I hate that people are so invested in the idea that everything has to be explained or make perfect sense (thanks a lot cinema sins) that they forget that symbolism is a thing? The purpose of cosmic horror, which Nope is in the vein of, is that we don’t understand what is happening and so we are scared. I get it if you’re jaded by your middle and high school English classes or symbolic movies aren’t your thing, but “not getting” a movie doesn’t inherently make it bad.
For what it's worth, I follow some of the CinemaSins writers on Twitter and I know for a fact they already agree with you. And the ones who have already seen Nope said they really like it.
Haven't seen movie yet, but can agree that people treat art in a very consumerist one-way-street/ one-way flow, as a product or as definitive answer in the end (a yes or no) or told what and how to think- cinema is reflective of this. And the Paul guy is reflective of this reductive thinking. Its terrible to think of his platform and how young ppl in particular are influenced by him.
Logan Paul literally went to the woods of Japan to get a shot that would temporarily ruin him. The movie is about him, and that fact went straight over his head.
I personally love the fact that everyone in this movie was really concerned with capturing footage above all else. I feel like it represents a lot of modern values our society has. That's why the guy on the motorbike is so hilarious. "Yeah I'm about to die, but how can I profit off of this in my final moments?"
While some characters were motivated by profit, the plot of that filmmaker and his attempt to capture his best work was definitely motivated by passion for the arts rather than profit. I felt like that was a pretty moving scene.
@@PimPim4 it's sort of comedic in a way tho that he valued being an "auteur" more than his life. A friend of mine who watched the movie also said it reminded him of old cowboy movie tropes
I've always had the interpretation that Nope is about the exploitative film industry. Animals are abused and exploited in the films We see that despite Haywood ranch being an important part of Hollywood history it's on its last legs. The alien represents spectacle and everyone is basically scrambling and doing anything they can to capture it. From opportunistic TMZ reporters, to people like Jupe who have previously experienced trauma being used to capture spectacle to now being attempting to become the one capturing it. Jupe is much like Jordan Peele, in that he went from actor to "director" basically. Even Antler Hoslt, the veteran cinematographer, is doing everything he can to get the perfect shot. Notice how everyone in the film is technically a "crew member" both in what they do for a living which is setting up cameras, training animals, but also in their place in the plan of capturing Jean Jacket. It's not UNTIL Holst endangers everyone by selfishly going after the perfect shot, is when shit hits the fan. We hear about Great Directors all the time, like Stanley Kubrick, Tarantino, David Fincher, real hard asses who are meticulous but are acclaimed for their work. However we rarely hear about the crew, despite the fact that while the director might have a vision, their vision is nothing without the people who have the skill set to capture it. Which is why the real hero of the story isn't the visionary director, but it's OJ, who rides like a night in shining armor wearing his Scorpion King hoodie. The film criticizes the industry in how it looks over the people who are the most integral in creating it. At least that's what I've gained from it. The reason no one can look the spectacle in the eye is because it represents a camera, just like how you're not supposed to look an animal in the eye, when filming, unless you're breaking the fourth wall, you're not supposed to look in the camera lens.
I think that's what the title cards are about too. It's each horse they're using in the scene and splitting it up that way is focusing on the things we don't think about and to show respect to the animals that are usually so exploited. Most movies we don't even know their names bc we don't care about them like we do actors. Plus they were his dads horses and he's losing them one by one
@@whatever3145 I saw someone else say each card represents an animal that is exploited in the movie. I think all of them appear on film/are on a movie set in the universe of nope at some point.
i think that with someone like logan paul, this film would fall flat just because his whole career is based upon him being a spectacle. the themes of the movie are a criticism of everything that he has done in his career and to make himself "big"
My thoughts exactly lmao. Also seems like he might be insecure about his voice not being deep enough since he has such a huge issue with two characters having deep voices 🤣
I was just about to say that. He is the kind of person the movie is talking about who very passively watches entertainment and then is mad when he doesn’t get the deeper stuff.
@@lkeke35 Right? The movie is about you!!! The call is coming from inside the house!!! But I guess someone like Logan would be as oblivious as the tmz reporter, so 🤷🏿♀.
my thoughts on the animal chapters - the story is told with the focus not on the people who are dying, but on the animals (all of whom except Lucky die during their chapters). for example we get "Gordy" not on the opening, but during the part of the movie that shows Gordy's death.I think it's Peele trying to subvert the themes of the movie (exploitation of animals, human selfishness/arrogance) by naming and individualizing each of the animals that are treated as disposable objects, and who ultimately pay the price for being put into situations by humans where they are ultimately killed. it felt like a deliberate choice to remind the audience the story is really about the animals, not the people.
