Spoiler Warning: There are some main spoilers for One Battle After One other under. If you happen to haven’t watched the 2025 film, please train excessive warning.
There have been a large number of riveting father and baby motion pictures through the years, ones that completely seize the wonder, pleasure, and necessary classes of parenthood. Then there are motion pictures like There Will Be Blood, which heart on probably the most deranged, manipulative, and downright evil fathers, particularly relating to Daniel Plainview. For years, I’ve been satisfied that Daniel Day-Lewis’ oil mogul within the superb Paul Thomas Anderson film was as dangerous because it might get.
That’s, till I watched One Battle After One other. This film is significantly nice, nevertheless it has a primary poll corridor of shamer relating to Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw. Penn deserves all of the reward and his Golden Globe nomination, however this character makes Plainview seem like a good man by comparability.
For Years, I’ve Been Satisfied Daniel Plainview Was As Unhealthy As It May Get
It has been 18 years since I first noticed There Will Be Blood on the massive display, and ever since then (rather less than half of my life on the time of this writing), I’ve been satisfied no dad may very well be as rotten, merciless, or opportunistic as Daniel Plainview. A person with questionable, at finest, enterprise ways, a pure hatred for the widespread man, and a drive to have management of all the pieces, regardless of the price, Plainview makes use of, abuses, and casts apart these round him after they now not serve a function to him.
This consists of his son, H.W. Plainview (Dillon Freasier), a younger orphan he adopts after the kid’s father is killed in a mining accident. Although there’s an argument to be made for the elder Plainview initially caring for the boy (he has a handful of tender moments), there’s a good stronger case to be made for the oilman utilizing the kid as a advertising and marketing tactic when discovering new leases. As soon as H.W. loses his listening to following one other accident, he’s finally despatched off to stay in a boarding college for the hearing-impaired. Solid away, in order that Daniel can give attention to what issues most: oil, fortune, energy!
He Did not Kill (Or Attempt To Kill) His Son, However Let’s Not Neglect The ‘Bastard From A Basket Scene’
Although it isn’t H.W. Plainview who’s on the receiving finish of one of many bowling pins in There Will Be Blood’s surprising closing scene, the older model of Plainview’s son (performed by Russell Harvard) does get a tongue lashing from his deranged, obsessive, and brutally violent father. A couple of minutes earlier than Day-Lewis’ character utters some of the iconic film traces of the twenty first century, the growing old oil man and all-around dangerous dad, unleashes an antagonistic barrage of feedback about his son’s childhood. Calling him a “bastard from a basket,” first by means of an interpreter, after which once more as he’s strolling away (including “just a bit piece of competitors” to essentially drive dwelling the purpose).
We by no means know if that is the ultimate assembly between father and son, however I’ve a sense H.W. wouldn’t need something to do along with his father after this bitter assembly. Then there’s the entire “my dad killed a preacher with a bowling pin” angle that follows.
Earlier than I put a pin within the awfulness of Plainview, one delicate side of this father-son relationship that I’ve at all times observed is the truth that the oilman by no means bothered to study signal language to speak along with his son, as an alternative choosing an interpreter even in any case these years.
Then I Watched One Battle After One other And Met Steven Lockjaw
After spending the previous 18 years considering Plainview was the worst film dad, or at the least relating to fathers from Paul Thomas Anderson motion pictures, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw entered the image. Although it’s not confirmed till the wild closing act of the film that the racist, violent, and usually disagreeable man who walks like he has a literal stick up his butt is the organic father of Chase Infiniti’s Willa Ferguson/Charlene Calhoun, it’s closely implied that he’s the one who received Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills pregnant earlier than the massive 16-year time soar.
From the primary time we meet this really unhinged lunatic (speak about rising to the event), this man is a pure menace, a pressure of chaotic evil who’ll do something and all the pieces to finish his mission. Time, distance, cash…nothing will get between this man and what he desires. First, it’s discovering Perfidia after their unsettling first encounter. Then, in a while, it’s discovering the woman who could or will not be his daughter. Nevertheless, it’s not about catching up in any case these years.
This Man Orchestrated An Complete Navy Operation To Discover And Kill His Daughter So A Tremendous-Racist Cabal Wouldn’t Discover Out
If somebody have been to inform me firstly of the 12 months that considered one of 2025’s finest motion pictures would heart on a raging lunatic who orchestrates a navy operation in order that he can discover and kill his biracial daughter earlier than a super-racist cabal known as the Christmas Adventurers Membership finds out and doesn’t let him be a part of, I’d be confused. But, right here I’m in December with One Battle After One other being considered one of my favorites. And yeah, that’s just about Lockjaw’s story all through this almost three-hour thriller.
I had a glimmer of hope that Lockjaw wouldn’t be completely dangerous and that he was merely simply looking for and reconnect along with his daughter after 16 years. Then I believed perhaps he was looking for her and protect her from the Christmas Adventurers Membership. Nope on each fronts. As an alternative, this man tried to have his daughter killed and wipe away any hint of her so his white supremacist buddies wouldn’t assume much less of him. Discuss a double-whammy of dangerous parenting.
At the very least Leonardo DiCaprio’s Pat Calhoun/Bob Ferguson, who thought Willa was his daughter for the previous decade-and-a-half, liked {the teenager} with all of his coronary heart. His reminiscence was sort of wonky from all of the drug use and explosives, however we are able to’t fault him for that. “Rocketman” was a stand-up man in my guide. Can’t say the identical for outdated Lockjaw…
One Battle After One other, with its horrible and not-so-terrible dads, is streaming for anybody with an HBO Max subscription. Possibly it’s time to revisit this one.
