Jordan Peele's NOPE Gets a YES From Me
Musings about Jordan Peele's most recent neo-western, sci-fi horror movie entitled NOPE (2022)
This post WILL contain SPOILERS.
Personally, I don’t see Logan Paul as my go-to for good movie recommendations.
But when he tweeted this—
—and I saw that some people (with opinions that I do actually care for) were somewhat in agreement with him, let’s just say that I got a little bit worried.
The movie dropped in the UK on the 12th August and life was so busy during the first few weeks of this month that I just couldn’t find the time to drag me or my wallet up out of bed to purchase a ticket.
But then, a couple days ago, my sister barged into my bedroom, all big eyes and waving hands, whining about how she really wanted to see the movie but was just too scared to go by herself.
I said, “That sounds like a you problem.”
She said, “Please, come. I’ll pay!”
And well…Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?
So, what’s the plot?
Given that I’m assuming that you’ve already seen the movie, I’ll keep the summary short and sweet.
NOPE (2022) follows the two siblings, OJ Haywood (played by Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (played by Keke Palmer), as they try their hardest to keep their family business afloat after the unexpected death of their father.
This “family business” goes by the name of Haywood Ranch—the only Black-owned horse training ranch in all of Hollywood.
“Did you know that the very first assembly of photographs in sequential order to create a motion picture was a two-second clip of a Black man on a horse? Yes, it was. Look it up… I mean, the very first stuntman, animal wrangler, and movie star all rolled into one, and there is literally no record of him. That man was a Bahamian jockey that went by the name of Alistair E. Haywood. And he is my great-great-grandfather.”
— Emerald Haywood, NOPE (2022)
However during the pursuit of this goal, the two siblings discover that they aren’t the only ones that have come to live on the ranch. There’s something in the sky. Something terrifying. Something spectacular. Something they believe would bring in large sums of money if they could just successfully capture it on camera.
I’m not going to bore you by explaining the overall meaning of the movie and what it symbolises because I’m sure the internet is saturated with enough of that already. Instead, I’m going to list out all the things that I enjoyed about the movie, things I don’t think anyone has brought up yet and then, at the end, I’ll tack on a few things I wish we got to see a little bit more of.
Let’s get started!
Things I Enjoyed…
1. The Bible Quote
“And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a spectacle.”
— Nahum 3:6
As a retired Catholic school kid, this itched at my brain in the best way possible and it only got better when the once assumed UFO was revealed to be an animal which then unfurled into something akin to a biblically-accurate angel.
Beautiful, elegant and bloody terrifying.
Of course Peele chose this quote for a reason because it’s perfect for the movie that follows.
Jean Jacket literally casts filth upon the Earth and makes the ranch vile while vomiting out blood and indigestible objects after each feasting session—namely objects made of metal, including the coin that killed OJ and Emerald’s father.
This might be a stretch but Jean Jacket’s behaviour is reminiscent of a key action used by animals, namely Turkey Vultures. When faced with another predator, these birds vomit up as much as they can in an attempt to feel lighter and to fly away a little easier. This vomit also works as a defence mechanism, the smell used to warn and scare off any other predators from getting too close/staying in their territory.
Fantastic work, Mr Peele!
2. OJ Haywood and Ricky “Jupe” Park working as dramatic foils of one another.
“In any narrative, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character; typically, a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist. A foil to the protagonist may also be the antagonist of the plot.”
Jupe is a tragic character. He’s what I’d call the secondary antagonist of the movie because despite not being a human-eating alien, he’s the only other obstacle standing between the Haywoods and the resurrection of their business.
However—like a lot of people—I didn’t quite grasp the importance of his past, namely his involvement in the Gordy’s Home incident and what the hell that had to do with the movie’s present timeline.
The chimp attack displayed in the movie is said to be loosely inspired by a real-life incident that happened in 1995. However in the movie, Peele moves the incident to a filming set, where the cast members and camera crew are killed by a chimpanzee brought to rampage by the popping of a birthday balloon.
This scene is honestly one of my favourites. It’s superbly drawn out and eeriely quiet, save for the animal’s laboured breathing and the screams of the people he finds and pummels to death. It was so uncomfortable to watch that I found myself winching even when nothing particularly violent was happening.