This is an excellent point! (And, appropriately, the one exception to the rule is Lucky.) Though honestly? Even if it were just an artistic flourish for the audience to interpret, the fact that it’s not something that comes through clearly to everyone on first viewing doesn’t make it *bad*.
That’s a very interesting point, as a vegan that’s how I feel everyday with the cognitive bias of people “loving animals “ and also consuming and exploiting them
@@straberryshinigami15g97 hi equestrian here, I see this misconception of riding hordses messes up their spines a lot and wanted to claritfy. Its safe to ride horses if you use a correctly fitted saddle (saddle fitters are trainned to remove/ adjust the shapes of saddles to be comfortable for a horse, your not supposed to just buy a saddle off the shelf and slap in on a horse) and you are in the correct weight range. Unfortunately rules around horses safety can be very lax which leads to dude ranches and other commercial riding centres not using correctly fitted saddles that do damage horses spines, making them lame and unridable. Its a huge problem in the equestrian community and an extremely valid concern as I deeply believe it counts as animal abuse. Id recommend donating or supporting local horse rescue ranches that can give a second home to these horses or that sponsor saddle fitting drives for underserved communities. Its a small nitpick but I wanted to let you know that your concerns are very valid, and that there is a safe and responsible way to ride horses since some equestrians get very defensive on this subject and probably wouldnt explain this.
I think Logan was expecting to be spoon fed the information which is not how Peele rolls at all. It’s okay not to understand but that doesn’t make a movie bad.
i was thinking back to Get Out in particular and while it’s still my favorite peele film, it’s the most obvious in its message. i think that’s why more people felt comfortable with the symbolism and themes, they were laid out as soon as the father said ‘i’d vote obama for a third term’ i’m really happy peele was able to build up to this incredibly symbolic film, it’s not for everyone but the ppl who get it Get It
@@morganburt2565 - I love a movie that expects me to do a bit of work to fully enjoy and understand it, but I also get that not everyone wants that. I think they're wrong, but I get it... ;)
I liked the film and it's themes like, "Humans assuming they have perfect control over animals, especially wild animals, are putting themselves and others in danger", "Tragedy is treated like a spectacle by the modern world, because we have increasingly blurred the lines between entertainment and real life", "Our ever-growing desire for extreme content means some people are desperate enough to monetize their own trauma"
Absolutely nailed it. The only one I would add is "By viewing these spectacles, we are helping to create a market for them, indirectly causing more people to try to capture similar spectacles". It is not a coincidence that looking at Jean Jacket is what gets you eaten.
I didn't think about waiting for the other shoe to drop! My gf thought the shoe was a "bad miracle" which feels solid to me. We also felt like it was an evocative way to show a traumatic experience from a child's perspective, like of course you would fixate on something unrelated to the violence when faced with an experience so terrifying.
I thought of it like time feeling like it stops when experiencing something traumatic or even after the trauma. It was also a great visual shortcut-- just seeing the shoe immediately makes the audience recall the accident
I really like the "waiting for the other shoe to drop" reading! I personally saw the shoe being up right as how Jupe saw it in his memory, seeing as that's how he has it displayed in his office. Like the shoe was never standing up right, that's just how he sees it in his mind due to the times he's looked at it in its case.
The upright shoe is the equivalent of the one house left standing after a tornado destroys a town. Most would say it was a miracle but it's actually just dumb luck. Jupe saw it as a sign at worst and an improbable distraction at best.
I haven’t been keeping up with their stuff for years but I just always don’t take their sins seriously. From what I remember most are just jokes or exaggerated nitpicks for the sake of filling up time. In other words, just for fun
Jupe was kinda a sad character to me. Yes, he was arrogant and thought he could train the UFO. But he was also traumatized and never dealt with his trauma. When asked about what happened, he talks instead about the SNL skit. He has a moment of vulnerability right before his show. Also I loved the character Angel and just think he should get more attention :)
Yeah it made me sad how Jupe had a whole museum about the accident in his office yet he never acknowledged how sad or scary the experience was to him. Seeing his memory as a child vs. how he talked about it to others gave me whiplash
Interestingly, if you listen to the words he uses to describe the SNL skit, he's actually describing what happened that day but removed by a layer, probably to protect his traumatised inner child. E.g. " He was killing!"
