There Will Be Blood

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"What's this? Why don't I own this? Why don't I own this?"

A controversial but critically acclaimed 2007 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Written, directed, and co-produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood was nominated for seven other Academy Awards including Best Picture. It also won Best Cinematography for Robert Elswit. Loosely based on the first half of the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair.

The story takes place in the late 19th century and early 20th, during the Southern California oil boom. It centers on Daniel Plainview, an oilman who travels the state buying people's land to drill. He is accompanied by his young adopted son and "business partner", H.W. One day he gets a tip from a young man named Paul about undiscovered oil fields on his family's land in Little Boston. As he buys up land in the town and starts drilling, tension builds between Daniel and Paul's twin brother Eli, a young charismatic evangelist who runs the local Church of the Third Revelation.

Despite much difficulty during the drilling, including H.W.'s injury and resulting deafness; Daniel's humiliating baptism at the hands of Eli; and the long process of building an oil pipeline to avoid shipping costs (which is more dramatic -- and traumatic -- than it sounds), Daniel pulls it off and makes a fortune. But by the end of the movie, it is clear that his morality has completely eroded, and has been dissolving throughout the film.

It is a complex and even confusing movie. Many left the theater asking themselves, "What was that about?" Unlike most Hollywood films, it eschews conventional plotting in order to focus almost entirely on exploring a character. One might say that in this case, the character is the plot.

Which is not to suggest that not much happens. Plenty happens. And there is blood. But very, very little.[1]

Tropes used in There Will Be Blood include:
  • Abusive Parents: Daniel and the Sunday father.
  • The Alcoholic: Daniel.
  • Ambiguously Gay: The effeminate Eli Sunday, who at the end praises Bandy's grandson's physical beauty, then breaks down crying about having sinned in ways he'd never thought existed. He may just have been crying about having lost all his money in bad investments.
  • Anti-Hero: Daniel is a Type V
  • Arc Words: Played with; Daniel Plainview's name as an interrogative apostrophe serves the role of Arc Words, but the characters use different variations rather than always the same form ("Mister Plainview?", "Daniel Plainview?", "Daniel?", "Mister Daniel?"…).
  • Bad Boss / Benevolent Boss: Played with when it comes to Daniel's relationship with the oil workers. We never really see him interact with them any different than any boss ordering his workers. When two workers die in separate accidents, he stops production long enough for the others to get the body out, but that can be attributed to him trying to continue work as quickly as possible. Judging by the numerous workers at his disposal and his mention that they bring their families along; they seem to have some kind of respect for him. He in turn trusts one of his Workers to watch the injured H.W. while he helps trying to reduce damage control on the exploding Well. Played straight with the latter as he gave Paul Sunday $10 000, as a reward for letting him know about the oil in his town. Not even seemingly bothered by the small company Paul started with that money.
  • Badass Moustache: Daniel's got one.
  • Berserk Button: Don't ever tell Daniel how to run his family. Ever.

"One night I'm going to come to you, inside of your house, wherever you're sleeping, and I'm going to cut your throat."

