Can't Nope Out on "Nope"

Minor spoilers ahead, limited to what was in the last trailer.

Usually, I try to avoid reading any of the critical analyses of a film until I can get some of my own thoughts down.  With "Nope," however, I've been doing the opposite. I want to hear everyone's takes.  I want to be clued in on all the little details I missed after watching the movie twice, still feeling like I wasn't grasping everything there.  As a piece of summer spectacle, I found "Nope" kind of messy and disjointed, with the action and thrills not really kicking in until the last third of the movie.  However, this is one of Jordan Peele's films, and there's all kinds of interesting thematic stuff going on, making it way more interesting as a giant allegory for a bunch of different topics that I've been having fun unpacking.

OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) work as horse trainers, trying to keep their recently deceased father's ranch and business going.  Times are tough, and OJ has sold several horses to a nearby western-themed amusement park, Jupiter's Claim, run by a former child star named Jupe (Steven Yeun). One night, OJ spots what appears to be a flying saucer near the ranch, and he and Em decide to try and capture the thing - dubbed "Jean Jacket" - on film.  A visit to Fry's Electronics for a camera surveillance system gets IT guy Angel (Brandon Perea) in on the scheme.  Eventually they also manage to enlist a filmmaker, Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), who is obsessed with capturing the impossible.  Other parties, however, have also taken notice of the phenomena, and have their own plans in motion.  Jupe, for instance, is up to no good.  

"Nope" has a lot of very fun ideas, and Peele has recruited many good actors and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema to help bring them to the screen in the best form possible.  However, there are ellipses all over the story, and the narrative has to be actively pieced together by the viewer in order for it to make any kind of coherent sense.    And I'm not sure that this is the kind of story that can get away with that.  For many, less discerning members of the audience, I expect that "Nope" will feel like a confusing bore until OJ and Em  put together their big plan to bait and film Jean Jacket in the last act.  It's truly a great action set piece, featuring Kaluuya on horseback,  Palmer on an electric motorcycle, dozens of inflatable skydancers littering the landscape, anime references, and one of the most memorable screen monsters that we've seen in years.  

On the other hand, how do we account for the disturbing flashbacks to young Jupe's time on a '90s sitcom, where a chimp actor went on a rampage and grievously harmed a cast member?  What about the TMZ reporter who shows up out of the blue, or the insane behavior of Antlers Holst? A big theme of the movie is the unacknowledged contributions made to cinema by black creators, represented by the unknown black jockey who appeared in the very first assemblage of stills that made the first motion picture - Muybridge's "Animal Locomotion."  Peele gives him a name and makes OJ and Em his descendants, and custodians of his legacy, as they try to make their own mark on film history.  Black cowboys, too, are often missing from American cinema, from the westerns that are a uniquely American genre.

Trying to make all of these different pieces fit together is where Peele seems to run into the most trouble.  Much of the film's horror is derived from the folly of human beings trying to exploit wild animals for spectacle, or reckless artists letting their egos run amok, with awful consequences.  I don't think that Peele does enough to make it clear what distinguishes OJ and Em from the others.  I don't think Peele does enough to distinguish OJ and Em as characters, period.  Kaluuya and Palmer are excellent onscreen, but I never found myself rooting for them.  Steven Yeun's traumatized, deeply misguided Jupe was more interesting as a tragic figure.    

"Nope" is definitely worth seeing, and I got plenty out of it, but it suffers from a lot of the same problems as "Us," and doesn't quite cohere the same way that film does.  I think this would have been a much better film with a few tweaks to the writing, but it's hard to be too negative on a film that is so wholly original and weird and ambitious.  And the more I think about the film, the more I like it, which speaks well as to its longevity.   

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