One Battle After Another (2025) Watch Party Discussion
- Justin Carpenter
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Thoughts on One Battle After Another:
At first, I wasn’t sure I liked it. The tone felt off—almost too exaggerated, too ridiculous to take seriously. But that discomfort turned out to be the key. The film is a Trojan horse. It presents itself as a political thriller, yet underneath it’s a sharp critique of our addiction to conflict.
Through comedic, exaggerated portrayals of the “revolutionary” and the “tyrant,” it exposes the absurd symmetry between them. They appear opposed, but they are trapped in the same loop—each defining themselves through the other, each feeding off the struggle to justify their existence. The satire is woven so seamlessly into familiar genre tropes that you don’t realize the script has been flipped until you’re already inside the lesson.
The real turning point isn’t the defeat of an enemy. It’s the realization that the war itself is the distraction. If you define yourself by what you fight, you’re still owned by it. The film suggests that true freedom isn’t about winning the game—it’s about stepping out of the arena entirely and building something that doesn’t rely on opposition for meaning.
It’s masterful precisely because it doesn’t preach. It lets the players reveal themselves as caricatures, making the addiction to struggle look as hollow as it actually is. "When their enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own."
As in recent watch parties, we're going to do it all via Zoom LIVE and then later post a recording of the discussion. Only the discussion will be recorded and posted later, the movie will not be, only played LIVE. If you are unable to attend the live viewing or you would like to watch the film on your own, check your streaming services for it or you can find it on lookmovie2.to
Discussions about and during the watch parties can always be found here: https://t.me/HouseJedidiahChat/3461
Previous watch party recordings can be seen here: https://rumble.com/c/JustinCarpenter or or https://odysee.com/@JustinCarpenter:c or here: https://www.justincarpenter.org/posts/categories/movie-watch-parties
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