Already a big frontrunner in the Oscar race, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” returns to select IMAX 70MM locations for special one-week engagements in top markets across North America, as well as the BFI IMAX in London starting tomorrow, December 12, 2025. And thus, PTA, along with its star Leonardo DiCaprio, continues to pound the pavement to promote the film, which has grossed over $203 million worldwide so far.
By now, you’ve probably heard the stories from press junkets that the film really changed and evolved in the last act, thanks to Benicio del Toro, who came on late to the picture, and his suggestions altered the tone and trajectory of the last act.
However, in two recent interviews with PTA and DiCaprio, as well as another one with the film’s lead and his mentor, Martin Scorsese, a clearer picture emerges about the extent to which the film changed. It’s astonishing to think that a movie, budgeted at $140 million, was essentially allowed to completely change its ending thanks to an actor and his inspired ideas.
Moreover, both PTA and DiCaprio admitted that “One Battle After Another” essentially shut down production for two months during filming to wait for del Toro, who was busy filming the “Phoenician Scheme” with Wes Anderson.
In a conversation with U.K. journalist Edith Bowman at a recent BFI IMAX in London screening, DiCaprio spoke about how much del Toro influenced the film’s last act.
“As soon as Benicio arrived, he came with a cacophony of incredible specificity and ideas for who his character was; we were kind of pushed into this panicky vortex,” he explained. “We shut down production for two and a half months to wait for Benicio to play Sensei [Sergio St. Carlos], because he was doing ‘Phoenician Scheme,’ and we knew there was just nobody else to play that role. And it was a rushed prep for him, and he came with a tremendous specificity of who Sensei was, but I don’t think I’ve ever automatically fit into the shoes of a relationship with two characters so immediately [before].”
“He knew who Sensei was compared to Bob’s manic [aura],” DiCaprio continued. “And the first day on set, I just felt, I know who these guys are. And it’s rare when you get that with an actor. Usually, there are some stumbling blocks, but he was Sensei from the moment he arrived, and I just got to react off those ocean waves.”
While PTA admitted a lot of the third act was a kind of “TBD” as it was—a bit crazy to think a $140 million movie is allowed to do that, but then again tentpoles do it all the time—it started to take shape when del Toro arrived, which lead to the great “road trip” of the last act.
In TIME’s 2025 “Entertainer of the Year,” conversation with Scorsese—where the filmmaker revealed his next film, “What Happens At Night” with DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence ostensibly shoots in February— the Oscar-winning actor revealed that in one version of the screenplay, his aged revolutionary character Bob Ferguson killed someone within Sean Penn’s Col Lockjaw’s circle, but del Toro commented that this would not jibe with Sensei St. Carlos’ sense of morality and he would not help Bob, leading them to rethink that choice.
“Benicio came in with such specificity about what he wanted his character to be,” he echoed, about all the ways del Toro had already imagined his character to be, to feel and his worldview. “The fact that he was this Harriet Tubman for immigrants, that he would have this underground sort of revolutionary center for himself, that what he would do for Bob and what he wouldn’t do for Bob was very specific.”
“He’s like, ‘Well, if Bob kills somebody’—because originally in the script, I was going to kill somebody that was a part of Lockjaw, Sean Penn’s crew— ‘Now I won’t help him as much,’” he continued.
That changed much of the final act’s tone, according to DiCaprio. The ideas were so brilliant that they inspired Anderson to pivot and take the film in a different direction completely.
“That was a very pivotal point,” he explained. “And that flexibility and the ability to take a turn and have the film—we essentially went on a completely separate road trip. They built this set within two days. All that stuff with Benicio and me was based on those ideas and the specificity that Benicio brought to that character. And all that was sort of popped up in El Paso.”
DiCaprio praised Anderon’s “ability to take chances” and to recognize a good idea and then run with it. “Paul takes one good idea and expands it. He zooms in on it,” while noting de Toro’s game-changing, road-trip-inspired ideas “infused this incredible adrenaline and intensity to all of the stuff that we had to do.”
As for del Toro’s little dance as he parts ways with Bob’s character when pulled over by the police. Was that in the script? “No, god no, that’s him,” Anderson enthused. “That’s the magic of Benicio del Toro.”
Watch the full conversations below
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