  • Best Served Cold: Daniel's revenge on Eli. Eli has antagonized Daniel since he arrived in Little Boston. He's tried to barter Daniel for more money for the Sunday Ranch. (Daniel wanted to pay $5000 and Eli wanted $10 000) When the first derrick explodes costing H.W. his hearing, Eli chooses that time to demand the money Daniel owes and smugly claims that had Daniel let him bless the well it wouldn't have blown. This earned him slaps in the face, kicks in the ass and him dragged into the mud. Eli gets even with him by humiliating him during his Baptism. Slapping him and forcing him to confess that he abandoned H.W. 16 years later, when Daniel completes his goal of buying a mansion and cutting himself off from the rest of the country, Eli shows up. Offering him a deal for him to buy land from Bandy, land that was previously held from Daniel prior. Daniel seems interested at first, but accepts under one condition. That Eli admits he's a false prophet and that God is a superstition. When Eli does so, Daniel smugly reveals that while he couldn't get Bandy's land he bought the land surrounding it, strategically placing derricks and rigging them. That way not only would he get the oil on said land, but through drainage be able to drain the oil out from under Bandy's land with no legal repercussion. Also telling him that his brother Paul made him aware of the land and aware of Eli's manipulative tendencies before he arrived. When Eli keeps insisting, Daniel throws him across the bowling alley, chucking balls at him and later finishing him off with a wooden bowling pin.
  • Black and Gray Morality: There aren't many sympathetic characters in this movie. H.W. and Mary Sunday are probably the only ones.
  • Black Comedy: Though perhaps not a comedy itself, the film is filled with darkly comic moments and scenes that are simultaneously absurd and horrifying.
  • The Caligula: Daniel.
  • The Chessmaster: Daniel.
  • Conversation Casualty: Daniel Plainview wakes up the man who claims to be his brother, and forces him at gunpoint to say who he really is. During the man's confession, Daniel puts away the gun. When the man is done explaining himself, however, Daniel unexpectedly draws the gun again and kills him.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Daniel Plainview, of course.
  • Day of the Week Name: The Sundays.
  • Dead Person Impersonation: Daniel's half-brother, Henry, who shows up all of a sudden later turns out to be an impostor. He knew Daniel's real half-brother, who died of tuberculosis, and took his identity so he could get work with Daniel.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: When Mr. Plainview buys the Sunday Family land, the women are dismissed from talking business. Surprisingly, Mr. Plainview is actually less dissonant than the rest of the community.
  • Devil in Plain Sight: Daniel is the devil in plain view.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: H.W. and Mary, presumably, and they're the only characters that deserve it.
  • Enthusiasm Versus Stoicism
  • Evil Versus Evil:
    • In the left corner we have an initially indifferent to life, determined miner who just wants to earn a living. In span of two hours he cheats folks in California to basically work for him like oxes and give him oil to sell, personally kills a few people (they had it coming, though), abandons his son because he failed him, takes pleasure from dominating everybody and generally perceives the world as much more evil than he is.
    • In the right corner, we have a cowardly, hypocritical preacher who bullies his father, manipulates members of his church and is implied to be a sodomite. Also, he ultimately sells his soul to Daniel in the end, complete with a swift one-way ticket to Hell.
    • Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.
  • The Film of the Book: Anderson adapted only the opening chapters of Sinclair's novel. The book Oil! actually is about the life of H.W.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Daniel Plainview starts out as a dirtied gold-seeker just trying to find some rare minerals without blowing himself up with his own TNT. By the end of the story he has stepped on anyone he has needed to in order to advance his own goals, exploited just about everyone with a speaking role, and killed anyone who dared to complain.
  • Gorn: The movie isn't full of it, nor is it the focus of the movie, but there are quite a few oil drilling and mining accidents that occur, and the film does not shy away at all from them. It doesn't focus on them either, which makes them even more disturbingly realistic, as if they were actually happening in front of you. Daniel's murder of Eli is pretty bloody as well. But, what else to expect from a film called "There Will Be Blood?"
  • Ham-to-Ham Combat: Pretty much any exchange between Daniel and Eli.
