Ryan Coogler compares Marvel to vampires as he delivers one of the best movies of the year

When Edgar Wright dropped out of directing the first Ant-Man movie for Marvel, pretty much everybody agreed that it was for the best.

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He ended up making the wholly original Baby Driver instead. Ditto for Ava DuVernay, who passed on directing Black Panther for the studio. They went with Ryan Coogler, who delivered a true cultural touchstone; Black Panther became the first superhero movie to earn a Best Picture nod at the Oscars and catapulted Coogler into a club normally restricted to white visionaries such as Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan. But it seems like Coogler always knew that the invite was conditional; while his white counterparts could go on to do whatever they wanted next, as a Black filmmaker with one blockbuster under his belt, he’d have to provide further proof of his capacity to comply — a guarantee, if you will, before he could be allowed to make something as audacious as his fifth feature, Sinners.

Coogler’s first original movie in over a decade, Sinners is many things. But it’s also a reflection on his partnership with Marvel. Making one movie for the studio felt like a necessary stepping stone to get to where he wanted, but returning for a sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, had the unmistakable whiff of contractual compromise. Even with a $250 million budget at his disposal — for context, SS Rajamouli could make four RRRs for this amount — it still felt like Coogler was chained to master who was profiteering off of his culture. His two Marvel movies certainly did a lot for the Black community, but you can’t ignore the fact that they also made a lot of white people a lot of money. The filmmaker literally wrestles with this conflict in Sinners, where the two sides of his personality are represented by the SmokeStack twins, played by Michael B Jordan.