@@ladymanga6575 right, because as a skit they usually would filter all the real horrific elements of the tragedy and convert it into humor. Maybe it’s his way of coping, turning tragedy into comedy
He literally gives himself up for exploitation, he’s just like one of the animals but he’s a human in the state of desperately throwing himself into the mouth of the machine hoping it will bring him some validation , being looked at and affirmed in existence in value, but the machine only knows how to chew you up and spit you out and leave you with more and more trauma
Oh yeah, Jupe is a deeply tragic character. His whole life is centred around a horrible tragedy that happened to him as a child, and ultimately I think his new show is all about him trying to regain control of his life, a worthy goal that gets him and his entire family killed.
Nope is the kind of movie that gets better the longer you think about it and the more you hear about theories after watching. Not that it isn't enjoyable initially but I think it takes a while for part of it to click in people's minds.
Slasher Cat, I agree. I enjoyed the movie initially but I definitely needed time to process it and think about it before I could formulate my thoughts about it. I think I need to watch it again.
I saw Nope in the cinema with a friend and we chatted about it on and off via text chat for a couple of weeks afterwards. It's a really fun movie to analyse and debate.
I love that every “take” he had was something that would be easily understood with basic media literacy… (but also the way that media discourse has rotten our brains to make us think that every single thing on screen has a huge backstory that we have to be shown hasn’t helped anything)
Really good example of just that is people wanting a season 2 of Squid Game. I got so confused when I saw articles and comments saying that there were too many loose threads in season 1 that needed to be explained and I'm just like, 90% of those threads are just means by which the story propels itself they don't need an elaborate backstory to make sense. Big one I saw was people being like we need to know exactly why the cops plotline exists. And I'm like the show patently shows why the plot thread is there and how it ties with the greater capitalist critique the show is going for
i think the reason for the horse names as chapters was interesting was that each horse was being hunted down by the UFO during that chapter. the last chapter has the name that they gave the UFO since “Jean Jacket” the UFO is the new “horse” being hunted down. expect this time, the UFO is the creature being hunted down by the protagonists to get the picture. at least that’s how i interpreted it.
I have not seen the film...so this might be a dumb question. But how many are there? Could it be an allusion to the "four horseman of the apocalypse"? Just with what was described, and all of the destruction, that was my first thought that came to mind with the use of horse names.
Its giving respect to the animals. We usually never know the animals names in movies or notice the difference between one horse and another, so many movies w animals have caused so many animal deaths and usually that is swept under the rug. Also they're his dads horses and he's having to essentially sacrifice them to survive. The least we can do is know their names
I don’t understand how someone can not make the connection between the monkey and the alien. Both are about animals that aren’t understood by the majority of people around it, and eventually get provoked(the monkey by the noises on the set that day and the UFO by hunger and swallowing this fake horse and ribbon that was set up as a trap).
One of the ways the creature is misunderstood is that its genuinely not a UFO and by definition is a UAP. It's not an object, it's a alive so it's not a flying object it's an unidentified aerial phenomena. That whole conversation was foreshadowing but it's also about how something that seems like a trivial distinction from the outside can actually be very important. And that's kind of of subtly about how the language we use to describe different groups evolves and some protest because they don't understand the difference but people actually experiencing it understand the importance of the distinction.
@@laylagardner8728 like how conservatives want to define trans people by their version of sex and ignore the conversation about gender, expression, and changing sexual characteristics? Thats what I think of anyway.
@@Sophia-vk5bq omg, I'm mad at how much sense that makes within the themes of the movie. The viewers consuming the spectacle. The dehumanizing way that happens. The passive consumption of the viewers, the lack of understanding, the stillness of the cloud and how a UAP can't tell the difference between a real and a fake horse. I don't know how balloons can destroy transphobia, but you only just gave me that read. Maybe it'll come to me lol. Am I remembering that right? The UAP tried to eat a balloon? There's something there, cause a balloon also set off the chimp.
