So far in this century, nineteen R-rated films have grossed over 200 million dollars at the North American box office. Nine of those were sequels or remakes. Five were adapted from published works with built-in fanbases: books and comics from the likes of Marvel, Stephen King, Frank Miller, and whoever wrote the canonical gospels of the New Testament. That leaves five movies reaching smash-hit status without the two advantages studios normally consider essential to blockbuster success: friendliness to the under-18 audience, and a connection to popular pre-existing IP. Three of those five films were released before 2013: Wedding Crashers, The Hangover, and Ted. The other two — the only two from the last twelve years — are Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners.
Much has been made about the unconventional deal Warner Bros. struck with Coogler to have the film’s copyright revert to him after twenty-five years. Execs at rival studios have complained that the deal is overly generous, even dangerous; a piece in Vulture has one of them saying, hilariously, that “it could be the end of the studio system.” But as pointed out by our friend the anonymous indie producer, winning the bidding war for Sinners and giving Coogler what he wanted — ownership over a movie about Black ownership — made perfect sense for a studio concerned about its long-term future. The disastrous decision by Warners to release their 2021 theatrical slate simultaneously on their streaming service led to, among other things, a breakup with the big-budget auteur whose films had made the studio billions. Who do you bring in to replace Christopher Nolan? Maybe the guy who, like Nolan circa 2009, has made an award-winning indie, a mid-budget hit, and a pair of hugely successful, uncommonly sophisticated franchise films, all before turning forty.
After The Dark Knight, Nolan felt he’d earned the right to tackle his original-concept action thriller about a crew of thieves who carry out heists in people’s dreams. Like Coogler, he had to play the studios off each other to create the ideal conditions for his passion project. A producer told me this story years ago, and as far as I can tell, it’s not public knowledge: when Nolan pitched Inception to the Warners brass, they told him they were onboard as long as he made a third Batman movie first. Instead of accepting their terms, he started shopping the project to Sony and Universal. The Warners people got alarmed and communicated some flexibility in their stance. Nolan’s agents allowed the execs to read the script just once in a locked room, and gave them forty-eight hours to either greenlight it or let it go elsewhere. He got the budget and the creative control he wanted, thanks to the most reliable motivator of Hollywood executives: fear.
You can learn a lot about a filmmaker from their first blank-check movie. Inception made it clear that Nolan’s purest obsessions are mathematically intricate plot architecture, tailored suits, and the laws of physics. He’s well aware that a movie can’t connect with a broad audience without a strong emotional hook, and he can dutifully deliver one, but mapping the depths of the human soul isn’t a natural urge of his. When he tries, you usually end up with something oddly logical and physical — a character’s traumatic memories of his late wife being kept in a literal basement of his mind, or a 5D-to-3D hyperspace projection of the moments in time when a guy felt the strongest love for his daughter.
Sinners shows us that Coogler has very different impulses. The film is bursting with passionate feeling from all corners of the human heart, while many of its high-octane sequences are as rote and generically competent as the emotional beats in Nolan’s movies. The most memorable bit of cinematic spectacle isn’t an action set piece, but a woozy, dreamlike vision of the millennia-spanning arc of African-descended music. The filmmaker’s keen intelligence isn’t directed at abstract structures and metaphysics, but at grim social realities and the stormy inner lives of the characters. The soul is the battlefield of the narrative. One soul in particular: Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore, who, despite the dual-role movie star on the poster, is the real protagonist of the story.
When studio executives evaluate a screenplay, the issue at the top of their mind is stakes. The stakes need to be high. The main character has to have something important to win, and everything to lose. The stakes are why we care about what happens in the movie, and why we want to keep watching it.
In theory, the stakes of a gory vampire thriller are life and death — as high as can be. But we know from the flash-forward first scene that Sammie will survive the night of carnage. The opening has him staggering into his father’s church, traumatized by the horrors he’s witnessed, clutching the broken-off neck of a guitar. Pastor Moore thunders about the evil unleashed the night before by Sammie’s music, and implores his son to cast aside his devilish pursuits so his soul can be saved.
The central stakes of the film are defined here, and they’re not about who lives and who dies. They’re not about who falls in love with who, or who gets away with a trunk full of money, or whether the supernatural threat will be defeated. They’re about whether Sammie Moore will keep playing the blues.
This is a strikingly bold commitment to an emotional arc that a less courageous and self-assured filmmaker would write off as too slight to prop up a movie — all the more so because Coogler chose to entrust this character to a teenaged musician whose entire acting resume consisted of a short film and a school play. Miles Caton delivers one of the strongest debut performances in recent memory, comfortably embodying the film’s emotional center with his lucid, vivid portrayal of Sammie. The character is put through the wringer: a day that begins with good signs and high hopes descends into a hellish nightmare, and the pastor’s not wrong when he says it’s all Sammie’s fault. It’s the transcendent power of his music that attracts the monsters; they view Sammie as an enormously valuable prize. “I want your stories, I want your songs,” says their ingratiating leader: the vampire hive-mind holds the sinister promise of a true melting pot in which all differences and divisions can dissolve. All they ask for in return is your identity and your soul.
You can sense how personal this feels for Coogler — an artist whose head-turning talent had Disney knocking on his door when he was barely out of film school. He repeatedly refused Marvel’s offers to direct Black Panther until he was certain he could make the movie the way he wanted to. In a chapter of his memoir, Disney CEO Bob Iger talks about the first studio screening of the film, where Coogler — still just 31 at the time — was visibly nervous when Iger approached him with notes. He uses this as a lesson in creative leadership for the reader: he made sure to tell the young director his movie was great before suggesting a few tweaks that could make it better.
There are filmmakers who’ve gone into the Marvel machine and failed spectacularly, and others who’ve never quite made it out. Coogler now appears to be the first to parlay his wins into what we’d imagine, theoretically, is the ultimate goal of any indie voice who signs up to direct a franchise project: a license to make big ambitious movies of their own design, with the backing of a studio that can trust them not to lose money. His Nolan card has been stamped. What’s remarkable is how uncompromising he’s been in crafting his first original film, at a time when the stakes — for himself and his career — couldn’t have been higher.
The most affecting moment in the movie comes near the end, when the story has caught up to the morning-after opening scene. Sammie stands in the church, bloodied and bruised, clutching the broken remnant of his guitar and being desperately urged to let it go. We then cut to him at the wheel of a car on the open road, speeding away from the only home he’s ever known. His hand comes into view as he pulls it to his chest: still firmly in his grip, held against his heart, is the piece of his instrument. It’s euphoric to witness. A gifted artist has gone up against the demons and bloodsuckers summoned by his powers, and come out the other side with his soul intact. Now we get to see what he does next.