Nope

Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Director: Jordan Peele

Quick Impressions:
Never appear in a TV show with a chimp. That’s what this movie has taught me.

(Just this instant, I suddenly remembered that when I was in third grade, I had a desperate scheme to afford a pet chimpanzee by starring in a TV show with it. Good thing I never got around to doing that! The pilot I wrote didn’t make much sense.)

I love Jordan Peele movies, and I’ve been dying to see this one, but it premiered while we were in Disney World finally taking a family vacation that we began planning in 2019. We were supposed to go in the summer of 2020, which I kept reminding my mom as she begged to stop at Disneyland on the way home from Jeopardy!. (“I’ll probably never go to Disney World again!” she lamented when we had to postpone the vacation the first time because of the pandemic. “We’re just moving it to Christmas,” I sighed, exasperated by her despair. Couldn’t she wait until December? It’s not like she was going anywhere!)

My mother-in-law and brother-in-law were going for the first time ever, so we weren’t postponing again, not when I learned Nope opened that week, not even when my dad spontaneously decided to get married on his birthday the night before we left. Unfortunately we did end up missing the wedding when it got pushed back a day, but at least Dad didn’t miss it (as we feared he might during the surprise emergency room prelude). It’s been a busy summer.

So far, I’ve liked all of Jordan Peele’s movies, so I wasn’t surprised to like this one, too. For one thing (though this isn’t the film’s main point), Nope gives us a fascinating look at the way trauma can come back to consume you without warning (which resonated quite strongly with me). I also like the suggestion that we all fall back on learned behavior, finding comfort in the idea that if we just remember our training and play our assigned parts, everything will be fine. (Note how well this works out for Ricky and Mary Jo.)

Nope is also an interesting look at making movies, a reflection on what it takes to get a movie made. I’m fascinated by the way the protagonists’ goal changes at the end of the last big action sequence. I guess you need a diva-like star to appear in your work to get people’s attention, but if you want to retain creative control of everything, there’s really only one course you can take. (The protagonists seem to be following the playbook of the Gordy show incredibly closely, despite the fact that they’ve never seen it. Nope plays out like the perfect escapist fantasy for OJ after he endures an obnoxious interaction with star Bonnie Clayton (Donna Mills). I guess stars are expendable. It’s best to keep your head down, only looking up when it really counts.

The Good:
This is a really fun look at trauma. Often films with a central theme of revisited trauma vaguely depress me, but this one just makes me want to go to Knott’s Berry Farm. (It’s very hard to go there when you don’t live nearby because every time you think about it, you just end up spending another day at Disneyland. But I do like Knott’s Berry Farm.)

The chimp storyline is what really speaks to me. I’m taking my daughter to see Nope this weekend, and I’m dying to find out what she thinks! I’m fascinated that the trauma Steven Yeun’s character and his “sister” experience not only sticks with them but, in fact, literally destroys their lives in every sense possible. Maybe that TV show needed a better animal wrangler because the lesson that the young actor learned on that set was the wrong lesson. He adheres so desperately to what he takes from these early life events that his misguided performance ultimately kills him. Perhaps being a child actor isn’t for people who place a high value on their own survival. It’s darkly funny that the human actors on the set are as thoroughly trained as the chimpanzee. After something goes disastrously wrong, the chimp eventually returns to his programming, the trained behavior, the part he has learned. The human actor does the same thing. They both get the same results. (Personally I think the chimp fares a bit better.)

I don’t know what lesson to take from this except that if you train a child to become a horse wrangler instead of an actor, he’ll have a brighter future. I’m not sure that’s true as a general precept. (In fact, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. I can name more successful former child actors than I can horse wranglers.) (Of course, maybe having your name known by random strangers is not the best measure of success.) (Surely that can’t be it! Fame is everything!) But I do think that we’re all that TMZ guy, desperately looking for our camera right to the last. (Well, some of us may be more like Antlers Holst. I found I could relate to him, too. I hope to go the same way. Seems romantic.) For sure the only way to survive events like these is to keep your head down and be a horse wrangler (or at least be related to one and finally be getting the shot your father never gave you). Working at Fry’s is a pretty good career path, too! (Good luck finding one!)

The first thing, though, that impressed me about Nope was its opening epigraph from the Book of Nahum. (How often do we get that from a summer blockbuster? I don’t recall ever seeing Nahum quoted at the movies before!) It’s Nahum 3:6. “I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.” By the end of the movie, you’re certainly not left scratching your head, wondering, “How in the world was that quotation relevant to the movie?” (Our house looked so messy when it got back from vacation, but now I’m thinking, “Could be worse!”)

Without spoilers, I can’t say half of what I want to about this film. (Frankly, I’ve already said too much about the chimp!) I want to talk about Nope’s themes and what it has to say about our society, but if I do that I’ll give away critical plot points. I can’t even talk about what it has in common with Moby Dick (which I’m rereading at the moment). To my pleasant surprise, even though I saw it a week late, this movie was not spoiled for me by any of its own promotional material. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else.

Nope features a relatively small cast of core actors. Daniel Kaluuya’s OJ Haywood is a man of fewer words than Calvin Coolidge. I loved Keke Palmer as his sister Emerald and also found a brother/sister dynamic rather than a love story kind of refreshing. (Nothing against love stories. I just like the variety. Here we’re looking at a family, the brother/sister bond and their memories of their influential father.) Brandon Perea makes Angel Torres quite likeable, and Michael Wincott’s Antlers Holst is a character I’d love to learn more about (although I think his dramatic exit says everything he wants us to know about him).

