The only problem I have with this anti-One Battle After Another essay is the name of the guy who wrote and narrated it — Adam Friended. What the fuck kind of last name is that? As in “he/she friended me on Facebook”? The fuck? Otherwise it’s a totally on-target OBAA takedown.
Excerpt: “If Sean Penn‘s Colonel Lockjaw would have married Perfidia Beverly Hills had she not left him, maybe he could have lived a normal life. The evidence of a real biological daughter from Beverly Hills could have awakened in him a need to revisit that life that could have been setting our villain on a new path to save his biological daughter, sparking in Lockjaw something I like to call a character arc.
“If Lockjaw, in the face of this new biological reality, decided to protect his daughter from the Christmas Adventurer assassin who is coming to kill both of them, we have a far more interesting story than the cartoonish slop of a racist killing the daughter he’s ashamed to have brought into this world. The protect-the-daughter scenario dives into the complexity of racism and the greater human condition far more than PTA’s woke-pandering trash ever could.
“Instead of exploring this far more complicated and compelling story, PTA abandons the story at its most critical climax. And likely because it would be woke blasphemy to depict some sort of redemption arc for any racist character. Once a straight white male character contemplates anything close to a microaggression, he is damned to the pit of progressive hell for all eternity.
“Most good movies are a debate over a contentious point of view. OBAA is a perfect vehicle to debate the age-old belief that blood is thicker than water. But instead of admitting that sometimes blood is a compelling force for good, the movie would rather comically cling to the ideal notion of a blended family based more in progressive dogma than any social or cultural reality.
“Ultimately, it’s this dogmatic stance that has made this movie a hit with those living inside the moral matrix of progressivism (i.e., wokeys).
“But it has left people like me, people desirous of a movie subversive enough to depict the world as it actually is, totally unsatisfied.
“Though this movie is garbage, the cinematic equivalent of a tire fire, rabid fans will no doubt lampoon this review, citing the movie’s widespread critical acclaim. And you know what? That’s fine. I get it. While this movie may rake in accolades and critical acclaim and awards noms, any success it enjoys is ultimately kind of similar to, I would say, that of a Minecraft movie. One Battle After Another has stayed true to its leftist fans.
“Instead of depicting any kind of normal through-line that makes logical sense with a cohesive conflict and resolution, we are dragged through another Hollywood cliche depicting strong women and marginalized communities, no matter how many innocent security guards they may kill.”
From HE’s 10.22.25 OBAA argument vpiece:
“This is what’s fundamentally and humanly wrong with One Battle After Another. There’s just no believing that this kind of psychopathic ugliness could prevail within the heart of even a fanatical rightwing hard-ass like Lockjaw….even the sickest, most racially diseased dad in the world wouldn’t clip his own daughter over a social-political motive.
“Even if Lockjaw was so insanely devoted to racist ideology that he tried to nullify his own heart and shut off his own soul spigot in order to commit filicide, even the sickest bad dad would be so inwardly torn about the prospect of murdering his own that he probably couldn’t go there. Because deep down, even the worst dads are human.
“And yet PTA has dramatically invested in this kind of venality. He believes that Lockjaw, being a racist pig and all, could be a daughter-killer. He bases the bulk of the film, in fact, upon this premise. (Not the 40-minute prologue set in 2008 or thereabouts, but the present-tense part.)
“The problem isn’t just that silent Godly guidance and the better angels of human nature forbid such a diseased mindset at the end of the day, but that we, the ticket-buying, popcorn-inhaling, non-lefty extremists in the audience…we can’t and won’t believe this shit. It simply doesn’t add up in human terms. Filicide is simply a bridge too far in this context, and it just doesn’t wash.”