  • I Have No Son: Daniel, who adopted H.W. after his father died during the beginning scenes, disowns him in the second-to-last scene, dropping this bombshell on him in the process.
  • Jerkass:
    • Daniel. The only reason people even talk to him is strictly business oriented, and even then no one really looks forward to it. The possible exceptions are H.W and Henry, the impostor half-brother of Daniel.
    • Eli isn't much better.
  • Large Ham:
  • Leave the Camera Running: There are a lot of long, uninterrupted shots in the film, especially during the opening sequence.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Both Daniel & Eli.
  • Meaningful Name: Daniel Plainview. Just in case you don't quite get it, it's referring to the saying "Devil in plain view."
    • Not to mention Eli Sunday (a Shout-Out to real-life preacher Billy Sunday).
    • Also Paul.
    • H.W. is never given a full name, because Daniel never sees him as a complete person.
    • The entire Sunday family.
      • Sunday is a religiously-significant day of the week in Christianity, and the Sunday family also happen to be the most religious family in Little Boston.
      • Paul Sunday is named after Paul the Apostle. The biblical Paul received a revelation of Jesus and then spread the gospel. Similarly, Paul Sunday receives oil money from Plainview and then uses that to spread out into new oil fields. Also, Paul the Apostle claimed a distinct separation from the church in Jerusalem, just as Paul Sunday is separate from the rest of his family.
      • Eli Sunday is named after Eli, which is both the Hebrew name of God as well as a Biblical Israeli judge. There is irony in the divine interpretation of the name, because although Eli Sunday starts his own church to preach his own gospel (as if he were God) he is shown to be instead incredibly immoral and powerless, unable to heal H.W. and easily physically subdued. The Biblical judge Eli dies suddenly after learning that his power has suddenly been stripped from him, a close parallel to Eli Sunday's powerless desperation after the Great Depression.
      • Abel Sunday is named after Abel, a son of Adam and Eve who was murdered by his brother Cain. Both Abels are shepherds. Abel is regarded as the first victim of evil in the Bible, and the cinematic Abel is the first one to sell his land to Plainview.
      • Mary Sunday is a reference to the Virgin Mary.
  • Mind Rape: Daniel lays a truly savage one on Eli in the climax, reducing the man to tears. For bonus points, we only have Daniel's word on Paul's success and the drainage of Eli's land, but his delivery is strong enough that the victim doesn't question it. and then he bashes Eli's brains out with an old-timey wood bowling pin.
    • While he could be telling the truth, he did lie to Eli to twist him up with brother/jealousy issues. He said he gave Paul $10,000 dollars for the information, when really he only gave him $500. Eli has spent much of the film trying to get paid $5000 for selling his land, while Daniel has made a disgustingly large fortune off of it.
  • Misanthrope Supreme: Daniel does not like people.
  • Mister Danger: Daniel again.
  • Mood Dissonance: For some people, the final scene (yes, the milkshake one) goes from hilarious to utterly horrifying when Daniel murders Eli. Yes, the narm actually makes the film better.
  • Morality Chain: It doesn't stop him from murdering his fake brother Henry, but his relationship with H.W. seems to be the only tenuous link keeping Daniel attached to the rest of the human race.
    • And before he found out that he was a fake, Henry, too; as he mentioned that the man's arrival gave him "a second breath of life."
  • Mugging the Monster: The baptism scene. One can argue that Eli knew damn well what he was doing, especially considering how he emphasizes the child abandonment, but slapping and humiliating a man like that in front of god and company was not the wisest decision Eli Sunday ever made.
  • Nice Hat: Daniel's got one.
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: Guess who??
  • Older Than They Look: Despite the 16 year Time Skip, no makeup is used to make Paul Dano look any older in the final scene, for... some reason.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Real life deaf actor Russell Harvard delivers a short but impressive performance as adult HW.
  • Only Sane Man: Plainview, who's overflowing with murderous, psychotic contempt for his fellow man. Gets played for actual dramedy/existentialist comedy in the baptism scene.
    • And subverted when, in the end, Plainview winds up anything but sane.
  • Oscar Bait
  • Parallel Porn Titles: There exists one called There Will Be Cum.
  • Parody: There will be Bud, a Youtube trailer for a film about a man's rise to power among the hippies of Southern California.

