Hi! You’re reading an entry in the Jscars 2022, a series on my favorite movies of the year 2022. Read the previous entries here:
All Quiet on the Western Front
“The dream you’re chasing, the one where you end up at the top of the mountain, all eyes on you, it’s the dream you never wake up from.”
At the very beginning of Nope, we witness a tragedy unfold on the set of the in universe sitcom Gordy’s Home. The chimpanzee who plays the titular Gordy suddenly goes on a rampage on set, brutally murdering all cast members except two, one of which is left with a significantly scarred and deformed face for the rest of her life. Thirty years later, the two main characters are speaking to Jupe, one of the two survivors, who watched all of this occur right in front of him when he was just a child. How does he choose to discuss this event that traumatized him forever, complete with undercut scenes of how horrified he was as a child?
By talking about how great Chris Kattan was in the SNL sketch parodying the event.
From the very first moments of Nope in which Nahum 3:6 is displayed on screen, Jordan Peele takes aim at the system of Hollywood and the nature of fame and spectacle. Jupe not only represses the trauma of the Gordy’s Home incident but even continues to display merchandise from the show and rents out tours in a desperate bid for money and to hold onto the star power he once had as a child. No matter how many memories it continues to dredge up. And when what appears to be a UFO stars hovering above Agua Dulce, OJ and Em Haywood know exactly what needs to be done. They need to get photos of it so they can sell them and become famous of course.
As the Haywoods, Jupe, and a gaggle of other characters who get involved all try to use the UFO for their own benefit, the risks involved begin to reveal themselves. Trying to control a beast you know little about may not be the wisest decision one can make, a lesson that is learned over and over again throughout the stories by different characters in various clear ways. And yet it doesn’t always stick. It doesn’t matter how much pain and suffering being at the top of the mountain is going to cause. It’s all going to be worth it. It has to be.
And this is all without getting into how great the less symbolic elements of the film are. Keke Palmer delivers easily one of the best performances of the year as Em Haywood, as does Steven Yeun as Jupe. But everyone involved brings their A-game. The chemistry and dynamics between the characters, no matter how small, are incredibly believable and complex. And not to give too much away, but Jordan Peele very clearly reminds everyone why he’s one of if not the biggest name in horror directing, delivering several sequences that had me absolutely terrified. And when the “true form” of the UFO reveals itself is one of the most interesting designs in a major Hollywood movie I can think of in quite some time.
Nope is not a movie that’s particularly subtle about its messaging, despite what some of the people walking out of the theater when I saw it may lead you to believe it. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the message needs to be shouted in as loud and clear of a voice as possible, from someone who’s lived through what he’s talking about. We shouldn’t want to be famous. Because if we are, what’s going to be left in our wake is going to be unrecognizable. Almost alien.
Plus Keke Palmer does the bike slide from Akira so I mean there’s that.