“I need to start figuring out what the f— to say,” Paul Thomas Anderson recently said when it came to his biggest project yet, a $115 million Warner Bros. summer tentpole with a cast featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, Alana Haim, Benicio del Toro, and Chase Infiniti. The promotion has not begun yet ahead of its August 8 release, but the film, which runs just under three hours, held its first test screening in Phoenix, Arizona at the Harkins Theatres Norterra 14 with the director in attendance and we have the first details.
Speaking with a lucky attendee at the screening, Anderson confirmed the film––which is titled One Battle After Another––is nearly finished, helping squash those unsubstantiated reports of the film being delayed. As early rumors hinted, it is indeed a modern take on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland. While Donald Trump isn’t mentioned, the film does feature white supremacists, notably Sean Penn’s menacing character Col. Steve J. Lockjaw (aka Brock Vond, for those familiar with the book), who gets the second-most screentime after Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, whose name is reportedly Bob but he goes by “Ghetto Pat.” The film captures Lockjaw’s hunt for Teyana Taylor’s character after she leaves him to be with DiCaprio’s character.
While on-set reports revealed a small portion of the tentpole-level spectacle on display, an entirely new arena for PTA, the film itself has even more than expected, with “loads of action and car chases,” including a “phenomenal” car chase in the climax and the “closest we’ll ever get” to a full-on PTA action movie. Our source says “it’s quite batshit crazy,” and don’t expect anything like PTA’s last Pynchon adaptation, Inherent Vice. “It could definitely appeal to a lot of people, starting with Leo and the scale that is present,” they note. Jonny Greenwood’s score also felt complete, one they call “chilling, but very big with techno elements.”
In terms of references, the film’s mix of thrills, humor, and “very moving” emotion recalls Jonathan Demme’s 1986 screwball comedy road movie gem Something Wild as well as Alex Cox’s 1984 sci-fi black comedy Repo Man. Our source confirmed the film does feature sci-fi elements and expertly handles weaving together its multiple tones with a feeling that “you just live in” the movie.
“As far as I’m concerned, he’s underappreciated,” Anderson said of Alex Cox back in 2014. “I was 13 or 14 years old and I recognized the world [of Repo Man]. There such abandon in this movie––it’s focused, it’s funny, it’s outlandish. It’s talky in a way that never feels like a stage play ’cause it’s always moving. Quentin [Tarantino] I’m sure loved this movie, we’ve never talked about it, but there’s Quentin fingerprints all over the way these characters talk to each other.” Speaking of Repo Man‘s night scenes, he added, “I’m always trying to get night exteriors to look the way Robby Müller shot them. I can never do it. I never know how he did it. It doesn’t look like there’s any lights on, it looks like how it really looks and back then — there’s gotta be a million lights on… As long as I keep [making films], I’ll try and get night exteriors to look like Müller.” It sounds like he may have finally succeeded with his latest project.
As we await the first trailer for One Battle After Another, hopefully attached to one of WB’s upcoming spring tentpoles (Mickey 17 in March or Sinners in April), here’s trailers for the two mentioned references.