Darth Plainview: I've broken you and I've beaten you. You are not my son. (Luke: No...)
Darth Plainview: It's true. You're not my son. You're an-- ORPHAN from a basket in the middle of the desert.
Luke: That's not true! That's impossible! NOOOO!
Darth Plainview: Stop crying, you snivelling ass. Stop your nonsense. Whoo-hoo... Look at me! You're lower than a bastard. You're nothing but an... afterbirth that crawled out on its mother's filth. (grasps fist)

  • Pet the Dog: The film is peppered with these moments, but Daniel's motives are ambiguous, the film often offering darker explanations.
    • Daniel is kind to the youngest Sunday daughter and ensures that she is no longer beaten by her father for not praying. However, even this act of kindness could be a tainted act for Daniel. While asking the girl if her father still hits her, Daniel's glance at said father suggests a motive of dominance.
    • One of the main points of the movie is just how much H.W. is or is not a Pet the Dog / Morality Pet for Plainview. In their final confrontation Plainview tells H.W. that he was exactly this: Daniel adopted H.W. because he believed posing as a family man would help him talk people into selling their oil rights to him. Yet the movie seems to suggest that Daniel did in fact love his son as much as he could love anything. Note the embrace when H.W. comes back from school, or Daniel's rage when his parenting skills are questioned, or Daniel's anguished "I abandoned my boy" when Eli makes him confess in front of the congregation. Most poignant is the quick flashback at the end, after Daniel has disowned H.W., when we see affectionate moments between father and son, followed by Daniel drinking heavily.
  • Pop Star Composer: Jonny Greenwood composed the score, but also used classical cues and some of his own previous score from the documentary Bodysong.
  • Psycho Strings: That's pretty much the whole soundtrack.
  • Put on a Bus: Daniel abandons his son on a train to a boarding school, and he doesn't appear again until the last few scenes.
  • Pyrrhic Villainy: Daniel, though unbelievably rich, gave up what morals he had, disowned his son, lives in isolation, is hated by most everyone, and kills a few people in the timeline of the movie.
    • Being completely alone was actually what he wanted all along, it might sound sick but this is more a case of Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The milkshake speech is this, combined with some general Evil Gloating.
    • "You're just the afterbirth that slithered out of your mother's filth! They should have put you in a glass jar on the mantlepiece. Stop crying you sniveling ass! Stop your nonsense!"
  • Scenery Porn: There's a reason it won an Oscar for cinematography.
  • Screams Like a Little Girl: Eli.
  • Shown Their Work: As it turns out, the milkshake-drinking-as-oilfield-drainage metaphor is actually paraphrased from the 1924 testimony of Sen. Albert Fall, who was convicted of bribery for selling off oil-drilling rights in what became known as the Teapot Dome scandal. One of them men who bribed him was Edward Doheny, the real-life inspiration for both Plainview and his fictional precursor in Oil!, James Arnold Ross.
  • Sinister Minister: Eli Sunday is obsessed with his church, and is probably just as power-hungry as Daniel. The weird part is that, even though Eli is greedy, very unforgiving, a mooch, extremely over-the-top, and clearly a wackjob, his church has many followers and grows throughout the film.
  • Sissy Villain: Eli Sunday.
  • Smug Snake: Eli Sunday is a great example of this trope. He can be charming and charismatic but when faced with a bigger bully than himself he breaks down screaming and crying. He has no trouble beating up his dad but when Daniel drags him through a pool of mud he barely tries to defend himself.
  • Society Is to Blame: Arguably one of the major points of the movie, although there is some question as to whether this is A man with questionable morals being forced down the path to becoming a Complete Monster by his peers, who never seem to prove him wrong in his belief that all humans are horrible people that should be shunned or profited from, or whether he was a Complete Monster to begin with, and society is to blame because it allows him to prosper so much.
  • The Sociopath: As has been mentioned, the film is less about the events that happen, and more about the character of Daniel Plainview, and realizing that this is what he is. At first, Daniel seems to simply not like social interactions because many of the people he deals with are quite petty, but in a discussion with his fake brother, he has this rather revealing conversation with him:

Daniel: "Are you an angry man, Henry?"
Henry: "About what?"
Daniel: "Are you envious? Do you get envious?"
Henry: "I don't think so. No."
Daniel: "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people."
Henry: "That part of me is gone... working and not succeeding- all my failures has left me... I just don't... care."
Daniel: "Well, if it's in me, it's in you. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone."

  • Sociopathic Hero: Daniel.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: In the end, the movie lives up to its title. Civilized men return to their animal selves, brutality reigns, blood is had and (one can assume) brains, bone and connective tissue is had right along with it--blackout to credits with a rollicking performance of a Brahms Violin Concerto so you can dance your way out of the theater.
    • Done earlier in the film for the opposite effect - seemingly mundane scenes are accompanied by a relentlessly foreboding soundtrack.
  • Steel Ear Drums: Tragically averted with H.W.
  • Stepford Smiler: Daniel Plainview spends much of the movie in his public persona, trying to charm people into selling him the right to drill for oil on their land. He even goes so far as to pass off the son of a deceased oil worker as his own.
  • Stupid Statement Dance Mix: Type "There Will Be Blood" in the YouTube search box, it is guaranteed at least half of the results are "I drink your milkshake!" videos.
  • This Is Sparta: "I! DRINK! YOUR! MILKSHAKE!"
  • Time Skip: The last half-hour jumps to 1927.
  • Tragic Mistake
  • Villainous Breakdown: The second half of the movie is essentially a very long breakdown for Daniel, as he becomes more and more unstable as time goes on. He has a few moments which definitely count by themselves, though, in particular, him slapping the hell out of Eli because Eli couldn't cure H.W. of his deafness, his telling H.W. that he's not his son, and finally, his "The Reason You Suck" Speech given to Eli at the end of the film, culminating in him brutally murdering Eli.
  • Villain Protagonist: Plainview.
  • Zig-Zagging Trope: Good vs. Evil... which is which?

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  1. ↑ #31
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