Nope writer and director Jordan Peele seems to likes horror movies as much as we do. We’re divided on this particular one, but at least we agree we saw something we’d never seen in a movie before. Given our long and storied careers watching movies, that’s quite an accomplishment!
Excellent! I couldn’t stop thinking about this movie after I saw it.
The return of McMasterpiece Theatre!!!
Haha, Tom’s “Over”!
I know, I know, I did rewatch Alien Abduction last night after we recorded and it is dumb and about as no-budget as you can get. But it didn’t disappoint me the way Nope did! So it’s still my over. Can I change it to my over-ish?
Besides, it shows you about as much onboard UFO action as Fire in the Sky. I believe you told me after we recorded that was an important criteria for a good abduction yarn.
EDIT: For those who haven’t heard the podcast, this is the movie:
Anyone 50-ish who doesn’t immediately associate the name of this movie w/ the famous Eddie Murphy haunted house stand-up bit is clearly suspect. I think the clip was linked in the other thread.
The cinematography was awesome in this movie. OJ sheltering in the wood barn as the flying saucer/alien flew by (and earlier a horse) viewed through the barn slats producing an effect akin to the original kinetoscope, was super clever.
More scene theater, please! So great.
I think Kelly was on the right track by mentioning The Twilight Zone, but Nope is also invoking a type of TV theater where multiple stories with a loose theme would be presented. Jonathan Frakes’ Beyond Belief is the one I can immediately think of; I know there are a bunch of older ones.
Imagine a version of this movie that opens with a host narrating ominously while walking around a room, then shows us four separate, complete shorts:
You watch these stories, noting some common threads, but also feeling like you’ve seen multiple perspectives of a big world.
Nope is essentially doing that, but it’s mixed the stories and characters into one.
That’s a great way of looking at the movie, and it certain jibes with Peele’s Twilight Zone. But I feel it also gets at why the movie didn’t work for me. I mostly enjoyed the individual stories, especially the Gordy plotline, largely because of Stephen Yuen (dude is such a superstar to me!).
But I didn’t find their intersection the least bit plausible or convincing.
Kaluuya and especially Palmer put some nice energy to the Heywood storyline (I guess I agree with Kellywand that Kaluuya’s laconic reserve is a foil to Palmer’s ebullience), I enjoy a good Fry’s joke as much as the next Californian (although the gag just felt like Lil Rel Howery 2.0 to me), I wish cinematographers got more recognition (and Wincott got more work!), and hoo boy, do monsters in the sky get me all excited!
BTW, here’s the poster for the movie Altitude that I mentioned (but don’t recommend):
Right? Holy cats, you gotta see that now, don’t you? Well, don’t. And if you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
But the Nope script is so strained to bring the plotlines and their varying tones together, and the actors are unable to do anything to convince me, because the script isn’t interested in developing relationships so much as it’s interested in tying them all into a bundle and dragging them along for its rootin’-tootin’ UFO rodeo. Which is a hoot, to be sure, but why couldn’t I have also had plausible character development and interaction? It might not be fair to invoke Spielberg, but he’s obviously near and dear to Peele’s heart. But Spielberg did the work to get Richard Dreyfus to leave his family and hook up with Melinda Dillon in Close Encounters. He did the work to get the terrified Roy Scheider out on a boat with a nerdy scientist and an insane old fisherman. He did the work to get a little boy and his sister and their friends to defy their parents and the government in ET. Why couldn’t Peele do the work? Why couldn’t he tie his characters together better? Why the morose Hollywood storyline, alongside the “Fry’s employees are LOSERS ha ha!” gag, alongside Camera Ahab obsessed with getting the Impossible Shot, alongside the genuinely poignant former child star still shellshocked by a horrific onset accident? If Peele could write these individual vignettes, why couldn’t he tie them together more believably?
I guess your take, @cornchip, makes me think Peele’s approach is like an anthology shot and edited as one concurrent movie, but I’m not seeing the thematic unity or convincing character development because he hasn’t done the work. Instead, I feel like I watched a poorly assembled* creature feature that seems to be suggesting a cautionary message, but it’s difficult for me to make out in light of all the threads Peele is pulling at. As best as I can tell, it’s this: “Chasing spectacle is a fool’s errand when animals are involved, because if you haven’t worked with animals in a situation when they didn’t flip out and kill a bunch of people, you’re going to be poorly equipped when an extraterrestrial predator comes for you.”
