I Came Across A Video Saying One Battle After Another Is PTA's Version Of Terminator 2, And It Actually Makes Sense

One Battle After Another had a great night at the 2026 Golden Globe Awards, taking home four trophies, including Best Picture (Drama), Best Director, and Best Screenplay. While it’s no secret that Paul Thomas Anderson’s nearly three-hour epic about a washed-up and burnt-out former revolutionary trying to save his daughter pulls from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, there’s a case to be made for it being an unorthodox remake of one of the best action movies of all time: Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

I recently came across a video by Author Jason K. Pargin on Facebook where he spent nearly three minutes arguing how one of the best movies of 2025 was heavily inspired by James Cameron’s 1991 classic. Through comparisons between the two, a brief history lesson of PTA’s love of T2, and comments made by the cast ahead of One Battle After Another’s release, Pargin has a strong argument. Let me break it down…

There Are Some Major Similarities That Make Sense

In the video, Jason Pargin goes into great detail, breaking down some of the biggest similarities between the two movies. While not every comparison outlined in the video lines up or makes the most sense, there are enough to make this seem more like Paul Thomas Anderson paying homage to James Cameron than sheer coincidence.

You have a paranoid, aging, and burnt-out revolutionary – Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Pat Calhoun – trying to save their child from being captured and killed by a seemingly invincible killing machine. Though Sean Penn’s Steven Lockjaw is a bit more human than Robert Patrick’s T-1000, it’s not hard to see the similarities. Pargin also points out that both movies are structured around several chase sequences where the goal is for the heroes to protect the child and for the villains to kill them.

However, There Are Others I’m Not Buying

At the same time, there are two comparisons that can be seen as a stretch. First, there’s Benicio del Toro’s Sergio St. Carlos being an analogue for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800. While Sergio does sacrifice himself to protect the heroes, he just gets arrested, not killed like T2’s noble cyborg. While there are some similar sequences involving the two, these two characters just don’t line up as well as the other.

There’s also a comparison drawn between Skynet and the Christmas Adventurers Club, but I’m not really seeing that either. You could argue that both represent control and serve as entities that want nothing more than to wipe out everything not like them with some perverse sense of peace, but there are just too many arguments to go against this claim.

These Similarities Make Sense (Sort Of), And Give You Something Fun To Think About

In a 2025 Esquire interview, Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio talked about One Battle After Another being the PTA’s version of an action film, which it is when you think about it. During the chat, DiCaprio brought up Anderson’s love of Terminator 2 and how the director quit film school not long after seeing James Cameron’s epic action flick. That history, combined with all the wild similarities, makes this whole comparison make sense to an extent.

Even if you don’t buy the whole argument that One Battle After Another is a loose adaptation of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, this whole situation gives you something fun to think about. I know that was the case for me.