One Battle After Another Is a Mirror

Hollywood Didn’t Pick a Side—You Did

If you have not seen One Battle After Another, you should. Not because I think it is some cinematic masterpiece or because it delivers a clean political message, but because it lingers in a way that forces you to examine yourself more than the story on the screen. I watched it last week, and it has been stuck in my head ever since. Not because of the acting or the plot, but because of what it revealed about how people react to it.

The New Yorker

A friend of mine said something after we talked about the movie that immediately clicked. He said it acts as a litmus test. That whoever watches it ends up seeing their own political bias reflected back at them. Not the movie as it is, but the movie as they want it to be. What you walk away with depends almost entirely on what you bring into it.

The Caricature

As I interpret it, One Battle After Another is not trying to be realistic. It is a caricature. A deliberate exaggeration of both the left and the right, taken to their most extreme forms. It strips nuance away on purpose so that the outlines are unmistakable.

On the left, you get characters who are so convinced of their moral certainty that violence becomes acceptable; reframed as resistance. Militancy is framed as ethics. Domestic terrorism, and yes I am using that word even though I know it carries political weight, becomes justified under the belief that the cause itself is pure. Deportations are framed as fascism. Anti-abortion laws are tyranny. The state itself is portrayed as something that must be actively disrupted and undermined, even through organized violence, all under the umbrella of doing what is right.

On the right, the exaggeration swings just as hard. You see characters tied to border patrol, the military, and law enforcement, operating in a world adjacent to white supremacy. Power is abused. Resources are misused. Ethics are treated as secondary to control. The central authority figure is not cartoonishly evil, but morally compromised, climbing the ladder while struggling with personal contradictions and unresolved hypocrisy. The abuse does not come from ideology alone, but from whoever happens to be holding power at the moment.

Both sides are dangerous.

What You Cheer For Is the Question

The movie’s real test is who are going to cheer for? You are going to flinch at someone else. And who that is will tell you far more about yourself than it will about the film.

People on the left are likely to watch this and see heroes. Fighters. A kind of fantasy version of resistance. I can easily imagine politically active, already-engaged people watching from comfortable suburban homes, feeling a quiet thrill as acts of sabotage succeed, mentally role-playing what it might feel like to be part of a righteous militia. Screaming at the screen when the “bad guys” show up. Fantasizing about a rose-colored version of revolutionary action, safely contained inside a movie.

People on the right are likely to react just as intensely in the opposite direction. Seeing nothing but domestic terrorists. Screaming at the screen that these people should be arrested, deported, or put down. Cheering for border patrol and military intervention regardless of how unethical the behavior becomes. Overlooking white supremacy elements, not because they support them, but because law & order feels more important than method or affiliation. And walking away convinced that Hollywood is once again virtue signaling, painting them as racist caricatures for believing in borders, enforcement, and the rule of law.

The movie invites both reactions at the same time.

A rational viewer should be able to sit in the discomfort, see the gray, and reject the methods on both sides. But that is not how most people engage with media anymore. Most people either love this movie because it feeds a fantasy they already hold, or hate it because it threatens one. That is why it works.

Hollywood’s Increasingly Obvious Hand

This leads directly into the second thing that stuck with me, which is Hollywood’s long-standing obsession with moral signaling. This has been on people’s minds for years. Hollywood loves to tell the rest of the country how to think about political and ethical issues, positioning itself as more enlightened, more moral, more evolved, while living lives defined by excess and insulation.

There is a sense that if they make the right movies, with the right messaging, it somehow cleanses them. That if they show us they are not the bad guys, we will leave them alone and let them continue doing whatever they want while being incredibly wealthy and complete degenerates (writing this in the wake of another Epstein files release).

What feels different now is how blunt it has become. The messaging is no longer subtle. Instead of presenting moral dilemmas and trusting audiences to think, movies increasingly shove conclusions in your face. Critical thinking is replaced with instruction. Complexity is flattened into good versus bad.

What makes One Battle After Another interesting is that it does both and neither at the same time. It signals. It lectures. But it also parodies itself. It exaggerates to the point where you can see the seams. It lets you project your own beliefs onto it, love and hate characters simultaneously, and walk away convinced it confirmed what you already believed.

That tension feels intentional. And honestly, I think it is one of the smarter things the movie does, even if it is still very much a one-watch experience. I would probably give it a 7/10 for acting and execution.

Why Timing Matters More Than Content

The last thing I cannot stop thinking about is timing.

This is not the first time Hollywood has released politically charged media right when the country feels unstable. Go back to when the conversation everywhere was about civil war. Could it happen? Are we headed there? What would it look like? What side would people be on?

At that exact moment, a movie called Civil War gets announced and released.

At the time, I thought it was irresponsible. I understand the argument that art reflects life. But I could not shake how reckless it felt to release a movie about journalists and civil war while the country was actively debating journalism and civil war.

There are a few explanations.

1. The simplest is marketing. If everyone is talking about something, make a movie about it and sell tickets.

2. Another explanation is desensitization. Turn the idea into entertainment so people associate it with fiction and dismiss it as something that only happens in movies.

3. A third explanation is priming. Introducing people to what breakdown might look like so that it feels familiar on the way to said result.

And of course, it could be ‘D’ all of the above.

That movie painted a world where money barely worked, but people still showed up to work. Where travel still existed, but was dangerous. Where communities fractured into tribes. Where rules changed based on who controlled territory. Where journalists tried to report what was happening and were either believed or ignored. Where the president held Washington with his own army.

It felt plausible and accurate.

One Battle After Another feels like it belongs in that same category. A scenario laid out not as prediction, but as preparation. A way for the American psyche to internalize chaos before it arrives. That might sound conspiratorial. It might also just be art chasing relevance. 🤷🏽

So What Do You Do With All of This

An Angry Patriot Doug wrote to me after a previous post and said that I am good at pointing out problems, but not very good at offering solutions. That is fair. I do not think there is a clean solution to media manipulation, algorithmic influence, or cultural priming at this scale.

But I do have a place I land.

Focus local.

Big-picture thinking is overwhelming. National narratives, global conspiracies, algorithms, corporate influence. It all compounds until people feel paralyzed. A mix of anger, apathy, and exhaustion sets in. You still have to go to work tomorrow, so you do nothing.

When real crises hit, it is not institutions that save people. It is communities. Friends. Neighbors. Blocks. Towns. That was true in the movie Civil War. It was true in real life hurricane Katrina. It is true in every disaster story people tell after the cameras leave.

Helping your neighbor. Volunteering locally. Building relationships. Shoveling a driveway. Bringing over food. Taking in trash cans. Saying hello. These things sound small, but they are not. They are how stability actually forms.

The more chaotic the national conversation becomes, the more important the local one is. That is where real change happens. That is where people are protected. That is where things still matter.

It might not feel heroic. It might not feel revolutionary. But it is achievable and real.

Stay Angry.