That feels muddy and confused to me, and when laid atop of four plotlines whose connections also feel muddy and confused to me, well, that’s where I mutter my own personal “nope…”
* poorly assembled at a script level, not necessarily a directorial level; Peele is every bit as good at individual sequences as M. Night Shyamalan
Haha! You watched Altitude!
I deserved that, but I trust it was offered in the spirit of solidarity?
The funny thing about Altitude is that I’d put it in the same genre as movies like 47 Meters Down (trapped in a shark cage), 12 Feet Deep (trapped in a swimming pool), Frozen (trapped in a ski lift chair), Fall (trapped on a radio tower), and so on. It’s about kids trapped in an airplane because a bolt shakes loose and gets stuck under the elevator, which is the flap controlling the plane’s climb or descent. So now the plane is stuck in a climb, but that would be boring, so let’s write in some goofy supernatural elements. But it’s really not at all the creature feature you might think from the poster; it’s simply Altitude (trapped in a plane).
Unfortunately, yes.
The time loop twist was especially dumb.
Tom, I think you’re right about that.
I did think the movie was going to do more work to tie the brother and sister together. The premise of the movie set was a great one: two kids stuck in this family business, one pre-occupied with money and respecting the animals, the other wanting to use the horses to launch a different kind of career. But then they left the set and that was essentially it. They did try to use it as a payoff later in the movie when we learned their dad didn’t respect her interest in horses. And they tried to make it seem like she was threatening the family by the way she acted with Steven Yeun, but they didn’t seriously pull on OJ’s wanting to buy back the (eaten) horses.
By the final scene, they are working smoothly in tandem and these different motivations are forgotten.
I also remember thinking at one point: was there a version of this script where they were spouses, not siblings? You can barely tell in this movie how they’re related other than they mention it. A brother and a husband are going to talk, build relationships and problem-solve family issues completely differently.
@cornchip Have you seen a Tim Roth movie called Sundown? You should for reasons I can’t say until you’ve seen it.
Ooh, you mean a Charlotte Gainsbourg movie? I will see it soon. Going in totally cold.
Also, the more I think about your comment, @cornchip – that Nope is “invoking a type of TV theater where multiple stories with a loose theme would be presented” – I also can’t help but think of Peele’s background in sketch comedy. I wonder if that means he’s really good at writing to immediate moments for short-term impact, but he never developed a talent for longer term character development, or more plausible connections between characters beyond “let’s see what happens if we put these two unlikely characters together in the same situation!”, which is a common element of sketch comedy and improv.
I do feel bad about my over to Nope being such a low-ambition, no-budget, found footage movie like Alien Abduction. Peele is a storyteller with immense talent and a huge fondness for the same genres as me, but I just feel he’s missing some fundamental qualities as a writer. I kind of hope he directs someone else’s script next time.
-Tom
I definitely enjoyed Nope more than you, but get the criticsim.
Peele has certainly worked in tinges of horror to his comedy sketches.
That was a great example, @mono. I like that you can see the seeds for the Gordy plotline in that sketch.
Also, Clint Howard’s still got it after all these years!
-Tom
I kind of agree with Tom’s take and disappointment with the character development and unearned moments, though I enjoyed it more overall. But on a factual note, chimps are predators - they hunt monkeys.
Oh, also, the alien was totally a Bajoran lightship.
So when they have a chimp like Gordy on set, they have to feed him monkeys? Creepy.
Seriously, though, I had no idea. Are they the only primate predators? Or is that true of a lot of primates? I guess I just mentally figured omnivores had their own set of rules distinct from predators. But I still feel it was a missed opportunity to show up how Jupe’s childhood experience – being spared by his “agreement” with a viscous beast – was brought into play during his encounter with the UFO.
Star Trek, man. Even after Googling this and clicking on the first dang link, I couldn’t figure out that I was readng about Star Trek.
