Michael B. Jordan Used A Wardrobe Trick To Distinguish His Approach To His Dual Sinners Roles

Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" is one of the most exciting films of 2025, and one of the rare films to immediately becoming a major subject of conversation and actually sustain that level of broad interest over the course of several months. There are many reasons the movie is acclaimed: Coogler and his collaborators told a relevant, powerful story set in a milieu we don't often see, the film has a lot on its mind but also works as an entertaining ride from start to finish, Ludwig Goransson's score is next-level, there are meaty roles for newcomers like Miles Caton and veterans like Delroy Lindo ... and that's before we even mention the vampire component. But while cultural discussions about "the death of the movie star" have been ongoing for years, Michael B. Jordan's dual performances as Elijah "Smoke" and Elias "Stack" Moore, brothers known as the "Smokestack Twins," is one of the best examples of pure movie star magic on screen this year.

Jordan commands the screen as both men, oozing charisma while managing to make these identical twins feel distinct. That's no easy task, and while the personalities of these men and their color-coded costumes help audiences keep track of who's who, Jordan used a secret trick that viewers would never know about to help him inhabit each character as an actor.

"I wore different-size shoes," he told Vanity Fair in a recent interview, revealing that he donned a larger size while playing Smoke because that character "was really grounded and didn't really move around too much." By comparison, Stack "was a little more adventurous and curious [...] He was always moving from one thing to the next — a little lighter on his feet."

Miles Caton's aspiring musician Sammy is the primary protagonist of "Sinners," but Jordan's twin characters are the engine of the movie, and what happens to them over the course of the story leads to some of its most heart-wrenching moments. (I won't spoil it, but if you're reading this and somehow haven't seen "Sinners," please give yourself the gift of watching "Sinners" for the first time.) His performances as Smoke and Stack are an unusual mix of flashy and subtle, and given the whirlwind nature of the narrative and how much there is to chew on thematically, I could imagine a world in which his performance is overlooked by the Academy when Oscar nominations roll around — especially in a year with heavily touted performances from people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet, Wagner Moura, Ethan Hawke, Jesse Plemons, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Lee Byung-hun.

Of course, Oscars history is littered with examples of the Academy getting things wrong (sometimes hilariously so), and winning a gold statue is obviously not some grand determination of a film's greatness. Still, given that the Academy has expanded its voting body in recent years (leading to interesting Best Picture wins like "Moonlight," "Parasite," and "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), maybe Jordan will be recognized after all — and maybe the voters will even acknowledge his spectacular, arguably career-best work with a well-deserved win. "Sinners" has been the movie of 2025 since the moment it came out, and Jordan winning an Oscar would be an incredible way to indicate that the era of the movie star might not be quite as dead as we thought.