Animation is in a weird fluctuation state right now, where what worked in the past doesn’t seem to be sure bets anymore.  The last 20 years in animation has been dominated largely by the trifecta of Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks, all of whom have built their brands on the strength of their innovation and storytelling through computer animation.  But, the computer animation craze seems to have died out, as the artform no longer has the novelty it once had.  Animated movies are still being made with computers, but they no longer look like computer animation.  Now films are being made that blend 3D computer animation with what looks like traditional hand drawn artwork.  Sony Animation Studios has been leading this shift in the animation industry with their innovative work on the Spiderverse movies, as well as their breakout hit KPOP Demon Hunters (2025) this year.  We are also seeing small independent studios adopting this new look in animation as well, including this last year’s Oscar winning entry from the nation of Latvia called Flow (2024).  And the bigger animation giants are seeing the results of this shift as their own film have been losing audience interest to newcomers.  This has been effecting original films from the big studios more than anything.  Pixar, which previously had one of the strongest track records of any animation studio in the world, has recently been struggling getting audiences to come see their new original films, like Elemental (2023) and Elio (2025).  Elio became the first non pandemic effected film by Pixar to not turn a profit in it’s theatrical run.  But even while these newer, original films struggle, we are also seeing record breaking success with sequels to past animated classics.  Between Elemental and Elio, Pixar had it’s biggest hit ever with Inside Out 2 (2024), which shows us that the only way these traditional animation powers are able to stay on top at the moment is to capitalize on their past glories.

Pixar’s sister studio Walt Disney Animation is also experiencing this same kind of cycle.  After the release of Frozen II  (2019), Disney has seen all of their original films fall short of crossing the $100 million mark at the box office.  Sure, in the case of Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto (both 2021), they faced headwinds from the lingering effects of the pandemic, but even as audiences were returning to the theaters (especially for animated films) Disney still was struggling at the box office, with both Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023) both becoming big box office bombs.  So, what was Disney going to do to salvage their reputation at the box office?  The answer would come in capitalizing on their past wins.  During the 2010’s, Disney had a strong resurgence in box office fortune with a steady stream of hits that all were brand new stories.  Frozen (2013) certainly got the ball rolling, but they continued to build upon that success with movies that hit with both audiences and critics, such as Big Hero 6 (2014), Zootopia (2016) and Moana (2016).  And while the pandemic era threw a wrench into Disney’s plans at the turn of the decade, the popularity of these films only continued to grow.  What Disney saw with the launch of their streaming platform, Disney+, was dominant numbers being put up by these movies from the past decade.  Moana in fact is not just the most watched film on that platform, but one of the most streamed movies ever across all platforms, even beating out many Netflix titles in the same time frame.  So, with their original films struggling to find their audience, it was time to look back at what worked before and try to replicate it.  A Disney+ original Moana series was quickly reworked into a feature film, and even though critics found it to be a cheapened cash grab, the gamble still worked, and Disney Animation had it’s first billion dollar film in 5 years.  Unfortunately, this means that we are going to be in a period of sequelizing rather than taking a shot at making new and original films in animation when it comes to Disney and Pixar, because these are the only ones that are bring in the money right now.  We’ve already seen this work out for Moana 2 (2024), despite it being a quickly slapped together sequel.  Does Zootopia 2 manage to overcome it’s intentions as a cash grab and actually justify itself as a worthy follow-up to it’s predecessor?

The story of Zootopia 2 picks up right on the heels of the first film.  Police officer Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) has finally earned the respect of her department as it’s first rabbit recruit after solving the case of 13 missing animals from the city.  Her accomplice in solving that crime, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) has also been accepted into the department and the duo have been assigned as partners in the Investigative division.  Unfortunately their different methods in solving crimes have led to some incidents that have gotten out of control, which has forced their superior Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) to declare a separation of their partnership, unless they seek counseling or voluntarily remove themselves from cases.  Despite Bogo’s warning, Judy is determined to follow up on the smuggling case they were just kicked off of.  It leads them to an elite party in the Tundra Town district of Zootopia, hosted by one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city, The Lynxleys.  On display at the party is a historical artifact called the Lynxley Journal, which has the original plans and patent for the city’s weather walls.  While investigating, Nick and Judy catch a mysterious figure that has invaded the party.  The figure turns out to be snake, the first appearance of one in Zootopia for many years.  The snake makes off with the Journal, but when confronted by Judy, he reveals that snakes like him have been unfairly scapegoated by people like the Lynxleys and that the journal is the key to helping him return to his rightful home.  Judy seeks to learn more from the snake named Gary (Ke Huy Quan) but both her and Nick are threatened by the head of the Lynxley household Milton (David Strathairn), who commands great power in the city, with the support of his equally ruthless children Cattrick (Macaulay Culkin) and Kitty (Brenda Song), and less so from his black sheep son Pawbert (Andy Samberg).  The pursuit of the truth takes Judy and Nick deep into the less travelled sides of the city, including Marsh Market, where the duo recieves help from an eccentric beaver named Nibbles (Fortune Feimster).  Can they solve the mystery of Zootopia’s shady past and help the reptile population from being wiped out ever further by the Lynxley’s devious plans.

It’s not a huge surprise that Zootopia would get the sequel treatment, given that the story left things open for further adventures of Nick and Judy.  There’s a ton of justification for developing Zootopia into a franchise because the world of the film is so rich with detail that there is a lot to further explore.  The only question is, did they have the right kind of story to follow up the first.  For me personally, I had very high expectations for a Zootopia sequel.  The first film is easily my favorite animated film of the last decade, and it has a place on my list of the Top Ten Movies of the 2010’s, found here.  Suffice to say, even if the movie is very good, it still has to contend with a movie that I hold in very high regard.  So, how does Zootopia 2 contend?  While I do think it falls short of the original, there is still a lot to like about this movie.  What Zootopia 2 does really well is build upon the world created in the first movie.  One of the great things about the world of Zootopia is the way that animators put in all these details about how the society is built around the different shapes and sizes of the animals that inhabit it.  Animals big and small call Zootopia home, and the architecture reflects this mix, as the society accommodates all the different aspects of the animal kingdom while they live and work in a way that looks so much like human civilization.  Zootopia 2 continues this, and gives us a look at the parts of the city that went unexplored in the first film.  In particular, we get a better view of the parts of the city away from the city center, in what human society would consider the suburbs.  The movie also uses it’s animal puns well, including some blink and you’ll miss them ones, like “Gnu Jersey.”  I have a feeling that this movie will benefit from a lot of re-watches in order to catch all of the different details.  The movie knows it’s strengths and plays to them pretty well, allowing us to see more of the world while at the same time allowing it’s two charismatic leads, Nick and Judy, to carry us through it all.