After killing a sum of the cast-members, Gordy appears to calm down and that’s when he notices a young Jupe, hiding beneath the table. He offers him a bloody fist-bump of friendship. Cute. Until a bullet cuts the embrace short. Not so cute. And then the scene ends.
Thinking about it further, I think I’ve finally come to understand the purpose of this scene…This incident is where Jupe’s over-confidence stems from.
He suffers from something different to survivor's guilt and since I couldn’t quite find any existing antonyms for this on Google, I’ve decided to think up a name for it all by myself:
Survivor’s egoism.
“Survivor’s egoism is when a person has intense feelings of self-importance as a result of them surviving a traumatic, life-threatening event that others did not.”
— Me… just now.
I believe this take is supported by the fact that he keeps his co-star, Mary Jo Elliot, around. I didn’t really understand her purpose at first but, think about this…What better way to be reminded that you, and you alone, left a traumatic experience unscathed than looking into the torn face of the only other person who came out alive?
So, where Jupe is full of self-importance, OJ is far more self-effacing.
Yes, it can and should be noted that there’s an element of dumb confidence within OJ too given that he continues to try for the Oprah shot even after seeing what havoc Jean Jacket can wreak but, in the face of untamed animals, OJ humbles himself.
From the very first scene, he’s painted as someone not only in tune with animals but also someone aware that you can’t bend them to your will without understanding them, and what OJ comes to understand—through remembering the teachings of his father— is that Jean Jacket is simply untameable.
“Ghost’s out there acting all territorial. I guess some animals ain't fit to be trained.”
–Otis Haywood Sr, NOPE (2022)
Peele wrote two men, both shaped by their experiences with animals yet both meeting completely different ends. I loved it!
3. Jean Jacket is on GO all hours of the day.
One major recurring theme in the horror genre is that all the evil things come out in the dark.
As a result, the characters that we are siding with are often safe during the early hours of the day. In horror narratives this means that mornings are used by characters to plan and prepare and we—the audience— are given a momentary breather from the terrors that are otherwise expected within the movie.
Mr Peele isn’t kind enough to give us that.
Honestly, I found that Jean Jacket appeared as an even bigger threat when the sun was out, when the alien’s presence wasn’t shrouded in darkness and you could see it in the reflection of a TMZ reporter’s cool, Y2K-esque helmet.
What this achieves is a movie fraught with tension. You’re constantly looking at any and all shots of the sky to see whether you can see a shape gliding between clouds. I found my head moving with the camera whenever it was trained upwards—I had to remind myself that I wasn’t in VR. I was so tense that I left that cinema physically tired and with my booty-cheeks so clenched and in pain that I felt like an IG baddie after an intense leg day at the gym.
4. The way Emerald sits.
Yeah.
5. The Eye-Finger-Signal-Thingy
We are first introduced to the siblings’ shared gesture when Emerald reminisces of the time her father chose OJ instead of her to train her horse— a horse that OJ just so happens to name our Alien Superstar after.
“For my ninth birthday, I was supposed to get to train Jean Jacket. But then Pops got some Western, and Jean Jacket wasn’t mine no more. Classic Otis Senior. I distinctly remember standing right here, at this window, watching y’all train my horse. My horse. Pops never looked up at me.”
– Emerald Haywood, NOPE (2022)
But you want to know who did look up at her? OJ.
Unlike the young Emerald that resented her lack of involvement and didn’t return the then-playful gesture, older Emerald repeats it when she accepts that she can’t “tame,” “break” or fight this new, more furious Jean Jacket on her own.
Through her retreating, through her entrusting OJ to get the job done, she’s able to run off and continue the execution of the plan elsewhere and it is this decision that allows them to capture the final image of Jean Jacket.
This was a great way to show development in Emerald’s character and it was a scene that packed a punch, not just because of the acting displayed by Keke and Daniel but also because of the gorgeous score written by NOPE’s composer, Michael Abel.
