Obviously, there are original movies that clearly follow the same plot points as earlier films, like the “fact” that The Fast and the Furious is street-racing Point Break, or that Avatar is Dances with Wolves in space. While those films are technically original movies with original characters, I agree they adhere firmly to the Die Hard Theorem. No, Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) and Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) have never been characters in previous stories, but you can’t tell me that their names in a previous life weren’t Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) and Bohdi (Patrick Swayze). Let’s run it down… when a young law enforcement officer (O’Conner/Utah) goes undercover to infiltrate a gang of criminal thieves (truck hi-jackers/bank robbers), he enters the world of an extreme sport (street racing/surfing), ultimately drawn into both the culture and the gang leader’s (Dom/Bodhi) charismatic orbit. Due to complicated relationships with both the gang leader and a love interest that is close with said leader (Jordana Brewster as Mia, Dom’s sister/Lori Petty as Tyler, Bodhi’s ex), the young agent eventually allows the gang leader to get away (O’Connor gives Toretto his keys/Utah shoots his gun in the air), allowing them to chase their ultimate high (a 10-second car/the 50-year storm). The order of events may happen differently, and the character personalities may be slightly altered, but when the details of two movies’ plot match up in so many places, it’s hard to call the latter-released film a wholly original one.

There also are genre movies that don’t have the same exact narrative, but the similarities are more than noticeable. Nobody and John Wick are both bad-ass revenge films that have retired assassins being pulled back into their old ways because they couldn’t let being disrespected go without reminding the offenders who the fuck they were messing with. Bad Boys and Rush Hour are both buddy-cop comedies that pair opposing personalities who love one another, get into action-heavy shenanigans that bother their superiors, and eventually foil the criminal enterprises of foreign-born criminal masterminds. And, naturally, there are the actual movies that created the Die Hard Theorem. Speed is Die Hard on a bus, Air Force One is Die Hard on a plane, Under Siege is Die Hard on a battleship, Con Air is Die Hard on a different plane, and so on. All of these are lone (or damn near lone) every-man heroes who battle criminals and terrorists within a confined location. While it’s understandable to question whether these films are wholly original projects due to their adherence to the Theorem, my stance is that they fall in the “influenced by” category of movies that feature original ideas while following the popular tropes that make genre films so entertaining to watch. Tropes are tropes for a reason. Yes, they make films more predictable and cookie-cutter, but they are tried-and-true outlines that audiences want to see because they have proven to make us laugh, scream, or sit up in anticipation of seeing how these new characters are going to attack a well-known scenario.

In the real world, multiple people with completely different personalities work the same kind of jobs and face the same kind of conflicts. I promise you that my wife and I, who are both in the same year of teaching at the same school in similarly unique departments that have a similarly separated student population from general education students, are nowhere NEAR the same kind of teacher. We have unique approaches to the conflicts that arise in our classrooms, and these genre films have similarly unique qualities when going through their seemingly similar missions. The charmingly stoic Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves, again) is not the philosophically aloof Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is not the forcefully grumpy President of the United States James Marshall (Harrison Ford) is definitely not the wise-cracking John McClane (Bruce Willis). There are enough differences between the heroes, villains, set-pieces, side characters, and resolutions of trope-filled genre films that, although they are spiritually connected to other films within the genre, they are still original projects that have a collection of details unique to them.

I say all that to say that I believe movies like Sinners prove that claims stating they are “the most original film since…” are not being hyperbolic. It’s in the details. These unique stories come from very talented people who clearly wear their influences on their sleeve, but those influences don’t flesh out specific plot and character dynamics. From Dusk till Dawn is one of the first films I thought of when I saw Sinners’ trailer, and when I saw the movie for the first time, Dawn’s influence was clear as both films have two brothers with some link to criminality who must fight vampires in a single location during a surprising third act genre flip (assuming you watched the movie blind). Sure, themes of faith and redemption lie in both films, but “brothers” and “surprise vampires” is as far as the similarities go. If you want to present generalizations about the themes and overall ideas these films tackle, of course you can find similarities.

