Is ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Paul Thomas Anderson’s Version of TERMINATOR 2?
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is having a strong awards season run, and that keeps the conversation around the film going.
On the surface, it’s a nearly three-hour epic about a washed-up, emotionally fried former revolutionary trying to rescue his daughter. The Thomas Pynchon influence via Vineland has always been obvious. But there’s another comparison gaining traction that’s a lot more unexpected.
There’s a real argument to be made that this movie doubles as Paul Thomas Anderson’s off-kilter take on Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
That idea hit wider circulation thanks to a video making the rounds from author Jason K. Pargin, who laid out a surprisingly compelling case that one of the standout films of 2025 is deeply informed by James Cameron’s 1991 action landmark.
The video pulls together direct story parallels, Anderson’s well-documented admiration for T2, and comments made by the cast before One Battle After Another hit theaters. Taken as a whole, it’s enough to make you pause and rethink what Anderson may have been doing here.
At the center of both films is a paranoid, exhausted revolutionary trying to save their child from forces that feel unstoppable. In Terminator 2, it’s Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor. In One Battle After Another, it’s Leonardo DiCaprio’s Pat Calhoun.
Both are worn down by years of conflict, operating on instinct and fear, and convinced that their child is the key to a future others want erased. The threat chasing them is relentless. Robert Patrick’s T-1000 may be literal nightmare fuel, but Sean Penn’s Steven Lockjaw serves a similar function as a force that simply doesn’t stop coming. He’s more human, sure, but the effect is the same. Escape isn’t an option. Survival is the whole movie.
Pargin also points out how both films are built around repeated pursuit sequences. The heroes are always moving, always reacting, always one step away from losing the child they’re trying to protect.
The structure itself mirrors T2 more than most people probably realized on first watch. It doesn’t feel like coincidence so much as Anderson borrowing a framework and filtering it through his own rhythms and obsessions.
It’s also explained that Benicio del Toro’s Sergio St. Carlos is meant to echo Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 is interesting. Sergio does make a selfless stand to protect the others, but he’s arrested rather than destroyed. The characters share moments and purpose, but they don’t align as tightly as the Sarah Connor and T-1000 comparisons.
The same goes for the suggestion that Skynet maps onto the Christmas Adventurers Club. You can stretch the metaphor and argue both represent systems of control that seek a warped version of peace through eradication. But that connection feels more theoretical than textual, and it’s easier to poke holes in than to fully buy into.
Where the theory really gains traction is in Anderson’s own history. In a 2025 Esquire interview, Anderson and DiCaprio openly discussed One Battle After Another as Anderson’s take on an action movie.
During that conversation, DiCaprio brought up Anderson’s love of Terminator 2 and the fact that the director quit film school not long after seeing Cameron’s film. That personal connection, stacked alongside the narrative similarities, makes the comparison feel a lot less random.
Even if you don’t fully buy the idea that One Battle After Another is a loose reworking of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it’s a genuinely fun lens to view the film through.
It reframes Anderson’s choices, sharpens the movie’s propulsion, and adds a new layer to an already dense piece of work. At the very least, it gives you something cool to chew on.