@@uardito1454 It is pretty silly that it can’t tell a real, biological animal from a fake one, but maybe if its either not intelligent or maybe even just lacking context it might explain it? I’m pretty sure it did but eating the ribbons gave it some kind of stomach pain that distressed it like the popping balloons distressed the monkey. And then it just explodes(in a much more literal way than the monkey lol) in another foreshadowed moment from the tv show. lol
Imma comment on his third point. The cinematographer that risks his own life to get a better shot makes sense to me. There are people who record natural disasters and risk their life to get good footage. People have died while studying volcanoes. I had a geology professor that said he would love to die in the field. (Not sure if he was 100% serious lol) Yes to the average person that is dramatic but to them the reward outweighs the risk. Nope wasn’t my favorite and I feel like it was a little long. Maybe it’s something I can revisit and appreciate fully later. With that being said it made sense. There are a lot of themes to unpack. Also the fact that Logan Paul couldn’t see how the monkey ties into the plot says a lot…
The cinematographer wasn't confusing to me at all. It made sense that he was more about "the shot" than the risk to his life. I did think that the camera might be spit out and would be still usable. Guess not. I enjoyed Nope while watching it, but I think I need to see it again because I needed time to process it all. Yeah, Logan Paul is an idiot cuz it's so obvious how the chimp storyline ties into the main plot.
I tried to explain this movie to some of my family members who thought similar things as Logan. I couldn't really put my finger on it but you explained it so well. People like Logan don't really want to watch movies they just what something in the background with flashy fight Scenes and bright colors. I have no problem with that but its frustrating when they then act like movies like nope are bottom of the barrel, dumb, and "doesn't make sense" . Like if you payed attention for 2 seconds maybe you would get it.
dude … the first thing my mother said while walking out of the theater was, “why didn’t they make it purple?” in reference to holst singing ‘one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater’. what the fuck? i’m convinced she didn’t watch the movie even though she stared at and sat through the whole two hours.
It's a weird recommend because it's better if you know nothing going in, but at the same time some people might roll their eyes when they realize it's "just" a ufo story midway through, and other people who showed up knowing it's a ufo story will be disappointed that it's not _really_ just a ufo story but it's actually doing its own weird thing. I can think of a lot of people being disappointed with it for not being what they thought it was. For me who showed up because the trailer was aloof spastic and chaotic, I showed up ready for the film to just do what it's gonna do and I had a good time
I didn't see anyone else mention it but there is a huge focus on eyes. Seeing the director edit footage of animal eyes made me think about how eye shape in animals tells a lot about whether it's a predator or prey animal as prey animals have eyes on the side of their face with wide pupils to survey the landscape while predators have front facing, round pupils to better focus on a target and depth perception. OJ put reflectors on his hoodie as false eye spots similar to tiger ears to deter being ambushed, we see the Gordy incident through Jude's eyes even though he could have had his co-star give her edition of the story, OJ struggles with eye contact which is a form of standing your ground. Motorcycle guy having only one eye spot just like the monster, the emphasis on getting footage.
The video of the eyes got me, too! Before the reveal about how to stay safe from the alien, I noticed the creature looked like a pupil. This movie really was so tidy. Now I describe it as a space sand dollar or a space jellyfish.
Also the mirrored helmet looks very similar to whatever tool the set crew used that spooked Lucky. Perfect example how Hollywood just refused to listen to a dangerous situation.
A camera is an eye and that parallel is a foundational symbol in the history of movie-making! In fact the way that Otis dies (a coin cutting thru his eye into his brain) feels like a reference to a famous surealist French silent film that shows a closeup of slitting an eye with a razor. Also on your next watch keep an eye out (ha) for all the things in the movie that are little dark holes (the UFO, the motorcyclist's helmet), which evoke the most basic kind of cameras, a pinhole :)
@@SmilingGrouch the fact that it was killed by plastic ! 💀 it's an environmentally conscious monster,like how they did Godzilla lol (OK maybe I'm reaching idk)
Bruh cinematographer guy is _not_ over the top. Eccentric libertarian geezers are built like that. I know several of them irl. Very difficult people to live with. They get along better in secluded lairs. Hence the cameraman having a secluded lair. This guy is literally my militant brother's spirit guide, and I laughed along with his demise because I just know that my bro would be like "THE IMPOSSIBLE SHOT! I love this guy." It's not made up or even exaggerated; you just won't meet them at a party is all.
I know they had to cut a lot for huge ass run time, even dropping entire storylines like the Mary Jo stalker and honestly I wish there's an extended cut when the movie comes out because there's *a lot* more we didn't get to see.
