Warner Bros.’ “One Battle After Another” SteelBook booklet review

Written by Matt Long

A review of the booklet included as part of Warner Bros.’ 4K-UHD and Blu-ray release of One Battle After Another (2025), which was originally released in 2026 as part of a limited edition SteelBook release.

The front cover of the booklet for One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2025 Academy Award-winning film.

Professionalism and production quality

This is a high quality booklet with saddle-stitch binding. The photography in the booklet consists of behind the scenes photos, and they are largely presented in amazing clarity. There is a nice soft glass throughout, so it looks beautiful to flip through and holds up well with use. It’s done well, befitting the large corporation that produced this booklet.

Grade: A

Text-to-image ratio

Not including copyright text on the back cover, there are two pages with text in this 24 page booklet. One is the title page, and the other is the credits page. That leaves 20 pages with either illustrations or photos.

Grading this category is tricky because Warner Bros. did not produce this for my preferences. But as both writer and editor in chief of this column, I’ve got the final word for this particular review.

Grade: C-

The SteelBook and booklet covers for this release. Minimalism must have been part of the job description.

Content

There are some remarkable photographs included. The cast of incredible women in the cast stand out in the photos selected. The more famous men (Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro) are relegated to less shots, and most of those included seem to be during filming. I thought those were interesting contrasts that aligned with the themes of the film. The black-and-white images do render the images a beautiful quality. However, it still feels like a relatively safe collection of photos.

As I noted in the text-to-image ratio section, this is a difficult book to compare to others because it consists only of photos. My preference is for text, so I would have liked a booklet of all text and barely any photos. Other reviewers who prefer visuals would have then had the opposite reaction to me. Some text to accompany the images may have been nice, or quotes from the cast or crew. Ideally a short piece from Paul Thomas Anderson or another member of the cast or crew could have been commissioned.

Ultimately, they chose to produce a photobook and not include any of that. This booklet does a good job of doing that; it’s just not my preference.

Grade: C-

Creativity

This film clearly resonated with a lot of people, and the choice to include this booklet as a supplement to the film reflects that they know people want more from any releases after the supplements-free first release of One Battle After Another. I appreciate that they put the effort to put this out on disc, let alone re-release it with more supplements and a physical booklet. If the constraints put on Warner Archive at all reflect what the creative team at the main company might have been limited to, then it might suggest a lack of budget or time rather than any lack of creativity. Nevertheless, this does not strike me as being particularly creative in its execution.

Grade: D

Grade summary

Professional and production quality grade: A

Text to image ratio grade: C-

Content grade: C-

Creativity grade: D

Final thoughts

I’m glad to see One Battle After Another getting released with supplements. If you’re a fan of photography specifically, you might want to own this booklet. But if you miss out on getting this and the disc is re-released in the future without it, you might be okay not to spend extra time or money seeking this out for the booklet specifically.

Overall grade: C

The One Battle After Another limited edition is available (while quantities last) from your favourite independent retailers.

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