionary is fraught with paranoia, secret codes, and an inability to live in normalcy. With all of this in mind, it was wise on Warner Bros. part to present its conflict in vague terms as it's all anyone would be talking about leading up to the film's release. This way, the conversations "One Battle After Another" will inevitably generate can come about organically.

While "One Battle After Another" is certainly an angry film about the mess we're enveloped in, it's also gut-bustingly funny, touching, and, most importantly, hopeful. Anderson's contempt for how stupid and cruel everything has become will likely go down smoother with audiences because the film ultimately makes you root for Pat (later renamed Bob Ferguson) to reunite with his daughter Willa (a star-making performance from newcomer Chase Infiniti). "One Battle After Another" is partially about Bob overcoming his own marijuana-infused fugue to be a present father when he needs to the most. His love pushes him to persevere through the film's portrait of an occupied America in spite of having lost his youthful edge. It's also an incredibly stressful action movie about the next generation coming face-to-face with a considerable evil that's carried over to their future prospects.

As bleak as "One Battle After Another" can get, its propulsive energy toward Bob and Willa's reunion is what gives the film its cathartic staying power.

"One Battle After Another" is now playing in theaters nationwide.