Fact Check: Is One Battle After Another actually based on the novel Vineland?

One Battle After Another, released on September 26, 2025, marks the tenth feature film of director Paul Thomas Anderson.

It is an action-thriller centered on political resistance and the clash between radical activism and authoritarian power.

The story follows Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a former revolutionary and demolitions expert for the militant collective French 75.

The group frees immigrants from detention centers, destroys military equipment and government buildings, and robs banks, becoming a relentless thorn in the side of conservative nationalists. 

Their escalating campaign draws the wrath of Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a racist and ruthless official determined to crush the movement after being humiliated by its fearless leader, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor).

Perfidia’s romance with Bob Ferguson produces a daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti). Knowing she’s a prime target, Perfidia disappears, leaving Bob to raise Willa alone. 

Sixteen years later, Bob is a paranoid ex-revolutionary turned reclusive stoner, obsessed with keeping Willa safe and living off the grid. When Colonel Steven Lockjaw resurfaces, now hunting Willa, Bob must protect her despite being far from his former fearless self.

His desperate fight is complicated by a forgotten password crucial to their survival. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film examines the lingering consequences of radical activism and the personal costs of revolutionary ideals.

One Battle After Another takes inspiration from Vineland

The story of One Battle After Another is loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s postmodern novel Vineland, which explores the aftermath of 1960s radical activism and government crackdowns.

While promoting the film, the director shared that he had been working on the project for almost two decades, which first came into his mind as a car-chase action film. 

“I had the notion to adapt Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Vineland,’ a book about the 1960s that he wrote in the ’80s. So I was trying to decide what the story meant another 20 years later,” Paul Thomas Anderson mentioned in his press notes. “So really, for 20 years, I had been pulling on all these different threads, and in a way, none of them ever left me. Realistically, for me, ‘Vineland’ was going to be hard to adapt. Instead, I stole the parts that really resonated with me and started putting all these ideas together.”

The story is set in California during Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election and follows Zoyd Wheeler, a former hippie raising his 14-year-old daughter, Prairie.

They are hunted by federal agent Brock Vond, who at one point in the past was involved with Prairie’s mother, Frenesi Gates.

A former member of the militant film collective 24 fps, Frenesi betrays her comrades for Brock, only to lose everything and vanish.

Vineland examines the United States’ shift from the rebellious counterculture of the 1960s to the conservative, surveillance-heavy climate of the 1980s.

The film One Battle After Another reflects these themes through its characters. Bob and his daughter Willa closely parallel Zoyd and Prairie from the novel, embodying the tension between past activism and present caution. 

Perfidia, however, departs more dramatically from Pynchon’s Frenesi Gates. While Frenesi betrays her radical collective and succumbs to government manipulation, Perfidia remains steadfast to her revolutionary ideals.

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