The only thing that is lacking from the experience is the novelty of the original.  Zootopia was a genuine surprise when it first came out because I feel like a lot of people (including myself) weren’t expecting it to be as deep and thought-provoking as it turned out to be.  A lot of us came to Zootopia thinking it was just going to be a simple, harmless animated romp meant for the whole family.  What we were surprised to find was that Zootopia was actually a profound commentary about modern society with a shockingly poignant message about institutionalized racism and how it unfairly drives people apart.  Sure, the kids would still get all the funny little animal moments to be entertained by, but for the parents there was a thought-provoking subtext to it all that you really didn’t expect to find worked into a Disney cartoon.  That’s what helped to make Zootopia stand out so strongly when it first came out, and in the years since, it’s message has only become even more prescient.  Zootopia 2 doesn’t quite have that element of surprise, since you already know going in that there will be a message in there.  Not that the message is bad by any means.  Instead about being institutional racism woven into society, Zootopia 2 is more about red-lining and gentrification splitting generational communities apart, which in a way is just a branch off of the message of the first movie.  I do appreciate that the movie is still trying to say something about society, but it doesn’t have the same punch as the first film.  Also, the plot twists feel a tad too familiar compared to the first film.  At least this time, the antagonistic force is set up much earlier instead of feeling like an afterthought in the first movie.  We don’t have to wait until the third act to realize the Lynxley family are bad people.  But, most of the rest of the movie lacks the element of surprise that made the original film so shockingly refreshing.

One the things that hasn’t been lost between films is the perfect chemistry between the two leads.  Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are some of the best characters to come out of Disney Animation in recent years, and they continue to be endlessly engaging in this sequel.  Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman both return to these iconic roles, and haven’t missed a beat.  I’m still struck by how much heart Goodwin puts into her vocal performance, making Judy’s emotional moments feel genuinely profound, while also at the same time nailing the more comical moments as well with Judy’s bubbly personality.  And Jason Bateman again proves that his personality was perfectly suited for slick, wise-cracking fox.  A lot of the heart of this sequel still remains the remarkable chemistry between these two.  I really do wonder if there were scenes which they recorded together, because their banter feels so perfectly in sync.  If not, the film’s vocal directors deserve a lot of praise for making the back and forth of these characters feel so perfectly in tune.  There are a lot of returning favorites from the first movie, though a couple of them like Chief Bogo and Officer Clawhauser (Nate Torrence) get their screen time diminished significantly in favor of introducing a lot of new faces.  One of the chief newcomers is Gary De’Snake, whose the heart of the plot of this story.  Ke Huy Quan delivers a very heartfelt performance as the newcomer to this world.  Given that Quan’s own family came to America as refugees must make this portrayal of a displaced animal like Gary something very close to home for him.  One of my favorite new characters though is the new horse mayor of Zootopia named Mayor Winddancer, voiced by a scene-stealing Patrick Warburton, here in a new Disney character role 25 years after his first when he voiced Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove (2000).  Also looking through the cast list of this movie you’re going to see a surprising amount of cameo voices from some pretty big names sprinkled throughout.  These include pro-wrestlers like CM Punk and Roman Raines playing “Ze-Bros,” or the real CEO of the Disney Company playing Bob Tiger.  It may be somewhat of a gimmick to give all of these cameos to big names, even if it’s just for one throw away line, but thankfully it doesn’t take away from the stand out performances of it’s lead actors.

Once again, the incredible design work of the animation team delivers some incredible visuals for us to enjoy in this film.  The movie sees the return of the original directors, Byron Howard and the newly promoted chief creative officer of Disney Animation Jared Bush, and they continue the same outlook over the world of Zootopia that they devoted to the first movie.  This time around, they get to showcase more of the city we haven’t seen, but still keep it familiar enough to feel like a natural extension of what we saw in the first movie.  We saw a little bit of Tundra Town in the first movie, but it was mostly limited to seeing an inner city environment in a deep freeze during the winter.  In this movie, Tundra Town is expanded out more, and the grounds around the Lynxley mansion has the feel of a ski resort after a winter storm.  There are also completely new places shown in this movie like Marsh Market, that definitely have a Deep South vibe to them.  The variety of animals are also incredibly realized.  One particular scene when Nick and Judy visit an underground hideout of reptiles shows just how much fun the filmmakers were having in using all of the characteristics we know about these animals get reworked into a human like behavior.  This film definitely has a more expansive scope to it than the first film, which largely stuck pretty close to the inner city.  You really get a sense of the scale of the city of Zootopia from this film, which includes not just urban centers, but mountain ranges and deserts as well.  It’s also great that we get a lot more of the lore of Zootopia in this city, particularly with regards to how it was all built.  The engineering of the weather walls becomes a crucial part of the plot, and in this movie we get a lot more detail about how it actually works.  For a lot of this movie, it does exactly what you want a good sequel to do which is to give you more; fleshing out ideas from the first movie and enriching it.  But, given the strength of the first movie and how it was so unexpectedly rich, I feel like it elevated it ahead of this one, which does the job right but doesn’t go any further than that.

As far as Disney animation sequels go, Zootopia 2 is undoubtedly one of the best ones.  It’s lightyears ahead of the travesty that was Frozen II and even though I liked Moana 2 better than most critics, I do recognize that it is a lot messier than the original film.  Zootopia 2 may fall short of it’s predecessor, but it still does enough to make it a worthy sequel.  I love the richness of the world it portrays and a lot of the new characters are a ton of fun to watch.  But, I doubt this movie is going to make my Best of the Decade list like the first film did, and it may miss out on my yearly list as well.  All that said, it’s still a film very much worth seeing; it just has the disadvantage of coming after a masterpiece.  Zootopia was going to be a hard act to follow no matter what.  It quite simply is one of the best animated films ever made; by Disney or anyone else.  I would say that it’s unfair to compare one with the other, but it was only a year ago where I saw Pixar follow up one of their best films with a sequel that surpassed it in almost every way, delivering one of the best best films ever with Inside Out 2.  Maybe I’m being a tad too critical because this sequel wasn’t as good as the original, but it’s only because the first Zootopia is still so fresh in my mind, and that affected my viewing of this film.  That said, it still is a worthy follow up to the sequel that doesn’t take anything away from the original and compliments it well.  No matter what I say, this is going to be another massive success for Disney Animation, giving them two wins in a row at the box office which they desperately needed.  I just hope that the success of Moana 2 and Zootopia 2 alongside Inside Out 2’s record breaking success doesn’t lead to a cycle of sequels for the foreseeable future.  It doesn’t bode well that we are getting another Toy Story next summer, and though I am still looking forward to that too, I just wish there was also news of more original films coming as well.  Disney and Pixar can’t just coast on sequels forever.  They need to find ways to improved their marketing of their fresh new films; and to also make them as good as they can be.  People do want to see new things; look at the buzz around KPOP Demon Hunters for example.  Disney has the talent to bring new, fresh ideas to reality; they just need to find ways to reconnect that desire to see new things from the audience to what they have being worked on in their studio.  Zootopia 2 is fun no matter what, but Disney needs to improve their game otherwise their output will just devolve over time into managing aging franchises.

