Leonardo DiCaprio on the Surprising ‘Star Wars’ Influences in His New Film

Walking out of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest masterpiece, One Battle After Another, you’ll be thinking about a lot of things. Its story of a father and daughter. Its many parallels to modern society. The filmmaking, the humor, and more. One thing you definitely won’t be thinking about, however, is a galaxy far, far away, but the film’s star, Leonardo DiCaprio, disagrees.

In two new interviews, the Oscar-winning star of Titanic, The Revenant, and Inception discussed Star Wars in relation to One Battle After Another. The first was chatting with USA Today, where he went deep about his character’s costume. Bob is a former revolutionary bomb expert stoner who is forced out of his comfort zone to find and save his daughter. For the majority of the film, he wears a long, red robe, which DiCaprio says he saw as almost a superhero cape. Then, he also wears a set of wraparound cataract-protecting sunglasses, which he chose for a very specific reason.

“There’s the weird Star Wars theme to this movie,†DiCaprio said. “I had this vision of these wraparound optical glasses like Boba Fett. Those are the ones I had to choose.â€

What does he mean by “the weird Star Wars theme,†though? He discussed that on the Big Picture podcast.

“There’s so much intricate thought put in and layering to what is essentially a sort of action film about a father trying to get back to his daughter. I compared it to Star Wars in a lot of ways,†he said on the podcast. “You have the bounty hunters. You have Princess Leia. You have Yoda. You have Darth Vader, but it’s saturated in [the] real world. The world that we live in right now. It’s holding a mirror up to society. And the fact that [Anderson] started thinking about this 20 years ago. The fact that it’s so incredibly topical to the world and the struggles that we’re dealing with now in society. The fact that no one seems to be listening to one another. That there’s extremism on both sides, and the conviction that all these characters believe in their ideology. That they feel that they’re right. And to me, you can see films that have a lot of thought put into them.â€

Because, much like One Battle After Another, Star Wars isn’t just about Luke, Han, and Leia. It’s about much more. And yes, you can say that about seemingly every other movie, but One Battle After Another is definitely about a group of rebels fighting against an oppressive government and then subsequently going on an adventure to save a woman they care about who was captured, all while being hunted by an unstoppable evil, who has his own soldiers. There’s even a sort of Death Star trench action scene at the end. Sort of.

Now, do we 100% agree with DiCaprio here? Not really. The parallels are loose, at best. But it’s undoubtedly fun how he’s trying to equate this unique, original story of love, fear, hope, and heroism to another popular movie about the same thing. Plus, there’s always those Boba Fett sunglasses.

One Battle After Another, which co-stars Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s Benicio del Toro, is now in theaters.

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