6. The elaborate Act 3 plan
As I’ve already explained, the Haywood Ranch’s history stems from OJ and Emerald’s great-great-great-grandfather being the first stuntman on a moving picture, and the plan created to capture Jean Jacket on camera honours this history by highlighting two main things:
It shows us that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. OJ literally stars as the stuntman, animal-wrangler and movie-star all rolled up into one in the home-made movie that the team end up putting together.
The whole thing displays the evolution of film-making in Hollywood. Despite Antlers Holst (the weird film-maker dude) using a non-digital camera, everything else used within the plan is reliant on modern technology. We have Emerald in the shed, monitoring every shot from all possible angles. We have the inflatable air-dancers being used as props, wholly reliant on batteries to keep them upright. We have Angel being…momentarily useful with his very own digital camera. And, again, we have Micheal Abel’s score, perfectly tying it all together.
Things I Wanted More Of…
This list is a lot shorter!
1. Angel.
I don’t have to explain myself.
2. More interactions between Jupe and his co-star, Mary Jo Elliott.
I’ve already touched on what I’ve interpreted Mary’s overall purpose as being but I would’ve loved to see more one-on-one interactions between her and Jupe. It would’ve even been interesting to see how Jupe’s wife and his children treated her as well.
Seeing interactions between them would’ve allowed for a deeper exploration of differing layers of Jupe’s reaction to the Gordy’s Home incident. He has genuine trauma existing alongside his survivor’s egoism and although he hides it well, we see momentary cracks in this confident demeanour when he stares off into space, only being brought back to the present when his wife nudges him out of the past.
Given that Peele seems to favour subtlety in his narrative, I’m sure including a conversation between Mary and Jupe might’ve been a little too explicit for his tastes but damn… I still would’ve liked to see it.
All in all, NOPE (2022) was a fun watch!
It ranks as a solid ★★★★☆ on my scale.
The movie provided a fresh exploration of human greed and the endless striving to bear witness/be the centre of a spectacle, as well as giving a nod towards the many changes within Hollywood and the wider film-making industry.
As always, Jordan Peele made a great movie and, as always, Logan Paul doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
God. Don’t you love consistency?
woaaah, that was an interesting read !!! I enjoyed your wording and musings. I was surprised by your interpretation of Jupe, because like you, at first I didn't quite get what his character in the movie was trying to tell us, so your 'survivor's egoism' take, took me by surprise and delighted me because I hadn't thought of that. After watching the movie I couldn't wait to see what other reviewers were saying about the movie, and there's this YouTube review channel about horror/grotesque/hard movies that made a point about Jupe that I really liked: it's about humans not learning from mistakes, and humans abusing animals for their profit is linked to it in Peele's movie. What I mean is that the studio were using monkeys in the show and normally that can be a lot of stress for the animal (seen also at the beginning of the movie when OJ was trying to advise the directors of the movie/add about how to be careful around the horse and they ignored him), so the balloon popping made the monkey loose control and then yeah, the only one left unscathed was Jupe, and in his adulthood he's using the horses to attract the alien to gain his stardom which can be linked to his survivors egoism' and the fact that he can't let go of wanting to be famous, ending everything disastrously for him, makes me feel like he didn't learn from the past, from profiting of animals, seeking game using them, I don't know if what I said makes sense, this is also not my first language 😅 and it's also getting really long, sorry. To finish, I would say that I found your musings brilliant and that I also love Emeralds way of siting.
Wow…..what a read. I literally watched the movie two days ago but your review makes me want to watch it again through the lens of your analysis. I agree with everything you said, especially the idea that OJ and Jupe are foils. I hadn’t even considered it before but it makes total sense — both of them had experience working with animals from a young age but in completely different ways. Whereas OJ’s experience came from a place of empathy, compassion and understanding, Jupe’s was one of exploitation and greed. He saw Gordy get shot down right in front of him, was literally covered in his blood, and yet was still willing to sacrifice Lucky for his own end. Survivor’s egoism, which is a brilliant phrase by the way, is definitely the reason for his downfall. It was also interesting to me that Jupe told the crowd to remember his sons’ names, implying that they too will be exploited for a possible second claim to fame. Anywho, I really loved your review and can’t wait to read more from you!