Rating: 8/10

One can’t imagine a world in which we never had a story like The Wizard of Oz in our lives.  Since author L. Frank Baum wrote down his imaginative tome about the magical world of Oz and the little Kansas girl who found her way there, we have been collectively enchanted for generations, finding new and creative ways to bring Oz to life.  No other adaptation has had as deep an impact as the big screen MGM production in 1939; a technicolor masterpiece that has been declared the most watched movie in history.  The Wizard of Oz (1939) remains the gold standard for all adaptations of L. Frank Baum’s stories, particularly in the visual iconography it created.  But, that hasn’t stopped many other people from trying to put their own spin on the Oz mythos.  One of the more creative came in the 70’s, when the musical The Wiz premiered on the Broadway stage and infused the familiar story with contemporary African-American culture and music.  The musical would later be adapted into a movie by Sidney Lumet and starred Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.  But that wouldn’t be it for The Wizard of Oz on both the Broadway stage and on the big screen.  In 1995, writer Gregory Maguire wrote an alternate history version of Baum’s original tale, recounting the events of The Wizard of Oz, but from the point of view of it’s villain, the Wicked Witch of the West.  Maguire’s book used the Oz story to deconstruct the notion of evil in the stories we tell, and whether people are born wicked or are made to be wicked, and how stories often are used as weapons to villainize the wrong people.  It was a compelling re-imagining of the Oz narrative and that gained the attention of some key people in the musical theater world.  Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz had been wanting to do a musical themed around the Land of Oz and he was instantly drawn to Maguire’s book and found it to be a perfect subject for adaptation.  Working alongside stage book writer Winnie Holzman, Wicked was realized into a lavish, high spectacle musical in 2003, and it has been playing non-stop on the Broadway stage ever since, becoming one of the longest running and most profitable shows ever on the Great White Way.

With the enormous success of the Wicked stage show it was easy to think that a big screen musical adaptation would follow very soon after.  But, the show’s producer Marc Platt held off bringing it to the big screen for twenty years, despite the fact that Universal Pictures was involved in the development of the show for the stage.  Platt’s intention was to allow Wicked to have a full, uninterrupted run on the stage before bringing it too the screen.  People would be less inclined to pay $50-100 per showing for the stage show if they could buy a movie ticket for a fraction of that price or rent it for even less to watch at home.   The Broadway show needed to build up that following first, and thanks to it’s record success both in New York and through it’s worldwide touring company, Wicked didn’t wane over time; it just kept growing.  So, after 20 years of running on stage (minus the Covid shutdowns for one year) it was time to finally bring the hit musical to the big screen.  But, it was going to require the right team behind it.  Mark Platt and Universal ended up turning to director Jon M. Chu , who had come up through directing music videos for the likes of Justin Bieber and many other hip hop groups, but managed to find his biggest success as a film director with the hit film Crazy Rich Asians (2018).  He came into this project with a lot of experience behind him, but Wicked was going to be a much heftier undertaking than anything he had made before.  There was also controversy surrounding the casting of the two lead characters; Elphaba, the Wicked Witch and Glinda, the Good Witch.  A lot of fans of the show wanted to see the return of the show’s original stars, Kristen Chenoweth as Glinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba, a role that won her a Tony Award, but it was decided by the production to tap new performers for the roles; in particular Tony Winner Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and recording artist Ariana Grande as Glinda.  Also controversial was the decision to break the musical up into two films, with a year long gap in between releases.  Despite the worries of many fans, Part 1 of Wicked (2024) premiered over the holiday season and became a smashing success, creating a lot of anticipation for it’s concluding chapter this year.  The only question is, does Wicked: For Good defy gravity, or does the yellow brick road lead to nowhere.

Some time has passed between Part One of Wicked and this second act of the story.  The first part of the tale showed us the start of the relationship at the heart of the story, that between Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda Upland (Ariana Grande).  Though they started out as rivals at the prestigious Shiz University of the Land of Oz, they found themselves becoming the closest of friends.  But, turmoil would once again test their friendship.  All across Oz, animal citizens continue to loose their rights to co-exist with the humans, leading many of them to be forced into cages which leads them to loosing their ability to speak.  Elphaba sees this injustice and becomes determined to help the animals that she sees being abused and scapegoated.  She believed that if she could make her case to the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) himself, he might be able to undo this injustice.  But unfortunately, upon arriving at the Emerald City, she finds out that not only is he complicit in the mistreatment of animals in Oz, but that he doesn’t have any magical power at all, and is just a con man trying to use her real magical abilities for his advantage.  Not only that, she also learns that the dean of her school, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) is also the master mind behind this deception, making her feel even more betrayed.  After standing up against the Wizard, Elphaba is labeled a traitor and a menace to Ozians through a propaganda campaign that paints her as a Wicked Witch.  She chooses to go into exile and acts to disrupt the Wizard’s regime through select attacks.  All the while, Glinda tries to keep up appearances as a Good Witch to counter the “threat” of the Wicked one, while at the same time trying to keep Elphaba’s true whereabouts hidden.  Glinda’s attempt to broker peace between Elphaba and the Wizard becomes increasingly difficult, and it drives a wedge between her and Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Baily), the captain of the Emerald City guards and her fiancée.  It turns out that Fiyero still has feelings for Elphaba, which also makes Glinda feel all the more betrayed by those she thought were her friends.  Is there hope that Elphaba and Glinda can bridge their differences once again and bring harmony to Oz, or are the betrayals too much to overcome?  And is it possible for Elphaba to be seen for the good that she does and not for the wickedness that the powerful have unjustly labeled her with?

For me personally, I came into the first Wicked movie completely cold.  I was familiar with the Broadway show, but I had never seen it performed live.  I also haven’t read the original Maguire novel it’s based on, so the only thing I brought with me going into the first movie was my knowledge of Oz lore from the original MGM classic.  I wasn’t expecting much, because I’ve had a particularly mixed experience with modern movie musicals based on hit Broadway shows.  Some have been pretty great over the years (Sweeny Todd, In the Heights, West Side Story) while others have been pretty dreadful (Les Miserables, Cats, Dear Evan Hansen).  Given how massive of a hit the show has been on the Broadway stage, I felt like there was no way they would be able to translate it successfully for the big screen, and splitting up the 2 1/2 stage show and blowing it up into a two part, 5 hour cinematic experience just spelt disaster.  So, color me pleasantly surprised when I walked out of the first part of Wicked having really enjoyed it.  I was pretty stunned by how well the movie ended up coming together.  The entire first film is longer than the whole of the Broadway show, running 160 minutes, and yet it never felt bloated or sagging.  It used it’s run time remarkably well, and it helped to immerse us the audience into this version of Oz which was incredibly imaginative and detailed.  The movie wound up winning very deserved Oscars for for it’s costumes and production design.  And Cynthia Erivo’s performance of the show’s signature song “Defying Gravity” was such a perfect high note to close the movie on and it really got me excited to watch the second film, which I’d have to wait a year for.  So, was it worth the wait.  Well, a lot of Broadway show fans will tell you that the musical peaks at “Defying Gravity” and the second half of the musical doesn’t quite match up with the first.  That’s true of the Broadway show, and sadly also true of the movie Wicked: For Good, but that doesn’t mean that the movie is bad; not at all.  It’s just not as good as it’s predecessor, and that flaw is not really a fault of the movie so much as a flaw built into the musical from the very start.  In order to be a faithful adaptation, Wicked had to take the bad along with the good.  One would have hoped that maybe the filmmakers would’ve found a work around to make the flaws of the stage show less of an issue here, but alas we see that they still made the translation to the big screen.

