00:00Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're sinking our teeth into Sinners.
00:13A few spoilers will follow.
00:15For all of the online chatter demanding fresh ideas, IP fuels the box office.
00:27When an original project does come along, audiences don't always show up.
00:32Hola.
00:33That thing doesn't understand a word you're saying.
00:36We're talking.
00:37With a Minecraft movie topping the charts two weeks in a row,
00:40the argument for originality grows harder to justify.
00:43During its third weekend, though, Minecraft fell behind another Warner Bros. film,
00:48Ryan Coogler's genre-bending vampire picture Sinners.
00:52With all the things that I've seen.
00:57I ain't ever seen no demons.
01:01Taking in $48 million, Sinners had the best opening weekend for an original movie since 2019's Us.
01:08On Saturday alone, 61% of patrons purchased tickets on the same day.
01:13With encouraging walk-up business, positive word of mouth, and an A cinema score, a first for a horror movie,
01:19Sinners should have lengthy legs heading towards its break-even point of $170 to $185 million.
01:27You keep dancing with the devil.
01:29You got it up here.
01:32You got it up here.
01:34Along with Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, and Jordan Peele, Ryan Coogler is a director whose name can officially sell a movie.
01:43Following his debut, Fruitvale Station, Coogler directed three franchise pictures.
01:48All critical and financial hits.
01:50One even got a Best Picture nomination and made over a billion dollars.
01:54I don't need a suit to kill you.
01:57Your reign is over!
01:58As great as Creed and the Black Panther movies are, Coogler was eager to produce a genre picture that wasn't part of an established brand.
02:05Sinners is Coogler's blank check movie.
02:08It's paying off for him, the studio, and audiences.
02:11The film's success isn't a huge surprise, as horror is among the few genres that still pack theaters.
02:17Most of those films didn't have a roughly $100 million price tag, however.
02:21Sinners isn't strictly a horror film, either.
02:24Coogler drew from works of terror like Salem's Lot, The Thing, and The Twilight Zone, specifically the episode The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank.
02:31If you're right about me, then you better start treating me pretty nice, cause you just don't know all the kind of trouble I can cause you.
02:41Yet Coogler also pulled from the Coen brothers, and, believe it or not, Puss in Boots The Last Wish.
02:47Look into Death's eyes and you'll see the parallels.
02:50Then there's Robert Rodriguez, who's From Dusk Till Gone similarly blended crime with vampires.
02:55All right, now that we all agree that we're dealing with vampires, what do we know about vampires?
03:00Coogler was just as inspired by Rodriguez's The Faculty, which merged horror and sci-fi.
03:05Coogler puts his own spin on horror, fusing it with period drama, gangsters, and above all else, music.
03:12Sinners isn't a musical in the traditional sense, but music is at the root of the film's central themes.
03:18Listen here, this ain't no house party.
03:20While Coogler said he's been, quote, trying to make this movie forever, it started to take shape during the production of Creed.
03:29Coogler's Uncle James had been diagnosed with cancer, although he maintained contact with his nephew via voice notes, sending motivational words whenever he was homesick.
03:38Fast forward to 2015, my uncle got really sick, and I was in Philadelphia, you know what I mean, while he was getting, you know, basically getting diagnosed with terminal cancer.
03:47And he would send me voice notes, you know, of encouragement when I was homesick and I don't want to go home.
03:53During Creed's post-production, James passed away.
03:56Coogler felt guilty that he wasn't there when his uncle died, compelling him to go home in more ways than one.
04:02James was from Mississippi, which provides the backdrop of Sinners during the Jim Crow era.
04:07Just as integral to shaping the narrative, James introduced Coogler to the blues.
04:12Coogler once thought of the blues as, quote, old man music.
04:15After losing his uncle, though, the blues allowed Coogler to reconnect with him.
04:19James and the blues remained on Coogler's mind while making Wakanda Forever, a film about grief.
04:26This provided a natural segue to Sinners, Coogler's love letter to his family, the blues and genre filmmaking.
04:32Although his uncle and grandmother were from Mississippi, much of Coogler's family left the South during the Great Migration.
04:51Many African-Americans understandably moved to avoid suffering and pursue better lives.
04:57African-American history will forever be rooted in the South, however.
05:00Mississippi, for example, gave us the Delta Blues.
05:03I didn't notice going into making this movie, but I found that, you know, there's a legitimate argument to be made that Delta Blues music is America's most important contribution to global popular culture.
05:15Through Sinners, Coogler sought to learn more about a piece of his family's history that had been left behind.
05:20He traveled to Mississippi with composer Ludwig Gornsson, who brought his father along for the ride.
05:25The trip was eye-opening for all of them.
05:28Coogler walked away feeling closer to his family, no longer separated by time or age.
