The nominees for the 2026 Oscars were unveiled last week, and to no one’s surprise, Sinners earned many nominations. Well, that’s not fair; it seemed a given the latest Ryan Coogler flick would get recognized in a few categories. The real shock was its 16 nominations—which include Best Picture, acting for Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, and Delroy Lindo, and Costume Design for Ruth E. Carter—wound up a record-breaking moment in its own right, making it the most-nominated film in Academy history.
Even if Sinners got shut out of the awards conversation, though, it wouldn’t have taken away from how much of a phenomenon it felt like throughout 2025 and quickly cemented itself as one of the year’s biggest films. The moment it was announced as an original project involving Jordan and vampires, studios were chomping at the bit for it; you knew it had to be something good, and every time we saw a hint of it, it looked like something good. With five movies in 12 years, Coogler’s built himself up as a director worth paying attention to: he has a pretty good track record, his films have made money and been well regarded with critics and audiences, and they stay in the conversation well after release.
Not many directors these days have that kind of juice (or have been able to maintain it), let alone ones whose filmography mostly covers biopics and established IP, since it can be considered contract work or “selling out.” But Creed and Black Panther proved to be beneficial for everyone: studios got to tout a hot new talent that offered them legitimacy beyond the box office, audiences got to understand what makes a Ryan Coogler movie, and most importantly, he’s gotten to hone his craft with a solid safety net. It’d be hard to label either Black Panther as the worst things Marvel’s ever made (the even-numbered Thor films and at least one Deadpool movie still exist), and he’s clearly someone who isn’t looking to rest on his laurels. Coogler might not make his movies like they’ll be the last one he’ll ever get to do, but he sure makes them like he’s glad he gets to make them.
By the time Sinners came around, his voice and profile had built up enough to make you intrigued as to what he could cook up on his own without a force like Sylvester Stallone or Kevin Feige looking over his back. Even if you don’t connect the dots between his own life and Sammie at risk of being absorbed by a greater apparatus of white people looking to exploit him, the film is certainly informed by his previous movies on a thematic or visual level. (The Talokans’ debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a mini-horror movie all its own, with its hypnotic siren song feeling like a test run for what was to come.) If the mark of a good movie is that it leaves you with something to talk about, then Coogler movies leave a tangible cultural impact well before any digital ink about them has been spilled. No one can accuse his work of being “industry plants”; people just really like his work, and it resonates with them, either through a general Black lens or their own individual ones.
And that’s really the main thing about Ryan Coogler: he just comes off as a regular dude, which seems to endear him to all types of people. For cinephiles, the arc of his career has operated as real-time validation for parasocial investment; at 39 years old, he’s an outlier from MCU contemporaries like James Gunn or Taika Waititi in that he’s gotten to “grow up” behind the camera for everyone to see rather than coming in with a sizable body of work under his belt. Part of the reason people reacted as they did to legacy outlets’ fretting about Sinners’ early box office was because it felt like they’d suddenly picked on a (metaphorical) kid who’d by that point hadn’t done anything to truly warrant it, whose big crime was… getting to own the movie he made in 2050, well past its sell-by date, and whose ownership he wanted because it was inspired by his late uncle and grandfather.
However parasocial one wishes to be, there is no denying that people are gradually reckoning with the fact that the older generation of filmmakers we’ve grown up with aren’t going to be around in the years to come. So they want a new crop of directors, writers, and actors to be excited by, a position they think Coogler is able to fill alongside the likes of James Gunn, Celine Song, and whoever else. Intentionally or not, these three have made themselves personable via interviews. Song is such a fan of Zootopia, she saw it 10 times, which practically makes her a Disney adult. Gunn uses his online presence to dispel rumors and put readers onto the comics that inform DC films.
In Coogler’s case, his magic trick is just feeling like a guy you know that just knows things: whether you watch him sketch out a fight scene or talk aspect ratios, his words embed in your mind as he talks your ear off, in part because of his thick, distinct accent. We may have to wait until March to see how Sinners fares at the Oscars, but things seem to speak for themselves: the people like Ryan Coogler, and they’ll ride for him until he gives them a reason not to.
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