Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is one of the best films of the 21st century; most celebrated for its Oscar-winning cinematography and Daniel Day-Lewis drinking our milkshakes. With such striking visuals and virtuoso performance at its core, it’s easy to overlook the screenplay. As a screenwriter I’m biased, but I’m here to argue that what was on the screen was a masterpiece in large part due to what was on the page.

I want to share 8 things that PT Anderson, who wrote and directed the movie, did with the screenplay that made the movie so great. If you’re just a fan of movies, this may help give you a deeper understanding of how they’re constructed, but if you’re a screenwriter you can use some of these lessons in your own scripts.

LESSON 1: Conflict and Gravity

It’s not a brilliant insight to say that characters should oppose each other, that’s Drama 101. The protagonist is opposed by the antagonist, creating conflict, which creates drama. But characters in conflict don’t necessarily stay in conflict. The characters can repel each other like magnets that are the same pole. And if they are separated, they cease to be in conflict and you lose the drama.

The task of the writer is to keep them in conflict throughout the story. There are a couple of methods for this. For one, you can give the protagonist and antagonist a common goal, but only one of them can get it, like co-workers fighting over a promotion.Another approach is to make the antagonist invested in what happens with the protagonist and believe they shouldn’t achieve their goal, much like concerned parents who are keeping their teenage kid from going to a party.

But in There Will Be Blood Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday want different things and want nothing to do with each other. So how do you keep them in conflict?You build your story in such a way that they are forced to come into contact with each other time and time again because each has something the other needs. Eli controls access to land for oil and a pipeline, which Daniel wants, and Daniel controls access to money, which Eli wants.

This creates an unstable equilibrium where power swings back and forth and the conflict keeps renewing with added layers of resentment. This work in the story is what gives so much potential energy to the performances, and it’s a reminder of how everything comes back to the script.

LESSON 2: Dialogue is a tool (and a weapon)

There is no dialogue for the first 14 minutes of the movie, so when Daniel finally talks, his words are given extra weight by the silence that precedes them. We understand that this is a man who only speaks when he needs to, the same way he’d only pick up a wrench when he needed to use a wrench. Like a wrench, dialogue is a tool that characters use to accomplish a task. Often that task is getting something that they want.

In his opening monologue, Daniel wants to get a room full of people to sell him their oil rights, and he’s using his words to accomplish this task. He’s basically a salesman selling himself to the audience. Not all characters are salesman, but they all want something, and writers should use their dialogue as a tool to get it.

What’s important is that the dialogue is a tool for the character to achieve their goal, not for the writer to tell the audience some new piece of information. That’s what so often leads to bad exposition.

Of course sometimes, what a character wants is to hurt someone, and that’s when dialogue acts as a weapon. Daniel uses his words as a weapon throughout the movie, most notably to hurt his son when they have their falling out, and in the famous ending scene where he ends up bludgeoning Eli Sunday with more than words.

I should add that just because dialogue is used with purpose, it doesn’t mean it can't be fun or casual. Characters can sit around and joke or talk about nothing, but even that speaks to a need the character has.

LESSON 3: The Power of Lies

If characters are using dialogue to get what they want, they may lie and manipulate to further their ends. And in There Will Be Blood Daniel Plainview frequently lies. While I would not advocate for dishonesty in real life, in a script lies can be fantastic. Lies tell us that the character cares more about the thing they’re lying for than about truth or even the person they’re lying to.

Daniel lies frequently and easily because he doesn’t like or respect other people, therefore he doesn’t feel they deserve the truth. All that matters is him getting what he wants. Lies are also fantastic because they get characters into trouble. Whenever you lie it creates a risk of getting caught, and that can add drama to a story.

LESSON 4: The Power of Honesty

Since Daniel lies so much, it makes his rare forays into honesty all the more powerful. In one memorable exchange, he opens up to the man claiming to be his half-brother and shares his honest thoughts.

What Daniel says isn’t surprising. It aligns with what we’ve seen from him so far, but a moment of honesty can be great at confirming or crystalizing all the other character work revealed through subtext or action up to that point. Of course, this requires the writer to have done the work earlier to build the case that is now being solidified. If you have the honesty without building the case, the honesty won’t have much of an effect.

LESSON 5: An Outside Complication

In storytelling most of the complications come from within the story. They are either a result of the characters’ own actions, or from some other character or thing in the story. They don’t generally appear from out of nowhere. Except sometimes things do seem to come out of nowhere. When Henry shows up claiming to be Daniel’s half-brother, it seems like it comes out of the blue. But we buy it for a couple of reasons.

First, it makes sense. As Daniel becomes more successful, it is logical that people would come out of the woodwork. Another reason we buy it is that Henry’s sudden appearance is not helpful. When things come out of nowhere that are helpful we call it a deus ex machina, and to the audience it can feel like cheating.

Henry’s appearance at first appears to be helpful. We see Daniel open up and enjoy himself for the first time. But it turns into a complication after Daniel finds out Henry is an impostor and murders him, which leads to Daniel getting blackmailed and baptized.

The lesson here is that you can give your story a complication from the outside world to add fresh energy if that complication is one the audience will buy.

You’ll often see complications or reveals or reversals at the midpoint of movies. For more on midpoints, check out my analysis of the midpoint in Parasite.

LESSON 6: Change or Amplify?

There is an enduring philosophical debate over whether people can truly change, and it’s not something I’m going to be able to resolve in this video. But one thing every screenwriter needs to decide is how much their protagonist will change over the course of a story.

In There Will Be Blood Daniel Plainview certainly changes. He’s not murdering people at the start, for one. But I totally would buy it if he did murder someone at the start. He had that potential all along. And one way of thinking about how your characters change is to think of them amplifying some preexisting aspect of themselves. This aspect could be a positive attribute like bravery, or it could be something negative. The approach here is to show flashes of this attribute at the beginning and let it grow as the story progresses.

LESSON 7: Surprise the Character

Audiences love to be surprised, but those moments are much more potent when the character is surprised as well. Early in the movie Daniel meets Paul Sunday, played by Paul Dano, and then later in the movie meets Eli Sunday…. also played by Paul Dano. This reveal of an identical twin is surprising and a great sight gag. Daniel is feeling the same thing that the audience is feeling. This lets him act as a stand-in or conduit for the audience. They feel validated and connected to the scene and to Daniel’s character.

LESSON 8: Actions Echo

Speaking of twins, there are moments of twinning throughout the story. You could also think of them as parallels or echoes. For instance, in order to build a pipeline he needs, Daniel is forced to be baptized by Eli. He has to publicly repent and confess his sins. Then at the end of the film, that scene is echoed when Daniel forces Eli to confess he’s a false prophet. Not only are these fantastic character moments, but they pull the different parts of a movie together and give the audience the sense that this was all for a reason.

It feels satisfying in the way that a good meal leaves you satisfied. The audience walks out believing their time was well spent and the movie was worth watching.

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