Nope (2022)

Review and Analysis of Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022)

Up until the point where I had actually went and saw Nope, I had been wanting to see it badly. Here is the ironic part: I never watched the trailer and went into the movie completely blind.

All I knew was that one of our film critics at the publication I write for had given the movie a really low review and called it a knockoff of another movie, but when my best friend rolled up in her car and bought me a ticket for my birthday, I sat back and was ready to analyze.

And boy, my initial thoughts were that there was an insane amount of content to unpack with this movie. My theatre was pretty dead when it came to reactions outside of the characters going “Nope,” while my best friend and I were laughing at the spectacle the movie itself was.

I have a lot of analysis when it comes to this movie, and while it may not be the accurate thing Jordan Peele 100% expects us to get, I think I’m getting somewhere with this.

Two siblings and an electronics store employee get caught up in paranormal affairs on their ranch.

Nope opens up with a biblical quote: “And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a spectacle.” I found there to be so many layers with this quote, as a lot of the characters in the movie are chasing after a spectacle and end up dead, so then they literally become spat out as the abominable fifth that Jean Jacket consumed. If you look at Jean Jacket’s final form, he represents what biblical angels actually looked like in the Bible, as well as a film camera when his mouth extends.

Even the siblings cannot escape the fact they were chasing after some sort of fame. Emerald, when she’s giving her speech memorized by her father (if you’re paying attention, you can tell she memorized her father’s speech word for word, because she gets the amount of greats wrong), gives the implication that she is a hustler who wants to make it in the industry with her personal pitch added on top.

She does not end up dead, but guess who does? Their father, who helps contribute to the spectacle of Hollywood with his horse business. He’s killed with a nickel, which is ironic because the first movies were screened at nickelodeons.

The nickelodeon theme is continued visually through Emerald and OJ, who literally are wearing the colors of the channel of the same name (orange and green) throughout the movie.

We also then have this notion of cameras being everywhere—the alien suits that Jupe makes and sells are ape bodies with faces that look like the cameras from the Gordy show. The siblings try to set up their cameras in order to catch the alien and get their money shot, thus guaranteeing a chance at being famous.

Then there is Antlers, the cinematographer that ends up killing himself. We get this connection at the very beginning of the film that the Haywoods claim that they’re related tot he man in the horse photos turned into a movie, but Antlers is the successful white man who literally ruins their entire plan for the sake of the impossible shot.

Antlers is implied to be sick from his appearance and the fact that he is popping pills throughout, so his comments about his life not being much longer make a lot of sense with this theory. The film camera also may have been completely useless, too, since it was jammed up after Angel (another coincidence name)

I do not think the government knowing theory does not work for this movie. When Jupe/Ricky is running through his rehearsals, there were no audience members at night as he fed Jean Jacket the horses. We know that he was feeding Jean Jacket horses because OJ brings Emerald to a meeting where OJ wants to buy his horses back from Jupe, but Jupe just kind of laughs and goes “yeaaah” because the horses are 100% dead.

Jean Jacket, by this point, was also eating humans because there’s a radio announcement in the background, during the beginning, saying that there are hikers missing. The ranch would not show up Google Maps solely because of Jean Jacket messing up the mapping electronics that try to enter the area.

Now onto Ricky Park, who is another major thread. He doesn’t technically get a lot of screen time—but never does Barbie Ferreirra—but he certainly makes his impact throughout.

When we first meet him, he dodges the horse buying-back question by showing the siblings his collection of Gordy artifacts, but when asked about his memories itself of the experience (which aren’t revealed until later in the movie, when we enter an extended, disturbing flashback scene), he relives it through popular culture, such as the SNL skit.

He’s clearly traumatized, but doesn’t seem to realize that the only reason he survived that experience was because he was fixated on the shoe and the tablecloth hid his eyes from Gordy. Eye contact is a form of dominance, so as the balloons went off and people looked at Gordy, Gordy saw them as threats.

Gordy became the predator and the humans the prey, which is a dynamic reversed when Gordy is finally shot by what seems to be the police. We get this sense that Jupe never actually moved on from it from his wide, blank stares and refusing to confront his own memories about, and when he looks up at Jean Jacket, his stare is still pretty out there and zoning out.

It is because of this a trauma-ridden Jupe tries to capitalize massively off of his experience on the Gordy show, collecting artifacts and claiming that he was best buddies with Gordy. We know that he was on the show, but that seems unlikely in real life, so Jupe is conflating reality potentially as well.

He thinks that because he survived Gordy, he can try to tame and domesticate this wild animal, but forgets when he puts everyone in front of it as an audience that it is a predator, just like Gordy. When Gordy was put in front of the cameras and an audience, he lost it. And guess what happens?

Everyone and everything except Lucky is eaten. Their demise isn’t pleasant, either, as we can see the metal horse in its throat-thing and it ends up regurgitating all the blood back up onto the Haywoods’ home.

Some other random easter eggs was that I think the keys stuck to the horses after the projectile vomiting were a reference to Key & Peele. The final shot where OJ is sitting on the horse is a direct reference to Westerns, where the lone cowboy often sits in front of a mountain while on a horse, victorious at whatever the hell he just did in that movie.

There’s the quip about OJ’s name and the white woman making a statement about it being similar to OJ Simpson, then Emerald screaming “Run, OJ, run!” not losing any meaning in the process of comedic timing. There’s also the homage to Akira when Keke Palmer slides off the motorcycle.

Overall Thought

At the end of the day, I saw this as a movie that warns about the notions of asserting dominance over things you don’t understand and trying to create an uneven power system.

At the same time, it has a lot to say about Hollywood and the concept of a spectacle itself, almost condemning the search for endless fame and fortune as something sinful and to die for.

All the characters who try to profit off of something that is a living organism ends up dead, taking quite a few innocent people (the park employees, the random family in front of the stands) with them in the process.

It’s a destructive cycle that bends the traditional notion of an alien movie, instead framing the alien as an animal with a brain, thought processes, and as something to be understood.

I thought Nope was pretty brilliant because it gets you thinking and talking about what exactly you just saw. It was constructed very well and I thought it was a good movie. Hope you enjoyed this analysis—there’s so much more that I’m missing, too.