There’s still a lot of entertainment to be had here.  Jon M. Chu still proves to be a great stager of musical numbers.  One of the worries I had going into the first film was the fact that it was being directed by a man who cut his teeth as a director of musical videos.  I have long said that the MTV generation ruined movie musicals for a long time, because the prevailing style of quick edits that worked for snappy music videos on MTV did not translate well into musical adaptations for the cinema.  That’s why so many musicals over the last 20 or so years look so cheap, because the music video style just chops everything up in the edit and doesn’t allow for the musical numbers to really come alive.  You look at stage to screen musicals of the past like Oklahoma (1955) or The Music Man (1962), they relied on long takes that really showed off the incredible staging of the different musical numbers, immersing the audience the same way that the stage show would.  Thankfully, Jon M. Chu is not the kind of filmmaker to chop things up.  I think what helps is that in addition to directing music videos, he also directed concerts as well, and he was the creator of the choreography centered Step Up movies, so the man knows the importance of staging.  The musical numbers in Wicked are cinematic, but still feel true to their stage bound origins, and that remains true throughout both parts of the Wicked experience.  While none of the musical numbers here reach the epic heights of “Defying Gravity,” there’s still enough creativity in their staging to still make them feel immersive and visually pleasing.  There’s one particular number, a new original song for Glinda, that does some incredible things with mirrors that I thought really helped it to stand out in the movie.  Another highlight is the song “Wonderful” sung by Goldblum’s Wizard, which has some really great visual touches.  So, even while this is the lesser half of the narrative, there are still plenty of moments that will still enchant you while watching the movie.

I think one of the big issues that ends up hurting Wicked: For Good, which is a flaw inherent from the original show itself, is that it breaks up the heart of what made the first half so powerful, which is the chemistry between Elphaba and Glinda.  One of the best things about the Wicked movies is the absolutely perfect castings of the lead characters.  Cynthia Erivo of course has an angelic singing voice which made her a perfect candidate to fill Idina Menzel’s enormous shoes in the role of Elphaba.  But, she’s also a brilliant actor as well, bringing so much depth to this character.  And despite all of the naysayers who objected to her casting in the role, Ariana Grande has proven to be just as equally brilliant as Cynthia in her role as Glinda.  I would dare say that Ariana is the MVP of this whole endeavor, because so much of this movie rides on her ability to balance her performance between the silly comical aspects of Glinda’s character and the heavier emotional moments that she has to take very seriously.  So much of the movie relies on Cynthia and Ariana’s ability to work so harmoniously together and make this friendship the beating heart of the movie, and they pull it off magically.  It’s just unfortunate that they are apart for so much of Wicked: For Good.  The beautiful chemistry of these two actors is missing for a good chunk of the movie, and that unfortunately make a lot of the film feel like much of a drag.  But the highlights do come once they are finally sharing the screen again.  There’s an especially fun scene where Glinda tries to fight Elphaba one on one that is a hilarious high point in the film, and a much needed moment of levity in an otherwise darker second half.  Thankfully much of the returning supporting cast remain strong, though sadly with less to make them stand out.  Jeff Goldblum steals all of his scenes as the Wizard, strongly leaning into his own eccentric parody of himself, which matches the character well.  It’s also nice to see Michelle Yeoh really relishing her chance to play a villain, giving the character a nice menacing presence.  The one who unfortunately gets shorted the most in this second act is Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero.  He still has his moments here or there, but unfortunately the bulk of his character development and screen presence happened in Part One, so he more or less is just here to be a key supporting player.  It’s especially unfortunate since Part One showed off just how good of a musical performer he is.

The movie also does a great job of presenting such a rich, detailed version of the Land of Oz.  One of the best decisions that was made about the adaptation of this musical to big screen was splitting it up into two movies.  If the movie had adapted the story as it is from the stage production, it would have felt rushed and truncated on the big screen.  Making the whole thing a lavish 5 hour long production allows more space to really immerse us in the world of Oz over these two films.  That way we are better able to appreciate Nathan Crowley’s lavish sets and Paul Tazewell’s amazing costumes.  There’s a big difference between what works on the stage and what works on the screen, and the best movie musicals are the ones that find that right balance.  It’s also why so many movie musicals run between 2 1/2 to 3 hours in length, because movies really need that extra time for immersion into the world of their story.  Wicked was such a monumental undertaking that it all couldn’t be contained in just one movie, unless audiences were willing to sit for a 5 hour long show.  Wicked: For Good continues the high stand of the first film’s incredible production design.  The only downside is that because this is the second film of a two part production, the novelty of seeing it all for the first time is not there.  Apart from just a handful of new locations, like the castle that Elphaba holds refuge in, every other place in this movie are holdovers from the first.  It’s probably unlikely this movie will see the same success it enjoyed from last year’s Awards season, because it really isn’t showing much that we haven’t seen before.  But, at the same time, the movie still gives us plenty of time to appreciate all the work that went into the production.  Whether it’s the amazing Glinda dresses that Ariana gets to wear, or the graceful staging of the musical numbers that John M. Chu puts together, Wicked: For Good still succeeds as a visual feast for the eyes.

Despite the strengths comparable between the two films, taken as a whole these Wicked movies are a remarkable success.  There were a lot of high expectations surrounding these movies, especially given the universal success of the stage musical, which even after the release of these movies is still selling out shows across the world.  I really appreciate that the makers of these films didn’t just make a direct translation of the musical, but instead really explored what was possible in bringing this to the big screen.  Like the best movie musicals of the past, these movies understand what it takes to make what worked on the stage become a spectacle on the big screen.  Wicked is an epic just as much as it is musical, full of lavish detail that really makes the world of Oz come alive.  And “Defying Gravity” gives the experience a cliffhanger ending for Part One that even the likes of Marvel would be jealous of.  There’s no doubt that Wicked: For Good is the lesser of the two halves, and the one that is more reliant upon the other to give it meaning.  You unfortunately loose a bit of the magic if you only watch For Good independent of the other film.  The only way that this movie could ever match up with it’s predecessor is if it had that emotional high of the cliffhanger ending, and sadly that wasn’t meant to be since the musical itself couldn’t repeat that same emotional high.  But, there’s still a lot to like, particularly with the performances of the actors.  I also loved the way that, just like the stage show, the plot of the original Wizard of Oz is playing out in the background.  We never even see Dorothy’s face, which is as it should be, because this isn’t her story.  The movie expects us to know how the original story goes, and the charm of Wicked is in how it subverts the original Oz narrative.  Over time, I do see Wicked being celebrated among the likes of The Sound of Music (1965), My Fair Lady (1964), and West Side Story (1961) as one of the greatest stage to screen musical adaptations ever made, especially for how well the spectacle of it all was pulled off.  More than likely it will be because of the strength of the first half, but I hope many out there also see the bright points of Wicked: For Good as something worth celebrating as well.  It may not be a strong finish to this adaptation, which is more the original musical’s fault than anything, but it does do the best job it can to compliment it’s sister film.  And that’s something worth the journey over the rainbow for.

