Sinners never needed the Oscars to be great

Heading into the Oscars on Sunday night, the buzz surrounding Sinners and director Ryan Coogler was that they could be Hollywood’s biggest surprise. In the same way that the movie surpassed box office expectations (it’s made more than $369 million worldwide to date), it could perhaps defy the odds and take home the night’s biggest awards. 

The Gothic vampire Western ended up winning four Oscars. Coogler scored his first win for Best Original Screenplay, as did star Michael B. Jordan (for acting). Autumn Cheyenne Durald Arkapaw also made history —she’s the first woman to win the Academy Award for cinematography. And composer Ludwig Göransson was also honored for the movie’s score.

What Sinners wasn’t able to do was beat One Battle After Another and director Paul Thomas Anderson in the Best Picture and Best Directing categories. That would’ve been considered a monumental upset. But why? In what world would the most-nominated movie in history be considered an underdog? 

Why was Sinners ever considered an underdog?

In all, Sinners nabbed 16 Oscar nominations, setting a record for the most of all time. This included most of the major awards: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku), and Best Directing. 

While it was Coogler’s first nomination in the directing category, it’s not as if this level of acclaim was entirely new territory. Coogler helmed 2019 Best Picture nominee Black Panther, and was nominated as a producer in 2021 for Judas and the Black Messiah. He also directed Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which got Angela Bassett a nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 2023. 

That isn’t an underdog’s résumé. 

The likely reason Cooger and Sinners have been painted as crashers at the very party they’ve nabbed a historic number of invites to, is because the Academy is an institution that generally hasn’t rewarded Black art or artists. In the award show’s 98-year history, a Black person has never won the directing category; only six Black actors have ever won Best Actor (and that number includes Michael B. Jordan); and Halle Berry remains the only Black woman to be awarded Best Actress (in 2002). 

The “surprise” narrative was also predicated on the idea that Academy members wouldn’t be able to see the artistry in a vampire movie (but Interview With a Vampire got two nominations in 1995), or treat horror as valid as any other cinematic genre to explore enduring American issues like racial identity, cultural expression, and the relationship between class and freedom. 

It’s true that Sinners didn’t sweep and that many of these old biases were likely still at play. At the same time, the acknowledgment of Sinners’s potential for an “upset”  and its mountain of nominations seem to demonstrate that many Academy voters have a more expansive view of art than their predecessors.

Sinners didn’t need a Best Picture win

There’s an understandable tendency to treat the Oscars a symbol of something bigger — as representative of something more than just the industry’s best work in a given year. Depending on who wins, the awards show can become a symbol of progressive triumph or a reversion to the norm or somewhere in between. And because of the Academy’s history, wins by people of color are largely seen as progress. 

Had Sinners won Best Picture, there probably would have been conversations about what this means for the Academy and whether the institution that has been historically bad at pinpointing Black talent is finally ready to turn a new leaf. Those conversations happened in 2014 and 2017, when 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight, respectively, won Best Picture, and analogously with Asian and Asian American representation surrounding Parasite’s win in 2020 and Michelle Yeoh’s and Everything Everywhere All at Once’s domination in 2023. 

As beautiful (and true!) as the idea that art can change minds is, the notion that a Best Picture win could resolve structural discrimination is a little too tidy, too reductive. We wouldn’t be celebrating all these Oscar milestones and continually having all these conversations about representation if simply awarding the right movie and right people could really effect lasting change. That’s not to say that representation has no effect. But asking the same questions about it year after year after year feels a little more hollow each time. It’s especially tough in a moment when the political reality in the United States — bloody violence against its own citizens and animosity toward minorities and immigrants, and the purging of diversity and equity initiatives — is so grim. 

Ultimately, proving that the Oscars are more open-minded also isn’t Sinners or Coogler’s responsibility. 

No doubt, taking home the biggest prize in cinema would be an honor. There’s also undeniable accomplishment in the four awards it did score, and the historic number of nominations it received.

But there’s also relief in letting Sinners stand on its own terms and existing outside of the Oscars. Though Academy voters clearly thought it was worthy, it doesn’t need more awards to be great. A fantastic movie like Sinners can simply be something we can love and share without the burden of awards show validation or the weight of expectations about What It All Means. Sinners isn’t an underdog or a referendum; it’s a really good movie that was beloved by audiences — a powerful, beautiful, and special thing to be.