If theres anything ive learned about film and cinema is that everything (framing, lighting, images, dialogue, etc) has a purpose and meaning. Nope, to me, was much more cinematic and artistic than what i think a lot of people were expecting, especially in the day and age of blockbuster and the slew of marvel films that are getting pumped out. If anything, as you said, Logans questions and "critiques" are indicative of the passive viewing of movies. I really dont think he grasps symbolism or artistic imagery. I didnt understand Nope in its entirety the first view but i can understand that i have to think and analyze a little lol. That is what peele is seeking to do- to create a think piece. Hidden and symbolic meaning in his films arent new
The thing I'm so perplexed about when it comes to Logan's review is how he thought the movie was discordant. I think it's confusing, sure, but there is a lot of obvious connective tissue, like three main themes that appear over and over, themes that are hard to miss. It felt like poetry, rhyming, each stanza (chapter) using an overall continuous prose, but I couldn't quite make out what the poem was about. Obviously, I have a better understanding now, but saying that the movie is disconnected is kind of mind blowing to me.
It's so obvious too - the title cards tie together that all these beings are related as animals. I'm not great at getting themes in a movie the first time through, and I wasn't quite getting it until the title cards popped up and I was like OH DUH.
@@janine7384 Its definitely discordant. The movie make us feel empathy for the horse at the beginning because people are agitating it but the film is jubilant when they end up killing this amazing animal in the end. She gets her picture for Oprah and the film seems to want us to celebrate that and yet the film criticizes Oprah for exploiting a real life animal attack victim. I can go on and on.
@@Theyungcity23 But the Alien is a metaphor. So NOPE, you are not ment to be happy she "killed" it as an animal, but to see it as the camera to the spectacle being shattered. Also, the part about it implying they might get the money for their pictures ties to another theme of the movie, about compensation for those that are usually exploited in the spectacle but dont even get recognition (in the case of the movie, black people). So yeah, i disagree. The animal exploitation angle is one of its themes, but not the only one, so ofc it overlaps.
I didn't think this movie was slow paced at all, I thought it was dense with things happening, but that's because I think the meat of the movie isn't in the alien at all (well, the people and horse meat is), but rather in the exploration of how the exploitative pursuit of entertainment at all costs brings out violence and insanity. There's endless references to the history of Hollywood's treatment of people and animals, from the first man on film being an uncredited Black man; to repeated visual and aural references to The Wizard of Oz (infamous equally for the utopian iconography for the dangerous working conditions that saw several lead actors severely injured, wounded "Toto" and had its child star hooked on drugs to make it through filming); right up to their plan to catch the UFO almost being ruined by a TMZ photographer trying to capture the tragedy porn of a former child star being eaten by an alien.
loved this video as i’ve also been looking for excuses to talk about Nope any chance i can. that part where Gordy had stopped attacking everyone really stuck with me because you could see him come out of his rage realizing parts of what happened. him wiping the blood off of his face and trying to move the sister’s foot for example. by the time he reached Jup, the balloons were no longer popping. i agree that the table cloth blocking his eyes probably helped save him but i also think by then Gordy’s rage had passed as he gestured for the fist bump with Jup. also LOVED the detail of the balloon ending the fight between Jean Jacket and the farm being one of Jup. he got this complex thinking he has a way with animals and can “tame the beast” so to speak. amazing film and video!
Tbh I was immediately traumatized by the UFO corral show (well the end of it), and the inside of it, and the screams of the people dying as it hovered over the house. I felt suffocated and trapped and scared and it gave me a panic attack in the theater. Not to say I enjoyed that but when ppl say it wasn’t a scary movie, yeah ok 👌 also I was genuinely freaked by clouds when I walked to my car. I legit called my husband and laughed cuz it felt like how I assume people leaving jaws felt about open water. I would call that effective.
It’s the proper way to scare in horror movies. No cheap jumpscares or sudden loud noises, they make you immerse yourselves in the real horror like watching people getting digested alive and it’s thousand times scarier than any jumpscare there is
For me I really like the shoe. On my first viewing I didn't really get that it was supposed to be "the other shoe dropping" or anything like that, but instead it just felt so thematically correct in the context of the Gordy's home incident. I think for something to be a spectacle it has to be more than a tragedy, there has to be an element of unreality to it, even a bit of absurdity. Gordy's Home is horrifying in how kind of strange and ridiculous it is. There's a chimpanzee in a birthday hat running around on a sitcom set murdering people, like it's just so strange and absurd and unreal. So it just makes perfect sense that a shoe would fall in such a way it landed on it's end and stood up straight. When you think about it, a shoe getting tossed off and landing like that isn't impossible, just very unlikely. It feels unreal and absurd and yet it's happening. I feel like that's all of the tragedy in the film, it all kind of walks that line or unreality that creates spectacle.