Rating: 7.5/10

There are movie franchises that often take their time in releasing new entries, but when it comes to the movie Tron (1982), it’s had perhaps the longest periods of fallow that any movie franchise has seen.  The original Tron was not exactly a mega hit when it first released in 1982.  Like so other movies that summer, it got overshadowed by the box office behemoth that was Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).  It wasn’t until many years later that it received a re-evaluation by both critics and audiences.  Tron was a movie that in terms of the technology that went into it’s production was well ahead of it’s time.  It was the first studio production ever to utilize computer animation, which of course now has become omnipresent as a part of the film-making industry, to the point of replacing many once necessary jobs in the business.  The film’s story about rogue AI programs taking too much control also now seems prophetic, despite coming from very early on in the history of computing.  When computer animation started to take hold in Hollywood in the mid-90’s, a lot of the digital artists and animators often cited Tron as an inspiration.  Without Tron, we probably wouldn’t have had the digital revolution in film-making that we know of today.  And this digital revolution brought more attention to Tron itself.  Disney, the studio that made the film, put the movie out on DVD in 2002 for it’s 20th anniversary, and it became a strong seller for them, helping them to realize that the movie was indeed growing in esteem.  It was time to think about the possibility of a sequel, though this would be a gamble as well.  A lot of time had passed since the last Tron, and the world had advanced so much in those 20 plus years in terms of computer technology.  Was it possible to make a sequel to this film that would feel just as cutting edge as the original.  Despite some of those challenges, we did indeed see the Tron franchise finally come to fruition in 2010.

Tron: Legacy (2010) released into theaters during the holiday season that year.  While it did perform a lot better at the box office than the original film, it also didn’t exceed expectations either.  Audiences were mixed, as well as critics.  Much like the original film, Legacy was viewed as visually stunning but emotionally hollow.  The biggest praise for the movie went instead to the musical score written by the techno punk DJ group Daft Punk, who saw their soundtrack become an award winning best-seller.  Legacy was a valiant attempt to capture some of the unique charm of the original movie while at the same time trying to modernize it and make it relevant again.  But, Tron is still a franchise with a very niche fan base.  The people who are impressed with the Tron movies are usually people with a fair amount of knowledge about computer tech.  They recognize the technical achievements that these movies represent.  To think that the original Tron was rendered with megabyte levels of computing power is astounding.  Legacy also became one of the first movies ever to use digital de-aging on it’s actors, a tool that we are seeing being used more and more in big budget blockbusters.  But, casual audiences are not aware of those things, and the Tron films often feel too cold and detached from emotions to ever feel as thrilling as most other blockbusters from their respective eras.  But, just like with the original, Tron: Legacy has also received a bit of a re-assessment over the years.  While it’s not considered by many to be an all time great action flick, people have come to admire it’s ambition and unique style.  One thing that also has helped to give this movie some extra attention is that it was the first film directed by Joseph Kosinski, who has since gone on to become a very successful movie director in the 15 years since Legacy, including being a part of a little film called Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  With both movies now having some noteworthy attention paid to them, Disney seems to be convinced that it’s time to try again with this franchise, adding a new film into this trilogy.  The only question is, does Tron: Ares manage to justify making the return to the world of Tron after such a long absence, or is it game over for this franchise for good?

The story of Tron: Ares brings the story up to where we are in the present day.  Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the eccentric founder of the ENCOM corporation has been missing since 1989, becoming now more myth than man.  His son Sam has also abdicated his role as CEO of the company and is living off the grid, so ENCOM now lies in the guiding hands of Eve Kim (Greta Lee) who hopes to run the company in the same spirit as Flynn did.  But, she faces stiff competition from the Dillinger Corporation, run by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the grandson of it’s founder and former corrupt CEO of ENCOM Ed Dillinger.  Both companies are trying to create the next breakthrough in AI technology, which involves creating living matter out of 3D printing with AI to give them sentience.  The only problem is, the creations can only keep their structure together for a maximum of 29 minutes before they disintegrate.  Eve believes that Kevin Flynn managed to crack the code for this problem back when he was still the head of the company, creating what’s been dubbed the Permanence Code, and she’s been digging through decades old computer systems trying to find it.  She manages to find her answer in a secret lab in the frozen Arctic Circle and she hopes to bring it back home with the intent of using the Permanence Code to fix things like food and medicine shortage.  Dillinger, however, wants to use the code to mass produce soldiers and war technology.  In a desperate attempt to steal the Code, he sends out two of his most elite warrior programs, Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith).  The two manage to track down and corner Eve, but Ares starts to question the motives behind his programming, believing that Dillinger is crossing the line by seeking to literally destroy his competition.  So, Ares goes rogue and elects to help Eve instead.  But, Dillinger doesn’t take the betrayal lightly, and he re-programs Athena to now hunt down both Ares and Eve together.  What follows is a battle of wills that chaotically shows what happens when AI programs with elite warrior skills take their battle out of the Grid and bring it into the real world.

As the third film in a long running series such as this, Tron: Ares will undoubtedly face immediate comparisons with it’s predecessors.  It’s also difficult to really stack up each film together, considering that each one came from such different eras of filmmaking, to the point where each one almost feel more of a product in it’s own time than cohesive whole.  Tron: Legacy almost felt more like a reboot of the series rather than a straight forward sequel, only loosely tying itself to the original film through the general premise and return of Jeff Bridges.  Tron: Ares pretty much feels the same way as well.  It’s almost like Disney is once again starting from scratch, with this movie choosing not to continue the story of Legacy and instead doing something new with a whole new set of characters.  In some ways that is both a blessing and a curse.  Tron: Ares does have a lot of things going for it that it does do a lot better than the previous films in this series, but it’s also lacking some of the things that made the other films stand out as well.  Truth be told, the Tron movies have never been known for having great stories.  It’s always been a film franchise built on style over substance.  Tron: Ares keeps up that tradition by being as cookie-cutter as possible with barely dimensional characters.  It’s an unfortunate problem that definitely weighs the movie down, but at the same time, it’s kind of par for the course for this series.  The only character of note from this entire series has been Kevin Flynn, and he only stands out because of Jeff Bridges natural magnetic charm.  But unfortunately, starting over again also undercuts most if not all of the previous world-building work that had been put into the series.  There are fleeting references to the previous films (plus one admittedly pretty cool nostalgia filled scene referencing the original Tron), but otherwise Tron: Ares is carving out it’s own path.  That can be good if you want the movie to stand on it’s own, but it also means that Ares also has to go through the whole world-building gauntlet again, and that unfortunately burdens the film more with a lot of unnecessary extra exposition.  It shows Disney being undecisive in their approach to this franchise.  They want to continue to bank on the nostalgia value of the Tron brand, but they also feel like audiences can’t be trusted to already be familiar with the lore of the previous films, so unfortunately we have to have it all spelled out for us again.