For example, someone presented me with an excerpt from online entertainment blog Just N Life’s in-depth comparison of the two films to assert their points that Sinners is essentially the Southern version of Dawn (full article HERE):

“Faith and redemption are key themes in both films…by comparing Sinners and From Dusk till Dawn, it is clear that both films use supernatural horror to explore the human experience. They highlight both external threats and internal demons… The characters in both films grapple with complex familial ties, moral dilemmas, and the tension between survival and ideological beliefs.” 

That’s just a fraction of the thematic similarities that article points out. Here is the thing, though… I recently watched the entire The Conjuring Universe, and I can apply those same faith and redemption themes to the Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto) in Annabelle: Creation; that same supernaturally charged human experience to the Warrens (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga); and those external threats and internal demons to Annabelle Comes Home and The Nun. In fact, the tensions between survival and ideological beliefs, and the rest of that article’s unmentioned parallels, are up and down the entire franchise. When have you heard Ed & Lorraine Warren being compared to the Smokestack Twins (Michael B. Jordan)? You haven’t, because themes, tones, and big-picture ideas are shared amongst most films in the same genre. You can go down any rabbit hole of universal statements to rightly claim these films are structurally connected, but you must dig into the details to uncover the difference between inspiring similarity and an unoriginal copy-and-paste job. So, let’s do that…

Dawn takes place at the modern-day Texas-Mexico border, with its setting, music, and overall vibe being influenced by southwestern cowboy and Mexican cultures. This setting is perfect for the Gecko Brothers (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) to set forth on their high-stakes escape from the law as they take a family hostage and seek refuge in an unexpectedly not-so-friendly entertainment establishment. Sinners, on the other hand, is a 1930s Southern character piece deeply rooted in blues music culture and the African American experience in a racist society. That experience is why the Twins are not actively escaping the law. They are looking to settle down in their hometown, not run from it. There are no hostages. They aren’t visiting a random entertainment establishment. They are bringing their community together to start their own in order to protect it from their oppressors. Everything about how the sets of brothers get from one genre to the vampire-horror third-act switch is in opposition.

Admittedly, there is one detail that both sets of brothers share: their father was abusive, and one of them had to kill their dad for their mutual survival. It’s one of the few areas where the Dawn influence goes deeper than the surface, but even then, Sinners’ director Ryan Coogler leaves the means of the patricide unknown while Papa Gecko’s death is revealed to be by fire. People want to say that the Geckos and the Twins have similar features, but let’s break down how those claims don’t hold water:

Claim: Both sets of brothers are criminals trying to escape from their past.

Counter: Neither Smoke nor Stack are known to be rapists, and they don’t murder any innocents on screen. They left Chicago to return home after conning the mob. Seth and Richie Gecko, however, are running from the law to avoid capture while committing atrocities on screen.

Claim: Both sets of brothers have one “bad seed” and one “calmer” brother, and the one more prone to evil gets turned into a vampire.

Counter: While the Geckos have that clear demarcation, which one of the Twins is actually more prone to evil? Answer me this… which twin shoots a human in the film? Who threatened to kill their cousin for following their dream? It damn sure wasn’t the boisterous Stack. It was the calm, seemingly more reasonable Smoke who did all the uncaring shit.

I haven’t even mentioned how we get much deeper into the Twins’ familial history, love lives, and community ties than we do the Geckos. It’s those kinds of detailed differences that put Sinners’ brothers and vampire tropes on a whole different level than Dawn’s. Name me a vampire in Dawn with as much character, depth, swagger, and empathetic motivations as Jack O’Connell’s Remmick. Again, you can’t, because Sinners’ director Ryan Coogler took the influence he got from Dawn director Robert Rodriguez and said, “I’m going to elevate the hell out of this.”

I could keep going on how the deep dives into music, ancestry, religion, spirituality, race and so many other things make Sinners so much more than From Dusk till Dawn in the Jim Crow era, but that would turn this article into a proper thesis. Sorry, but I have a word count, so I’ll just leave you with this: Sinners does not fit the Die Hard Theorem in any way, shape, or form. If you think otherwise, you can do two things. One, look up the 1986 Grace Jones film Vamp and accept that From Dusk till Dawn is just Vamp with criminals. Second, I am currently an online movie debate champion in two different online movie trivia leagues and my DMs are open… come at me.