whats crazy is that about two weeks after I saw that movie, something similar happened. I was in a hotel room in Mexico City (so random) and I was standing next to the bed bc I was reading some article about some secret Princess Diana expose (again: spectacle) when I realized I had to be somewhere in like 10 mins, so I threw my phone onto the bed, and it literally landed perfectly on itself. Like it was standing vertically- it was so crazy I had to take a pic of it on my iPad
Every time someone adds smth new to the shoe discourse it makes total sense and it has made this movie ten times better for me. I have to watch it again !!
One thing I noticed about the deep voiced filmographer guy was that earlier in the movie you see him watching a recording of a snake eating a tiger (I think?). And then right before he lets himself get eaten, he tells Angel that they don't deserve to profit off something that powerful. What I got from this is that he believes that the more powerful creature has the right to dominate the weaker.
There is definitely a way to critique this movie in a way that pays attention and understand film as a symbolic/artistic medium. It’s ok to not “understand” the film (especially after only one viewing) but Logan did NOT do that. And the fact that he still felt his opinions were worth a big ol’ Twitter thread that thousands of people would read, well, it kind of reinforces the observations that Peele was making.
I loved the film, but can definitely recognize it is the most distinct from the rest of Peele’s work. To me, Nope had a lot more abstract elements and messages than Get Out or Us. The other two had themes and messages that were pretty easy to understand whereas Nope takes some thinking and effort to make connections and fully understand what it was trying to say.
The guy who thought putting footage of a suicide victim on youtube was a good idea finding a movie confusing says nothing. I imagine most movies confuse him.
Specifically a movie that is about the horrors of filming a potentially dangerous situation for the spectacle of it - it's almost as if it's critiquing the type of guy who would film a corpse. Of course the movie confused him.
i loved that the tmz guy was faceless, made to run into a dangerous situation, desperate to get the scoop, essentially he was completely disposable. it reminds me a lot of the precarious situations journalists are made to be put in, the ones that they would get fired over or just miss a check they really need if they don’t agree. god i love this movie
I think the title cards are a way to clarify the theme: You get the first horses and start to believe "Oh, we're gonna see each horse get taken" and then the next one is "Gordy". So it's not about the horses dying. And at the end "Jean Jacket" is sort of the punchline to the setup. They are all just animals that can not be tamed. I'm a pretentious a'hole, I love title cards.
couple more theories of why the shoe is standing: 1. the idea of a “bad miracle” that’s mentioned in the movie. something that is so unlikely that you could call it a miracle, but it’s not a positive thing. like the alien. or like a plague. the shoe kept him distracted and he did not look Gordy in the eye, miraculously. 2. my favorite explanation tho. the idea of the shoe standing up is just how Jupe remembers it because he’s spent so much time now looking at the shoe displayed in its case. it’s turned even this violent, traumatic event into spectacle. a display piece.
What I read about the shoe in the opening scene is that it was another reason Jupe didn't look Gordie directly in the eye. In fact, it may even have been more helpful in that regard because it was unusual enough to grab his attention away from the attack. Like you said though, Jupe completely failed to understand how that all saved him, he just thinks of it as a trophy.
I didn't get the "other shoe to drop" symbolism when I watched it. I was thinking it was more just a focus point for Jupe so that he could block out the horror that was happening around him
I went by myself after class the other day. Everyone else was coupled up or in groups. Felt a little awkward. I loved Nope so so so much. Leaving afterwards most of the guys in those couples were complaining about the film- made me remember that being alone can be pretty great 😂😂😂
I was laughing at/obsessed with Holst (cinematographer) the whole time because I've met That Guy so many times since I'm an artist + went to college. I even saw some of myself in him, since I've definitely caught myself being super pretentious about art lol. For a lot of artists like that, dying for their art is often seen as not only a good thing, but as the ideal end to their life. I was caught off guard at first about people not understanding that, or just not 'getting' that character - I guess if you haven't met that type of pretentious art guy he'll come across even more exaggerated than he was from my point of view? But, yeah, he's not meant to be taken 100% seriously since he exists as a joking type of commentary
Reading your comment just reminded me of the photographer in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas during the motorcycle race, covered in dirt, can't see anything, yelling at HST that they need "TOTAL COVERAGE!" Same kind of character.