But, there is one area where Ares does outdo both of the previous Tron films and that is in the action scenes.  The original Tron certainly was limited by what was possible with computer animation at the time, and still managed to make the most of it.  The light cycle race in particular is still an iconic moment in cinema and remarkably harrowing given the primitive animation used to make it.  Legacy’s biggest problem was that while it was visually a big step up in visual effects, it was also a bit lackluster in the action scenes.  It lacked a visceral feeling, with more emphasis being put on the style of the action rather than any tangible impact; ironic given that the same director went on to make the immersive Top Gun: Maverick.  Tron: Ares actually manages to be the best of both worlds.  It manages to be as thrillingly impactful as the action scenes in the original Tron, while also having the advanced visual style of Tron: Legacy.  The movie hits a high point midway through the film when we have Ares and Athena drive their light cycles in the real world for the first time.  We’ve seen light cycle races in both of the previous Tron movies, but this film makes their scene much more thrilling.  Here we finally see how these things perform under real world physics, and it creates a stark contrast.  One of the great things about this scene is that it looks like they really built physical light cycles as a workable prop in the movie.  It reminded me a lot of the bat cycle scene from The Dark Knight (2008), with this out of this world vehicle cruising through a real city street.  Director Joachim Ronning also makes the wise artistic choice of mounting the camera on the cycle itself, placing us the audience in the drivers seat.  The Tron series has been lacking in action scenes that feel immersive and that’s what helps Ares to stand out.  And while the cycle scene is a definite highlight, the rest of the movie also manages to keep the tempo moving, with a lot of bombast and style working in tandem.  It’s only when the action set pieces stop that the movie starts to lag.  Thankfully, the movie is action heavy, much more so than Legacy, and that helps to make the film a mostly fun time.

One of the things that makes Ares feel different from the other Tron movies is it’s aesthetic.  The original Tron was unlike any other movie ever made, with the use of back-lighting giving both the environments and the characters themselves a neon like glow.  That has carried on throughout the franchise.  While Tron: Legacy added in more naturalistic color, especially on the facial tones of the characters, it also maintained the back-lighting aesthetic with lights built into the costumes.  Tron: Ares does that as well, but here they really upped the contrast between light and dark.  The warrior programs created by the Dillinger Corp. all have the color definition of red in their suits (a carry-over from the original Tron where all the bad guys were in red and the good guys were in blue).  Most of the movie takes place during the dead of night, so when Ares and Athena are out on their cycles or are brandishing their weapons, that red really stands out against the darkness.  This is definitely the darkest film in the series when it comes it’s visuals.  A big reason why the movie looks as good as it does is because it was shot by celebrated cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, who has famously done many films for David Fincher including Fight Club (1999) and The Social Network (2010).  He’s a master when it comes to creating dark scenes with stark lighting contrasts, which is probably why Disney sought him out.  Another element of the movie that really adds to the experience is it’s music.  Perhaps as an answer to the success of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, Disney wanted to get another famous rock band involved without having to go back to Daft Punk, who are not the kind of band intent on repeating themselves.  To give the movie a whole different sound, they went to Oscar winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.  The famed Nine Inch Nails members have been working in film composition for years now, including being employed by Disney before with their Oscar winning score for Pixar’s Soul (2020).  Given the synth style of music, they seemed like a perfect fit for Tron, but the duo went a bit further, deciding to get the entire band involved on this project.  It would have been unimaginable a decade ago that we’d see a Disney film scored by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, but that’s what make Tron so unique as a series.  And the NIN socre is perfectly suited for this movie, especially if the theater is equipped with a robust sound system.  This film score will definitely be rattling your bones with it’s aggressive sound.  Unfortunately, most of it all feels the same throughout the film, which does make it less memorable than Daft Punk’s Legacy score.  This is the one are where I feel Tron: Legacy was better, because Daft Punk put so much variety into the different themes, whereas Nine Inch Nails just stick with the same beat throughout.

One of the more controversial choices during the making of this movie was casting Jared Leto in the titular role of Ares.  Leto has, to put it lightly, been a controversial figure as of late.  Scandals aside, he’s also had a recent loosing streak at the box office, being a part of multiple box office bombs like House of Gucci (2001), Morbius (2022) and Disney’s Haunted Mansion (2023).  Not just casting him in this multi-million dollar tentpole but also placing him at the center is a major risk on Disney’s part, but Leto is far from being the movie’s main problem.  If anything, he’s appropriately cast as Ares.  Ares is by design to be devoid of character; an AI in search of an identity.  It’s in this that Leto’s understated style of acting actually fits, and I’ll take understated Leto over whatever the hell he gave us in House of Gucci or his performance as the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016).  A lot of the other actors do what they can with characters that are unfortunately just as ill-defined as Ares.  Evan Peters has a presence on screen as Julian Dillinger, but his villain role is overly eccentric and cliché and beneath the talent that someone like Peters has shown in other roles.  You definitely miss the aura of grandeur that the late David Warner brought to his villainous role as Dillinger in the original Tron.  Greta Lee also tries her best to make the most of her character, who is also very thinly defined.  The actor who stands out the most is Jodie Turner-Smith as Athena.  She brings a real menacing presence to the film and helps to make her character a lot more memorable than probably was on the page.  What does become clear while watching the movie is that a lot of the performances feel like they were more fleshed out in longer cuts of the movie.  Disney seemed pretty adamant about keeping this movie under 2 hours, and the editing done on this film seems to have mostly centered on fleshing out the action scenes.  So, a lot of character development is missing in the final edit.  Truth be told, Tron has never had the most memorable characters, other than Bridges’ Flynn (who thankfully gets a nice extended cameo here), but you definitely get the feeling that the movie would be a lot more exciting if we actually cared more about what happens to these characters.

You would think that after 15 years of development that Disney would have cracked the code over how to make a Tron movie that actually lives up to it’s potential.  Instead Tron: Ares is just another generic, albeit we-crafted, action movie capitalizing on the nostalgia of it’s predecessors.  If you’re looking for Tron to finally break out and become an elite franchise in the same class as something like Star Wars, you’ll have to wait a bit more because Tron: Ares is not that movie.  It’s hard to tell if there is any future for Tron at all, given the amount of time that we’ve waited for each installment.  If this movie underperforms, Disney may just end up giving up on it entirely.  The one thing that Tron had going for it initially was it’s ground-breaking visual effects and unique aesthetic, and that perhaps was not enough to build a long lasting franchise on, even though 40 plus years later Disney was still trying.  The positive thing about Tron: Ares is that it didn’t solely capitalize on past nostalgia.  It attempted to do things a bit different, and the result did yield some pretty impressive action sequences.  The smart thing that the filmmakers did with Tron: Ares was to keep it from being too self-important, which was Tron: Legacy’s biggest flaw.  It knows that the big selling point is the visuals and the action, and that’s where the focus was put, and the result makes this a better than average action flick that is best appreciated on a big screen with a robust sound system.  I saw this movie in 3D IMAX, and it honestly had some of the best 3D I’ve seen in a long while.  I just wish that maybe Disney would’ve given the script just a little more polish, allowing for better character development so that we could appreciate the story more.  Overall, the original Tron still stands as the best in the series, thanks to it’s pioneering visuals and overall nostalgic charm, but Ares definitely has the best action scenes in the series while Legacy has the best soundtrack.  A lot of people may end up just skipping the movie and end up buying the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack by itself, which is fair.  The sad reality is that there may have been a time and place where Tron could have turned into one of the biggest franchises in movie history, but it’s timing was at the wrong time.  It was either too ahead of it’s time, or just missed out on the right moment to reach it’s audience.  It’s hard to say if Tron: Ares will get the same reassessment from audiences and critics that it’s predecessors did in the years ahead.  Given that Disney is less inclined to give their franchises time to gestate over multiple generations of audiences, it may indeed end up being the end of line for Tron. 

