Nope
Steven Yeun as Ricky “Jupe” Park in Nope
On the 15th of April 1984, Welsh comedian Tommy Cooper collapsed on stage. The audience thought it was all part of the act. As the crew finally dragged Tommy behind the red curtain, the crowd cheered him off in hysteria, waiting for him to come back and charm them again with his delightful sense of humour.
He didn’t. Tommy was taken to Westminster Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
As of the 13th of August 2022, there is a YouTube video with over 345k views of this incident.
There are far more severe examples of easily accessible tragedy at our fingertips – some extremely recent – that we can view for our shock, or pleasure (or a mixture of both). But there’s, something so eerie, so painfully sad, about a man who bought people joy being cheered on by those oblivious to the fact that he’s dying. Something supposed to bring joy, turned into misery.
Enter Jordan Peele’s Nope.
The Get Out and Us director has taken a Spielbergian stab at Sci-Fi, whilst retaining his adoration of horror and its subsequent genre expectations. In this new feature, we follow siblings Otis Haywood Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer), two horse trainers living on a Californian ranch, as they attempt to profit over the first ‘proper’ proof of a UFO.
Peele has always layered his films meticulously with symbolism, easter eggs, and hidden meaning. He wastes no time in doing the same here with repeated mantras about “spectacle” and animals spoken throughout, as well as biblical undertones. Truly, the core of Nope is a tale about respect and naivety in relation to the impossible, the unexplainable, … the dangerous. Compared liberally by critics to the narrative and thematic structure of Jaws and Jurassic Park, this is a creature-feature with a lot of bite.
Image-making is both a tool here used for efficiency in how *we* feel watching the film, as well as how the characters feel making theirs. As they chase perfection in capturing this inter-galactic event, they risk themselves in a series of scenes that will keep you white-knuckling the cinema seats for an hour - bare minimum. Otis Jr, a quiet yet experience animal trainer, lends a mild sense of courtesy that helps himself, his sister Emerald, and techman Angel approach this task in a more survivalist manner. That does, however, not prevent them from chasing this phenomenon. The entire time, we are begging them to leave – pack their shit up – and leave. Why don’t they? Chasing coins, fame, hustle.
It's not just them though, child-star turned Western-styled theme park owner Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun) is also running his own thing on the side. I’ll let you go in and figure out what that is, but the most interesting aspect of this character is in relation to a horrific (yet necessary) tragedy that occurred whilst he was a child: The Gordy’s Home Incident, a traumatic on-set event that happened when he was a kid. An aside to the main plot that serves as a warning not heeded by Park, a warning about ridiculous luck not being motivation for commercialised wonder. Wonder, that quickly turns into terror.
I want to come back to the Tommy Cooper story I mentioned at the beginning in relation to how Park speaks about The Gordy’s Home Incident being parodied on SNL. The curiosity of the audience exposes them to something they shouldn’t be watching, shouldn’t be laughing about, shouldn’t be looking at. These are all themes gloriously layered from scene-to-scene in Nope. And I was loving all of this. Well … almost all …
The final act of Nope initially disappointed me. Maybe I was expecting more to it, more of a hard-hitting ending akin to the previously mentioned shocks of Get Out and Us. For better or for worse, Peele has created a film that tricks us in more ways than others. You will be entertained, but you might risk burning yourself if you get too close to the flame of more-ness.
However, this is a thinker in its purest form. You go into films like this expecting to be more than meets the eye, and a little bit of thinking will do Nope some much deserved justice in your own perception of this movie. Trust me, I’m already planning when I can see it again.
The ‘fuck around and find out’ film of the year, Nope is a cautionary tale about the images we make and the way we treat others in pursuit of the wow/shock factor. Tension in buckets and genre-thrills galore, this is filmmaking that warns us about the power of the moving image.