There's also these details from actual UFO reports, specific ones from ranches, so leaving the movie I was saying "THIS MOVIE IS FOR FUCKIN NERDS" in a loving way lol
Nope is one of those new movies you need to watch at least twice to catch some of the themes and meanings. I think one of the themes of this movie is about animal exploitation and trying to tame a dangerous animal.
Yours is the best explanation I've heard for the Gordy storyline. I understood the theme about Jupe capitalizing on his trauma and feeling like it made him special as well as wild animals lashing out when we men try to tame them. But I didn't get that he only survived because he wasn't at eye level with Gordy and I didn't fully understand how that tied in with the rest of the film. Everything makes sense now.
I really like the idea of the "waiting for the shoe to drop" and it's very plausible! I didn't understand the shoe either but my sister looked up a theory that I also think is worth considering which ties into the theme of spectacles. People can't help but fixate on spectacles and the shoe being able to stand right up is in itself, a spectacle. Even in Jupe's terror, he can't help but be impressed by the shoe.
Maybe it was me but I didn't take the "look in the eye" thing so literally. I don't think Jean Jacket only ate things that looked it in the eye, I think it just operated as an animal/predator - who when you look it in the eye (or do anything to taunt it) gets pissed. Same thing with Gordy- I'm sure in the course of the filming of the show that Jupe looked him in the eye - I think he was just close with the animal and treated him with respect so when Gordy snapped he was able to not see him as a threat and express his rage at being treated like a toy on the little boy. I think reducing it to just looking in the eye is a little over simplifying.
Agreed. It has a lot to do with the persons general behavior atm, not only the eyes. Like Jupe stayed quiet, didn't move, didn't try to yell/control Gordy + the balloons had stopped popping so Gordy's rage diminished (since it was justifiably triggered by the sounds). Funny how Jupe didn't understand why he survived and later did the opposite to the "UFO" (tried to control it) sealing his death.
2:15 I'm not a Psych Horror connoisseur, but I am a Psych Horror snob. When someone says a movie that involves thinking and paying attention is bad because it's confusing, I just immediately assume it's them admitting their mental capacity for such media is limited 🤷 Just say you didnt get it and not for you.
I'm just gonna add RE: the horse chapter names, a common thread in Peele's films is an empathy for the suffering of animals. In Get Out, it's the dying deer. In Us, the rabbits. And in Nope, the horses. I've noticed lingering shots on animals that are suffering- especially on the face and eyes- in all three films. In Nope, Kaluuya's character's understanding and appreciation of animals as beings, not just things (like simple movie props) is both a cause of his business troubles but ultimately the reason he prevails in the end. I believe the chapters being named after the animals is an invitation for us to empathise with them and see the film as their story too. I agree that this could have been developed further, however. (SPOILERS) I also believe that a stronger and more daring ending would have been not to kill Jean Jacket at all. We are asked to view the UFO as an animal with emotions and drives. But animals are also innocents. It was not right to put Gordy in a TV show, and it was not right to kill him for reacting to the balloons in the way he did. It would be interesting to see a version of this story where the characters decide that it isn't right to kill a unique creature simply because it is hungry and territorial. But a lot more difficult to write, probably.
about the ending, I actually disagree w/ you there, although I do agree on your take in general. For me, they kind of had to kill jean jacket the same way Gordy had to die?? if that makes sense? Because when animals, especially trained animals injure humans, we generally put them down. Even if it was due to human error. So, I think it made sense because it was pointing out that humans put animals down or get rid of them when they lash out, even if it was the human's fault. Like when Lucky "attacked" but didn't injure anyone, Lucky was sold. (Though we know in this case it was because OJ can't afford to keep Lucky after Lucky lashed out during the job.) I think it was just hammering home the concept of the movie and saying that ppl will use animals and other ppl until they stop doing exactly what they want, even if what they want is horrible and against what the animals or person's "rules" are. And when people are done w/ that person or animal they are tossed aside or in dangerous animal's cases, put down if that makes any sense. (If not feel free to correct or ignore me :) )
I also interpreted the shoe as something just that cannot be explained. A shoe standing upright in the middle of pure chaos doesn't make any sense, as well as the scene this traumatic couldn't make sense for young Jupe, and why he was not killed too and accepted by Gordy. He is obviously deeply traumatized, he keeps this shoe as a memento in his own personel museum (that he sells tours to, but nobody knows it's significant of the shoe except him), he designs alien costumes to his kids that even looks like the weird shapes of the camera of the set. The UFO is him taking ultimate control of a situation beyond comprehension, like he couldn't when he was a child. This movie has a big "STOP FUCKING WITH ANIMALS" subtitles for me, at least.
