Inside the Radical Political Story Behind ‘One Battle After Another’

While the adrenaline-fueled events in One Battle After Another are fictional, Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall and Teyana Taylor's characters were inspired by real-life revolutionaries.

The political dramedy, which premiered in September 2025, followed a group of once-idealistic revolutionaries whose quiet lives are upended when a new threat draws them back into the underground world they thought they had left behind. Director Paul Thomas Anderson revealed in an August 2025 Esquire interview with DiCaprio that he had been writing the screenplay for decades.

“Twenty years ago, I started writing this story, and the kernels of it were basically just to write an action car-chase movie,” the filmmaker said, noting that he based some of it on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland.

“Vineland was always going to be too hard to adapt, so I stole the parts that spoke to me and just started running like a thief,” Anderson explained. “I guess that’s what all us writers do — we’re f—— thieves.”

Like Pynchon’s book, One Battle After Another was also inspired by the real-life radical movements that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s. In a September 2025 interview with Radio Times, DiCaprio revealed that Anderson drew inspiration for the French 75 from the Weather Underground, a real-life revolutionary organization, while Taylor opened up about looking to Black Liberation Army activist Assata Shakur when developing her character, Perfidia.

So, is One Battle After Another based on a true story? Here's everything to know about the real-life revolutionaries who inspired the action-packed film.

Is One Battle After Another based on a true story?

No, One Battle After Another isn't based on a true story. Parts of the movie were adapted from the novel Vineland, and some of the radical groups and revolutionaries were loosely inspired by real-life movements from the 1960s and 1970s.

“Sometimes I thought I would like to adapt Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, a book written in the eighties about the sixties,” Anderson told DiCaprio of the film's inspiration in their Esquire interview. “But I was looking at it in the early 2000s, thinking of what the story means at that time. Cut to a whole other story that I had floating around that was about a female revolutionary.”

The filmmaker added that the “various strands” he'd held onto for 20 years never “went out of style.”

“Because whatever seems to be happening politically seems to always be the same,” Anderson concluded. “Same s—, different year.”

Who are the French 75 based on?

DiCaprio told Radio Times that Anderson based his character's fictional French 75 militant group on real-life revolutionaries known as the Weather Underground, who “were fighting imperialism, the Vietnam War, civil rights.”

“[They were] multicultural people that then had to sort of scatter like rats around the country and try to assimilate themselves and disappear into everyday society, but at a time and a place they were willing to risk their life for their ideology and belief system,” the actor said.

Also known as the Weathermen, the group emerged as a small offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) after the organization fractured in 1969, according to the FBI. In a 1974 manifesto, members said they aimed to “disrupt the empire … to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks.”

By 1975, the Weathermen had claimed responsibility for 25 bombings, including an attack on the U.S. Capitol. While their attacks generally strove to avoid civilian casualties, in March 1970, three of its own members were killed after a bomb they were building detonated inside a Greenwich Village townhouse.

At the time, some members were arrested in connection with bombing plots, while others evaded authorities and remained fugitives for decades.

Is Perfidia inspired by a real person?

While Anderson hasn’t said Perfidia was based on a specific historical figure, Taylor said she drew on Shakur, a former member of the Black Liberation Army, when shaping her performance.

Speaking with Radio Times, the actress recalled noticing Shakur’s autobiography — one of her favorite books — sitting on the filmmaker's table during their early conversations about the character.

“I kind of feel like it was a full circle moment,” the actress and musician said. “I was just like, ‘Oh, this is really dope.' And I know exactly where I want to go and what direction I want to go in for Perfidia.”

According to NPR, Shakur was an activist and member of the Black Panther Party who became a prominent figure in the Black liberation movement of the 1970s.

She was convicted in 1977 of murder, armed robbery and other offenses stemming from a 1973 incident in which New Jersey State Troopers pulled over her and two others because their car's taillight was broken. A gunfight ensued, which left an officer and a fellow activist dead.

Though she was sentenced to life in prison, Shakur escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum. She lived in exile until her death on Sept. 25, 2025 — a day before One Battle After Another premiered.

“I don’t look at Perfidia and say, ‘This is Assata’s life,’ ” Taylor explained in a November 2025 interview with EurWeb. “These are two women who were unapologetically themselves … they stood ten toes down on what they believed in. You can’t do anything but respect that.”

What historical events inspired One Battle After Another?

The pieces of One Battle After Another — specifically those drawn from Vineland — were loosely inspired by the leftist revolutionary groups that proliferated in the 1960s and the backlash they faced in subsequent decades.

While the film updated Vineland’s historical context for the 21st century, Anderson retained its core echoes of counterculture and underground movements to explore contemporary issues like police violence, racial injustice and government overreach.

“Paul started writing this movie 20 years ago, so I don't think that it was necessarily connected to the political relevancies of today,” Hall told Radio Times. “But boy does it coincide!”

Taylor agreed, noting that the movie was “very relevant to what's happening today.”

“Why is this still relevant today?” the actress asked rhetorically. “Why are we still going through this? And where is the change? … I definitely think that this movie will create a lot of healthy dialogue and much needed conversations that need to be had.”