Rating: 7/10

Paul Thomas Anderson is in a class of his own as a filmmaker.  I don’t think there is any other director who balances tone better than he does.  His films could feature some of the darkest, most disturbing moments ever put on screen and then within a single scene transition he can shift to something hilariously comical, and it still would fit together.  He’s made a career out of delivering some of the darkest comedies, with movies like Boogie Nights (1997), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and Inherit Vice (2014) on his resume.  His movies have also either leaned more fully into the darker side, like There Will Be Blood (2007), or the more comical side like Licorice Pizza (2021).  But one thing that remains constant in his films is a sense of keeping his audience on the edge, making sure that they’ll never know which way his films are headed.  That has made him one of the most admired filmmakers still working in Hollywood today.  Every new film he puts out always garners our attention, because we know that it’s going to be unlike anything we have seen before.  And as a filmmaker, he’s done a lot of things that we’ve thought were impossible.  He’s the guy who showed us that Adam Sandler could actually give a great performance with Punch-Drunk Love, which we’ve now learned was no fluke thanks to the Safdie Brothers several years later.  Anderson has an eye for talent and visual storytelling that is truly unique, and it has earned him a strong place in the filmmaking community.  However, as beloved as Anderson is among filmmakers, his reach still feels a bit limited.  Because of the unusual nature of his films, his reach hasn’t really crossed into the mainstream in the same way that his contemporaries have like Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan.  While many of his films are big in concept and ambitious in execution, he’s still been playing with limited budgets and small art house premieres.  But that seems to have changed.

For his newest film, Anderson is getting something he’s never had before; a substantial budget.  With the financial backing of Warner Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson for the first time is making a film with a budget north of $100 million.  Thus far, we’ve seen him be a filmmaker who has done a lot with very little in the way of funds.  There Will Be Blood was one of the most impressive looking American epics of it’s time, and remarkably it was made for around $20 million.  While it does excite a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson fans to think about what he might do with a budget of that size given his overall track record, it also leaves a lot of people worried about what that might mean for his style of fillmaking as well.  Anderson has managed to thrive being something of an outsider from the studio system.  So seeing him working with a major studio and taking their money for a film budgeted over 5x more than his average film makes many of his fans worried that he might be selling out.  Will this new movie actually still feel like a Paul Thomas Anderson film, or will it be a soulless studio product?  One of the positive signs is that the movie is not a pre-existing IP, but rather a project of Anderson’s own choosing.  It’s a loose adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel called “Vineland” and it’s pretty clear that the reason he’s making this movie is not because he needed Warner Brothers money but rather because they wanted his new film.  Warner Brothers, despite some of their own misguided steps in the past, have actually been quite good at attracting prestige filmmakers to bring their big concept projects under their banner.  It’s something they did with Christopher Nolan for a while with his films Inception (2010) and Dunkirk (2017).  Just this year they also got a big win with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025).  So, they recognize that it’s worth the investment to give a filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson the money he needs to make his big vision project come to life.  The only question is, does One Battle After Another prove that Anderson can still deliver on a much bigger scale, or does the movie fall apart under the weight of all those lofty ambitions?

The story of One Battle After Another is set in an America that’s been living under an authoritarian, militaristic regime that has been rounding up migrants and placing them in concentration camps.  Fighting back against this regime is a domestic terrorist group call the French 75.  Two of the members of this group are Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor).  The two revolutionaries have a fiery romance that builds while they conduct their many acts of resistance against the government.  But, their love affair and antigovernmental crusade hits a roadblock once Perfidia becomes pregnant.  Once their child is born, Perfidia begins to become unhinged and it results in botched raid that gets her arrested.  In order to save herself, and protect her daughter’s secret identity, she ends up naming names of the other French 75 members.  Bob ends up going on the run with his infant daughter, who will grow up believing that her mother died in prison.  16 years later, the young girl named Willa (Chase Infiniti) finds herself suddenly thrust into the chaotic world of her father’s past once an old adversary has picked up the trail.  Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an old enemy of the French 75 has now been given new authority to hunt down the remnants of the revolutionary group, and he’s got a personal matter involving Willa herself that he wants to settle once and for all.  While Bob is still very protective of his daughter, he’s also been out of the revolutionary game for many years, so a lot of his instincts are rusty.  He ends up seeking help from Willa’s karate teacher Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro), who himself is involved in his own underground resistance movement.  As Willa becomes the target of this government crackdown, it becomes an endless race between two highly opposed forces; Bob using his network of revolutionaries to help him find his daughter’s safe house refuge, and Lockjaw using his military back might to get to her first.  And all the while, Willa desperately is trying to adapt to all the chaotic events that suddenly have been thrusted upon her.  With all that happens, it’s clear why this movie comes to us with the title One Battle After Another.

There is a lot that unfolds within the story of One Battle, but at the same time, the movie is very simple in it’s narrative.  In the end, it’s just a story about a father doing everything he can to save his daughter from a ruthless predator and the system that has propelled him to power.  A lot of people who have been worried that some of Paul Thomas Anderson’s style would get lost under the weight of a much bigger budget will be rest assured that this movie thankfully still feels like an Anderson film to it’s core.  It’s honestly kind of surprising that this movie actually cost as much as it did to make, because Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t really do much to flaunt the budget of this movie.  It still feels like one of his grounded, street level films that were made on significantly smaller budgets.  If expensive visual effects were used in the making of this movie, they are barely noticeable as the movie still feels like a very hand crafted film.  But, regardless of how the budget was used, this is undoubtedly another triumph for Paul Thomas Anderson.  It features all of the incredible filmmaking instincts that have made him one of our more exciting cinematic storytellers over the years, with perhaps a bit more scale to it.  I would also say that as entertaining as the film is, it also feels a bit slack in it’s pacing, especially compared to some of his much tighter films like There Will Be Blood and Punch-Drunk Love.  While the overall experience is still thrilling, you can feel at times when it slips into indulgence, which has hurt Anderson’s films sometimes.  But, it’s a minor nitpick on the film, because when the movie does get cooking it is an amazing thrill ride.  Again, Anderson’s skill with balancing tonal shifts is unmatched, and he does that a lot here.  At times you will be laughing hysterically at the absurdity going on in the film, and then a scene later the film will hit you with a gut punch of tension and gut-wrenching tragedy.  In many ways, that’s the biggest asset that this film has, because it is constantly leaving you unsure about what’s going to happen next, which is thrilling in it’s own way.  It’s a movie that only he can make, and that’s a rare specialty in cinema these days, especially when done on this scale.