05:33It was as if the blues had conjured his uncle's spirit.
05:36This is reflected in the film's most talked about sequence.
05:39This gift can bring fame and fortune.
05:43Well, somebody take me in your eyes.
05:50But it also can pierce the veil between life and death.
05:55Where Miles, Kate and Sammy summons musical spirits across space and time.
05:59In what Coogler describes as the surreal montage, black artists ranging from jazz to rap to funk to traditional West African music are unified in perfect harmony.
06:10Through this transcendent one-er, masterfully shot by Autumn Durald Archipaugh, we see the past, present and future of music under the juke joint's burning roof.
06:19Now, we is one people.
06:21And we shouldn't go in barging into other folks' places uninvited.
06:25So...
06:26We've been in and out of here all day.
06:31Ain't never need an invite then.
06:34Yeah, something ain't adding up.
06:37Of course, this also serves as a siren to Jack O'Connell's Remick, an Irish vampire who seeks to drain the power of Sammy's music for himself.
06:45Oh, we heard tale of a party.
06:48One can draw parallels to cultural appropriation, mirroring how numerous white artists have adopted the music of the African diaspora, in turn erasing its origins.
06:59Although Remick wants his stories, he also sees Sammy's powers as a way to reconnect with his own people.
07:04Remick may be evil, but Coogler is a big fan of Irish folk music, which he effectively works into the plot through the vampires.
07:12I'm sad as all, but I don't need no saving.
07:14Yes.
07:16Yes, you do.
07:19You all do.
07:20Sinners thus avoids turning one community into the villain.
07:24Rather, the true enemy here is conformity.
07:26Be it a horde of vampires sharing a hive mind, or a hate group like the Ku Klux Klan.
07:32Our heroes aren't just fighting for self-preservation, but the survival of their community and individual identities.
07:38Come on, open the door, let me on out of here.
07:41Stay.
07:42Is you?
07:43Close me, open the door.
07:46That ain't your brother.
07:49With a title like Sinners, religious allegories are also prevalent.
07:53After Sammy survives the hellish night, his preacher father asks him to renounce his godless music.
07:59Sammy can't, seeing organized religion as another shade of conformity.
08:03That doesn't mean the film is anti-religion.
08:06Christian symbols like holy water and crosses are often used to fend off movie vampires.
08:10In Sinners, the heroes fight off the vampires through hoodoo, which Wunmi Misaku's Annie practices.
08:16Michael B. Jordan's Smoke is skeptical about the occult.
08:19As he takes his dying breath though, it's suggested that Smoke will join Annie and their child in the afterlife.
08:25Meanwhile, Smoke's brother Stack and Hailee Steinfeld's Mary will continue to walk the earth as vampires, forever between life and death.
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08:49By the end, Sammy is the only major character who isn't either dead or undead.
08:54Yet his music will make him immortal even after he passes.
08:58Sammy's guitar becomes his cross.
09:00It's something he must bear, but it can also be used as an instrument of inspiration.
09:05Kugler put much of his own family into the film's characters.
09:08Stack and Smoke, for example, contain traces of his Uncle Rod and Uncle Mark.
09:13Sammy, however, may be based on blues legend Robert Leroy Johnson.
09:17There's an old fable that Johnson met the devil at a crossroads.
09:20As the devil tunes his guitar, Johnson trades his soul to become a master of the blues.
09:26This man was a nobody, and then he disappears.
09:29A year and a half later, he's doing things with the guitar that even his mentors can't do.
09:38Where Johnson makes a deal with the devil, Sammy forges his own path.
09:42Hollywood should do the same, not only taking more chances on original concepts,
09:46but ones that are personal to the filmmakers.
09:49That's not to say every auteur-driven film can perform as well as Sinners.
09:53If the reception to Kugler's film demonstrates anything, though,
09:56it's that audiences are thirsty for a fresh sound.
09:59Sinners combines the new and old to create something that'll still be talked about generations from now.
10:05Just as Sammy's music awakens musical voices across history,
10:09Sinners took us back to a time when the industry wasn't so hesitant towards non-IP pitches.
10:14It also provided a glimpse of what cinema can be if only more artists like Kugler
10:19were given the opportunity to tell their stories.
10:21You keep dancing with the devil.
10:23One day he's gonna follow you home.
10:39What did you think of Sinners? Let us know in the comments.
10:46Y'all ready to drink? Y'all ready to sweat until y'all stink?
10:51You want some?
10:53About eight seconds?
10:58I DON'T KNOW ANY OFTEN
11:00I DON'T KNOW ANY TIME
11:02I DON'T N άλλONE
11:03I THOUGHT
11:04YOU ARE
11:04I DON'T KNOW ANY OFTEN
11:05I'm still on the part
11:19OF THEết
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