There Will Be Blood/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: Zig-Zagging Trope. Throughout the film, whether or not Daniel possesses any redeeming qualities is constantly being toyed with. He adopts the orphaned child of one of his oil workers, but that could have been purely because the child elicits sympathy in Daniel's business deals. He stops the father of a young girl in the town he lives in from beating her, but this could have been another way to exert his complete control over the town. When his son is deafened, he sends him away to a special school. Was this because he cares about the boy's well being, or because he's outlived his usefulness to Daniel? He kills the man impersonating his brother, but then cries afterward, lamenting that his real brother was long since dead. Does Daniel eventually bring his son back because he genuinely misses the boy, or does the town knowing he sent the boy away make it harder for him to do business? Is Daniel enraged at the end of the film because his son would dare do business against him, or is Daniel enraged/saddened because even his son wants to run away from him? By the very end however, it's clear that Daniel is nothing but a drunken, old sociopath. This is cemented by the Mind Screw he puts Eli through before beating him to death with a bowling pin. Good luck trying to explore this trope any more thoroughly.
    • Frankly, the ending could be interpreted in several ways, too.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: The whole "I drink your milkshake!" lines. Depending on how you saw it, it could either be this or a Narm. Or both.
    • And, to a lesser extent, "Draaaaaaaiiinage!"
    • The entire ending scene in the bowling alley. It's as if the entire film was building up to Daniel murdering Eli by beating the shit out of him. It's incredibly cathartic.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The use of Arvo Pärt's Fratres is good, but it's all about Jonny Greenwood's Convergence, a cacophonous, arrhythmic dirge that plays over the oilwell fire sequence.
    • The third movement of Brahm's "Violin Concerto in D" is used twice in the film. The second time it serves as the music for the credits, which obviously occur right after the ending. The Soundtrack Dissonance alone makes it excellent.
  • Memetic Mutation: The milkshake line again.
  • Moral Event Horizon: There are a number of possible justifications for Daniel's behavior, right up until he starts yelling "Bastard from a basket!" at his freshly disowned, adopted son. Then it all goes downhill.
  • Narm / Narm Charm: Splits the opinions of the milkshake lines even further.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • Henry not dying straight away despite a bullet in the brain is pretty damn disturbing.
    • It's a pretty disturbing film.
    • It's intriguing that most of the nightmare fuel comes from the soundtrack playing over what are mostly pastoral landscapes in West Texas. On multiple viewings, though, the nightmare fuel shifts to being Daniel Plainview himself.
  • Oscar Snub: Paul Dano went surprisingly unlauded.
    • Pitting Dano against Javier Bardem is pretty unfair to both of them, though.