Nope
The satisfying surprise of Jordan Peele’s terrifying alien spectacle
Directed By: Jordan Peele
Other Notable Films From Peele: Get Out, Us
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Brandon Perea
Screenplay By: Jordan Peele
Movie Synopsis: A brother and sister take on the alien that’s been terrorizing their family’s horse ranch.
Signature Line: “What’s a bad miracle? They got a word for that?”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
When the trailer for Nope premiered in February of 2022, the general public immediately tagged the film “Jordan Peele’s alien movie.” But because no Jordan Peele movie ever actually ends up being what you think it’s going to be, “Jordan Peele’s alien movie” ultimately ended up being a misnomer. And six months after Nope’s release, he addressed the contradiction while participating in a panel discussion hosted by the Film at Lincoln Center.1
After being asked what made him decide on an alien invasion film for his third feature, Peele began his answer by pointing out that Nope intentionally resembled a bunch of different movies but didn’t resemble any one individual movie. As the audience listened along, Peele elaborated, saying, “The first hook was this idea of: What if I could convince an audience they’re watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but then they realize at some point that they’ve been watching Jaws?”
It’s a perfect explanation of what makes Nope special, and why people were so interested in dissecting it after its release. We all sat down expecting one thing—namely, for the thing in the sky to be a spaceship, à la Close Encounters of the Third Kind—so everything that happened through the first 75 or so minutes of the movie was processed through that lens. We anticipated the normal beats; we waited for the ship to land, and we waited to see what the aliens were gonna look like, and we waited to see how they were gonna interact with the humans, etc.
But when it was revealed that the thing in the sky wasn’t a spaceship—it was a giant predator hunting a specific stretch of land (à la Jaws)—everything changed. It was a complete subversion.
“Jordan Peele’s alien movie” was only a good descriptor for Nope up until the moment you actually watched Nope. After that, you needed a new way to describe it.
Because Nope, like all of Peele’s movies, was a whole new thing.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Nope
1:43: You know what Jordan Peele loves? He loves attaching symbolism to an animal. He’s done it in all three of the movies he’s directed so far. Get Out had the throughline with the deer (Objectification! And exploitation! And racism! etc). Us had the rabbits (Duality! And a failed experiment! And rebirth! etc). And Nope has Gordy, a chimp who went crazy on the set of a sitcom in the ‘90s and killed and/or mauled several members of the cast and crew. (More on him later.)
1:44: P.S. The way I know that I’m dumb is that I refuse to believe that a chimp could kill me, despite the substantial amount of evidence suggesting otherwise. I honestly believe I could beat the fuck out of a chimp if I needed to. Planet of the Apes would’ve never happened on my watch.
3:35: Daniel Kaluuya is here. He plays OJ Haywood, a horse handler who works with his father training horses for movies.2 I really, really enjoy Kaluuya as an actor. He’s so steady, and so self-assured, and so patient, and all those things combine to give him a gravitational charisma that feels unique to him. It makes every tiny thing he does on screen—a sideways glance; a soft, open-mouth smirk; a droop of his head—feel like an unexpected ocean wave slamming into your back.
3:36: P.S. The best distillation of Kaluuya’s essence as an actor came from Steve McQueen, who directed Kaluuya (alongside Viola Davis, Colin Farrell, and Liam Neeson) in the heist thriller Widows. He told the New York Times in 2018 that Kaluuya “has that gift you don’t see often, a presence even in his stillness. You feel what he is feeling, you see what he is seeing.”
4:03: GOOD MOVIE house favorite Keith David is here.3 He plays Otis, OJ’s father. Keith David rules so much. No matter how much Keith David you have in your movie, it’s never enough. If he has no scenes, he should’ve had two scenes. If he has two scenes, he should’ve had five scenes. If he has five scenes, he should’ve had 15 scenes. And to that point…
6:05: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Otis is dead. Metallic objects mysteriously started raining down from the sky while he and OJ were out with their horses, and when Otis looked up to see what was happening, a nickel sliced through his eyeball and lodged itself in his brain, killing him.
6:06: P.S. You know how else I know I’m dumb? I read a whole breakdown from Scientific American about how it’s impossible for a coin falling from any height to seriously injure someone, let alone kill them.4 It had detailed scientific explanations for why it couldn’t happen, along with data from experiments run by actual physicists, and when I got done I was still like, “Ehhhhhhh, I don’t know, man. I’m pretty sure it’d kill you.” 😂😂😂
11:01: Keke Palmer is here. She plays Em, OJ’s sister and his new business partner. Palmer is outstanding in this. She brings her normal NUCLEAR-BOMB-LEVEL charm, which has made her one of the most enjoyable people on the internet for the past decade or so, and then also she peppers in some dramatic moments that are really, really great. For a solid four-year stretch, this was the best performance of her career, beating out her turn as Akeelah in 2006’s Akeelah and the Bee and Mercedes in 2019’s Hustlers. It dropped down into second place just this past month, though, with the release of Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, which she absolutely crushed.
17:26: Steven Yeun is here. He plays Ricky “Jupe” Park. Remember the blood-crazed chimp from earlier? Jupe was his co-star on the ‘90s sitcom. He’s one of the few people (if not the only person) who escaped from the catastrophe unharmed. Jupe now owns a western-themed theme park called Jupiter’s Claim located on a ranch near Otis and Em’s property. OJ’s been periodically selling horses to Jupe as he tries to keep his family’s business afloat.
24:46: As OJ and Em reminisce about their father, we find out that the first film OJ ever worked on with him was The Scorpion King, a very bad action movie from 2002. And I just think it’s very funny that in a movie stuffed with sneaky references to revered films (Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Akira, Buck and the Preacher, etc), the only work that gets mentioned outright is the one where Michael Clark Duncan has a ponytail glued to the back of his head. Jordan Peele is fucking hilarious.
