Fall 2025’s Movie Season Goes to War — DiCaprio, Lanthimos, Edgar Wright and Avatar Lead a Wave of Rebellion

Fall 2025’s movie slate is heavy on stories about resistance and revolution. Directors and studios are releasing films that range from satirical takedowns of corporations to outright tales of political oppression, and many of the season’s biggest titles put rebellion at the center of their plots.

• What this is about: a trend of fall 2025 films focused on resistance and revolution.
• Key examples: One Battle After Another, Bugonia, The Running Man, The Long Walk, Wicked: For Good, and Avatar: Fire and Ash.
• Other notes: adaptations from Stephen King (as Richard Bachman), director-driven satire, and a Brazilian drama set during a military dictatorship.

Trailers that set the tone

Trailers for several high-profile films make resistance a visible, even shouted, theme. For example, at the end of the first trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Leonardo DiCaprio — wearing a beanie, wraparound shades, and a tartan bathrobe — pumps his fist and yells “Viva la revolución!” Benicio del Toro responds by raising his fist and disappearing down a hatch, which is then covered by a rug.

The same trailer introduces DiCaprio’s character as a former activist who is drawn back into conflict to save his daughter, and it shows car chases, helicopters, desert gunfire, and a group of nocturnal skaters. Anderson has said the film focuses more on the personal than the political, and that point is documented on the record.

Satire and social paranoia

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia is a satire adapted from the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet!. The trailer shows Jesse Plemons kidnapping Emma Stone’s CEO character, and Plemons’ character declares, “Welcome to the headquarters of the human resistance.”

Lanthismos tends to present characters ambivalently, and the trailer positions Plemons’ actions between delusion and a kind of violent conviction. The film is a direct collaboration with Emma Stone, who has worked with Lanthimos on previous projects.

Bloodsport and televised contests

This fall also brings new adaptations of Stephen King works originally published under his Richard Bachman alias. The Long Walk and The Running Man both depict systems that force contestants into deadly competitions.

The Running Man (Edgar Wright)

Edgar Wright’s version of The Running Man stars Glen Powell. The trailer emphasizes a semi-recognizable present-day world and highlights how the public is encouraged to turn on contestants rather than only focusing on hired killers.

The 1987 Schwarzenegger adaptation took a sleek, futuristic approach; Wright’s take appears more grounded and frames the contest as mediated violence that implicates viewers and institutions.

Mainstream fantasies and eco-resistance

Big franchise films also carry resistance themes. Wicked: For Good adapts the second act of the stage musical and centers Elphaba’s opposition to the Wizard’s regime in Oz; she is shown as an insurrectionist and activist.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is expected to continue the franchise’s long-running theme of Na’vi resistance against human colonialism and environmental destruction. Early information indicates the film will introduce a Na’vi tribe that rejects Eywa, complicating the conflict.

Other notable films with resistance themes

There are several additional fall releases that fit the trend. The Housemaid stars Sydney Sweeney as a live-in maid in a wealthy household with dark secrets. Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice is described as a satire in which a wronged employee goes on a rampage. These films continue the recent pattern of “eat-the-rich” narratives.

Non-Hollywood perspectives

Not all entries in this wave are studio blockbusters. The Brazilian drama The Secret Agent premiered at Cannes earlier this year. It stars Wagner Moura and is set in the 1970s during Brazil’s military dictatorship. In the film, an academic becomes entangled with a revolutionary cell and is transformed into a kind of operative after a confrontation with a government minister.

The movie has been described as a story where corruption and circumstance leave the protagonist with little real choice, and it draws on historical experience from a country that went through these struggles in the late 20th century.

Why the theme is visible now

Several concrete factors explain the prevalence of resistance stories this season. First, multiple high-profile adaptations (including works by Stephen King) explicitly use oppressive systems as plot engines. Second, auteurs such as Paul Thomas Anderson and Yorgos Lanthimos are releasing new films that revisit countercultural and anti-establishment themes. Finally, franchise sequels like Avatar and stage-to-screen adaptations like Wicked put rebellion into large-scale, mainstream contexts.

These elements together make resistance a visible through-line in many fall 2025 releases, and the trailers and festival premieres document that focus across different filmmaking styles and national cinemas.