The story is as methodically paced as the original Jurassic Park, never rushing, but assembling all its pieces slowly and pragmatically. Its organization by animal name works out beautifully.

Best Scene:
By the time we finally get to see what happened with Gordy, I was desperately ready for it. The movie so effectively builds anticipation for this scene. Before the film even starts (visually), we’re teased with the sounds of this strange TV moment going wrong. The whole time, I sat there thinking, “What happened with that chimp? What do these events have in common?” It’s fairly clever filmmaking because for the longest time I was preoccupied with discovering the cause of the chimp’s behavior, not suspecting that the real significance of the episode lay instead in the effect. (It’s also a nice parallel for events that drive the plot.) The story of Gordy is, in fact, the entire story in miniature. Some people learn the wrong lesson from it. Even as the audience, we’re conditioned to look for a higher order cause, when in fact, the cause is obvious if you’re paying attention to what’s happening instead of looking for causes. OJ is the only one who gets it.

I didn’t realize until the end credits that Gordy the chimp is played by a human actor (Terry Notary who played Kong in Kong: Skull Island) using motion capture. This scene juxtaposed with the episode that happens to Steven Yeun next gives us a powerful payoff, more than justifying the way the audience is teased with the chimp audio from the beginning.

There are a lot of superb scenes in Nope. Honorable mention goes to the relatively late moment when Daniel Kaluuya says, “Nope!” (The characters actually say, “Nope,” multiple times during the movie, but one of these times, it’s really showcased and just as memorable as when LaKeith Stanfield pleads, “Get out!”) (My husband noted in glee, “And he locks the doors! Like that will help!”)

Best Scene Visually:
The scene with the praying mantis is probably the most charged in the entire movie. During this part, we still don’t know exactly what to fear. It’s obvious that something is about to happen (finally!), but it’s hard to know what to expect, and we get lots of ridiculous red herrings that end up being kind of fun as we realize they’re not “the thing” after all. And honestly, there is also a major clue given to the protagonists here that they just discount. It seems a bit uncanny that pranksters would coincidentally show up dressed in a certain way. (And maybe we’re thinking, “Why would an insect just happen to be in that place at that time?” Darn insects! They’re so unpredictable. Humans have absolutely no control over what they do!)

The final image that someone captures feels pretty perfect, too. (At least poor Ricky did something useful with his misguided life!)

Best Action Sequence:
The last part of the movie is one ongoing action sequence, increasing in complexity. It’s pretty fun to watch. If I were in this movie, I’m not sure I would have been there (unless I were the TMZ guy. What he’s doing makes more sense to me. He’s probably living paycheck to paycheck.)

The Negatives:
These people are crazy. After the grotesque nightmare version of The Wizard of Oz happens to their house, I would be like, “Time to move in with the guy from Fry’s forever.” (Angel is a great supporting character. I don’t mean to sound dismissive of him.)

This isn’t a true strike against the film, but I’m impressed that the protagonists remain dedicated to the idea of getting their photograph at that point. The movie’s message confuses to me. I get a vibe of, “Never give up on pursuing your dreams—unless you’re wrong. You’ll never know for sure until you die horribly!” I guess that’s life, right?) The last act of the movie is thrilling, but it doesn’t feel necessary. I mean, they got away. Is there really a danger? Nothing is pursuing them. (I kept thinking of the (very) old SNL sketch about the shark from Jaws knocking on people’s doors, maybe because Ricky Park mentions an SNL sketch about his old TV show.) These characters are not being chased. They’re the ones doing the chasing. It’s a weird inversion of usual monster movie/ghost story/alien escapade. Usually we get, “Oh no! Something’s out here!” This is more like, “Thank God! Something’s out here!” They wouldn’t want to die in obscurity, smoking up and crashing on Angel’s couch! How boring!

The whole time, all they have to do is leave. It’s rather hilarious that they’re trying so hard to dissuade the TMZ guy when he’s only trying to do exactly what they’re trying to do themselves (albeit with less information). At a certain point, I’d be talking excessively about sunk cost fallacy and cutting my losses. These characters never give up.

I wouldn’t honestly call this problematic, though, because the characters’ persistence in becoming rich and famous is an intentional theme of the movie. They absolutely insist on becoming part of the spectacle. It’s easily avoidable. In most movies like this, the “thing” is the problem. Here it’s the solution. All of the characters are running around so annoyed that they’re not more famous, that they’re not getting enough credit for all the hustling they’re doing. (To be fair, the memory/threat of loss of family also kicks in for some people at the end.)

The one character who seems able to recognize the Other as Other (and that’s OJ) is the only person who knows how to engage with the threat appropriately. Nobody else even sees it as a threat. They’re all like, “Ooh! An opportunity!” It’s very funny. They react like, “This giant, amazing, terrifying thing—what a perfect chance to get people to notice me!” (Jurassic Park does touch on the same kind of oblivious dreams of glory. I guess the Alien franchise sometimes veers in this direction, too.) OJ is the perfect protagonist to navigate this situation. From the start, his attitude is basically, “No matter who you think everybody should think you are, this horse is going to be a horse.”

I’m excited to watch Nope again because I have some thoughts about the plot and readings of the movie that I hope hold up to a repeat viewing. The scenes before the “big reveal” of the film’s “threat” are perhaps slower than some people might like. They work for me, though, because I enjoy slow building suspense.

Overall:
Although the beginning is a bit slow and the protagonists force the situation of crisis, running to rather than away from danger, Nope is as good as Get Out and Us (which I liked) and the best Jordan Peele film I’ve seen all summer. I’m excited to go again with my daughter.