What I especially love about what Paul Thomas Anderson does in One Battle After Another is the subtle world-building.  While there certainly are a lot of parallels in the film with regards to the state of the world today, the movie also creates this heightened world that only these kinds of characters could exist in.  The shadowy government organizations feel familiar to us, but Anderson also puts his own absurdist spin on them as well, making their secret organization a joke in of itself.  I also like how the revolutionary groups have become so entrenched in their routines, that their code speak way of communications has over time devolved into something like trying to reach customer service through a corporation’s hotline.  Everything is grounded and yet heightened at the same time.  There will probably be some discussion around this film that may make it controversial.  Certainly the mass incarceration of migrant people (primarily Latin American migrants as shown prominently in the film) is going to draw immediate parallels with the current situation in America.  Also the movie isn’t afraid to define the characters in clear black and white terms; the revolutionaries are definitely the good guys here and the white supremacists coded government figures are the bad guys.  The timing of this movie couldn’t be more prescient.  And yet, Anderson doesn’t use this movie to push any agenda either.  It’s merely the backdrop for this cat and mouse chase involving DiCaprio’s Bob, his daughter Willa, and Sean Penn’s Col. Lockjaw.  I do love that Anderson shows restraint here, because I can imagine this movie loosing all of it’s subtlety if it were given over to a less skilled storyteller.  Anderson certainly wants you to think about the injustices committed in this world and be conscientious, but at the same time he knows that the story must be engaging enough to guide us through this crazy world, and that’s why it remains focused on above all else.  It’s the thing that we all will engage with the most on our first watch of the movie, but I’m sure all the extra world details will help to make people want to revisit the film many times over in order to really absorb the world that Anderson created for this film.

The thing that I’m sure most people are going to take away from watching this movie are the performances.  Anderson has always been a great actor’s director, and he’ helped many of his performers deliver some of the greatest work of their careers.  He helped launch Mark Wahlberg’s career with Boogie Nights, showed us a different side of Tom Cruise in Magnolia (1999), made us believe in Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, and got Daniel Day-Lewis the second of his three Oscars for There Will Be Blood. Now, for the first time he gets to work with one of the greatest actors of his generation, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the long awaited team up does not disappoint.  What I especially love is how loose Anderson allowed DiCaprio to be in this movie.  One of DiCaprio’s most under-utilized talents as an actor has been his knack for comedy, which we’ve seen used only sparingly in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).  Thankfully, Paul Thomas Anderson uses DiCaprio’s comedic chops to great effect here.  It’s especially hilarious watching how clumsily DiCaprio’s Bob steps back into the revolutionary game after so many years out of loop, and his growing frustrations with how the network operates now as opposed to when he was in his prime.  DiCaprio has some pretty spectacular freak-outs in this character role, and a lot of the fun of this movie stems from his character.  But, the true scene-stealer is Sean Penn as Col. Lockjaw.  This is one of Penn’s best performances ever, and that’s saying a lot for the two time Oscar winner.  His Lockjaw is a true transformative performance.  There are so many layers to this character that Sean Penn brilliantly gets to peel back.  I love how his tough guy exterior is so extreme that all it does is spotlight his insecurities that much more.  I especially love that Penn even worked out a unusual gait to the way Lockjaw walks, like every muscle in his body is clenched at all times.  And he’s also not afraid to make Lockjaw as loathsome as he possibly can be, and that in a way makes him even more absurd of a figure.  This is the kind of performance that I’m sure we’re going to be hearing a lot about come Awards season.  The movie also gives us a breakout performance from Chase Infiniti as Willa.  This is her first ever film role, and it is an impressive debut.  She has to carry so much of the film given that so much of it centers around her character, and she manages to have an incredible on screen presence for someone fairly new to this.  It’s especially impressive, given that she’s able to command the screen even in the presence of heavyweights like DiCaprio and Penn.  And while their roles are minor in comparison, Teyana Taylor and Benicio Del Toro also manage to shine in their performances as well.  In addition, like with so many other Anderson films, even the side characters have a ton of personality.

One thing that Paul Thomas Anderson has never failed to deliver on is making his movies look good.  He always works with the best cinematographers in the business, and the production designs on his movies are always incredibly detailed.  He’s also been a purist when it comes to shooting his movies on film.  He’s worked with 70 mm photography on many of his past films, but with One Battle After Another he decided to do something different.  Here he’s working with 35mm film, but he shot the movie utilizing a Vistavision camera.  Vistavision is experiencing a rather surprising resurgence lately after going unused for decades in Hollywood.  A precursor of the IMAX process, Vistavision allowed for larger image captures on 35mm film stock by running the film horizontally through the shutter of the camera rather than vertically.  This allowed for an image that was 8 perforations wide rather than the standard 4, making the image captured twice as sharp and large as usual.  Over time, the format went out of style, but gained attention again last year thanks to the Oscar winning camera work on Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024).  While The Brutalist used Vistavision for parts of the film, Anderson made use of it for the entire movie.  The result is really impressive, as it give the movie some really breathtaking visual flair.  While Anderson doesn’t go overboard with the photography, he nevertheless allows for the Vistavision image to do interesting things with depth of field and focus in many shots.  There is a spectacular sequence involving a car chase near the end of the movie that is one of the most breathtaking uses of camera work I’ve seen in a while.  The placement of the camera in that sequence is truly inspired.  Anderson is working with cinematographer Michael Bauman for the second time after their collaboration on Licorice Pizza, and this is his most dynamic camera work that we’ve seen yet.  Another excellent part of this movie is the musical score from Jonny Greenwood.  The Radiohead band member turned film composer has written music for every Anderson film since There Will Be Blood, and this is yet another brilliant piece of work from him.  The score at times plays like a heartbeat that just keeps pounding through the movie, driving up the tension.  It’s minimalist in the right ways, at times only consisting of one note played over and over again, but it perfectly fits with the chaos that’s unfolding on screen.  Both of these elements, combined with a film production that still feels hand crafted and lived in really helps to show that even with a larger budget at his disposal, Paul Thomas Anderson still can craft a film that feels distinctively him.

While I still hold a couple of Paul Thomas Anderson movies above this one, especially There Will Be Blood which is one of my favorite movies in general, I can definitely say that this is one of the year’s best films.  It’s just great to see one of cinema’s greatest talents still taking chances as a filmmaker and coming out with his integrity as an artist still in check.  It will hopefully bode well for filmmakers in general if this movie does very well at the box office, because it will allow the major studios to see the value in giving filmmakers like Anderson the money they need to make their big original concept films knowing that there is an audience out there for them.  Not every filmmaker manages to do that working under the judemental eye of studio executives.  But Anderson has built a respected reputation over the years as a filmmaker, one that only a fool would try to stand in the way of in Hollywood, and it’s great to see a studio like Warner Brothers recognizing that too.  They know that Paul Thomas Anderson can deliver on his promises as a filmmaker, and that’s why they allowed him to have the budget that he needed for this film.  As someone who has enjoyed many of his films, it is great to see Paul Thomas Anderson succeed so well in maintaining his unique cinematic voice while working within the studio system.  It may be a costlier movie, but it still maintains his signature to it’s core.  The performances are certainly worth the ticket price alone, especially with Sean Penn’s completely transformative work here.  And there is some thrilling camera work on display as well.  It will be interesting to see what kind of replay value this movie has with audiences over time.  I’m certainly eager to see it again, hopefully to catch all the things I missed the first time.  And thanks to the Vistavision photography, this is a movie that demands to be seen on a big screen.  I caught it in IMAX, and it made the experience all the more immersive.  That aforementioned car chase is especially breathtaking on a true IMAX screen.  But even so, this is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that is indeed going to please his long time fans, while also at the same time hopefully drawing in a few new ones.  He’s a one of a kind filmmaker who certainly deserves more attention, and while One Battle After Another may not be his magnum opus, it is still a masterpiece that hopefully will add onto his already legendary status in Hollywood.

Rating: 9/10