I'm not usually one for the music trying to hype me up for the action scene. Usually I'm like "ew, music, go away". But even then OJ riding past the balloons with the shadow right behind him and the funky cowboy beat kicks into full blast was incredibly effective on me. THIS IS THE CORRECT SONG CHOICE FOR MY BODY RIGHT NOW.
I got to the cinema at least once a month. Aside from Everything Everywhere All at Once, I have never had a movie theater experience impact me as much as Nope. It was so entertaining and the themes/motifs were so layered, it was almost overwhelming! It gave me a lot to think about and I asked lots of questions. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And personally I think that’s the effect all moviemakers should try to achieve.
with the shoe part, I've personally drawn connections between the impossible odds of that and the motif of the concepts of "bad miracles" and it being a through line with each horrible event that happens in the film. A terrible thing happening all around us while we focus on this incredible little oddity. like a nickel hitting a man in the eye, and only focusing on the coin, not the horrific death
That other shoe to drop thing is brilliant. I think there was also a Gordy chapter, so I think chapters were what you said about there being recurring animal rage themes, each chapter being a different story
i feel kind of bad laughing at Logan Paul's Nope hot takes, because they do kind of read like baby's first media analysis and maybe they represent an earnest effort?? but then in the first damn tweet he basically confirms he wasn't paying enough attention to catch even the most basic exposition in the film, like... you can't just not watch the movie and then say "plot hole ding" because you didn't understand it LMAO i don't consider myself to be very quick on the uptake when it comes to noticing themes and foreshadowing in media, but i've grown to really enjoy practicing, and it IS something you can get better at with practice! but sometimes you have to be willing to meet a movie halfway if you want to be able to get anything out of it. i loved Nope, and imo it has a LOT to offer from just sitting with it and thinking about it after viewing. Steven Yeun's character in particular was so fascinating to me; one of the moments that stuck with me the most was immediately before the star lasso experience, when we come back from the Gordy's Home taping flashback to see Jupe staring off into space, but instead of looking like a man reliving the worst day of his life, he looks almost wistful, like this is a treasured memory for him. that and the callback to the balloons triggering Gordy's rampage, and a balloon of Jupe leading to the UFO's destruction at the end... chef's kiss
I interpreted the title cards as a kind of tribute to the named animals (aside from Lucky, who survived). It feels like a way of credit being given to the animals that are used, exploited, and ultimately killed for human entertainment, kinda like the whole film is a sort of memorial.
I watched the film with a friend who sometimes asked questions during the quiet moments, and, legit, I put together the "Jupe is repeating the hubris that destroyed the television show" thing as the horse came out, and I probably wouldn't have if my friend hadn't asked me
Understanding Nope is partly based on catching context clues/subtlety, not taking everything at face value, drawing parallels between events, and listening. Also being able to discern between what to take seriously and what to not. It’s not surprising the movie flew over his head Also, Jupe was a character I actually had to think about after the film to understand why he made those decisions and why we had to get a backstory for him. It was really easy to think he was just a dumb guy looking for fame and profit at any expense and Jordan Peele could have made him a shallower character like that. Instead we get a pretty good parallel between the chimp and BlueJeans. An outsider looking at that chimp attack understands how fortunate Jupe was, but Jupe never realized how close to death/disfigurement he actually was the whole time he was on set with Gordy (played by 3 diff chimps). Instead the attack makes him believe that he’s special, probably cementing what he people told him as a child star (Srsly I should have known he wasn’t thinking right when he tried to fist bump the bloody chimp fist smh, he was a kid but he JUST saw that chimp pop off and start eating and beating faces. It’s also not recommended at all to extend one of your limbs during an attack by a large primate because they can rip it off) That ignorance follows him into his adult life where he still doesn’t realize how dangerous the ‘UFO’/BlueJeans actually is, despite eating large horses and not being able to communicate with it. Plus he got lucky again because BlueJeans didn’t eat him the whole time he thinks he’s ‘training’ it, when he was just feeding it. He even instructs people to sit still and keep watching (the same way he thinks he survived the Gordy attack) and it’s the exact opposite wrong thing to do at the moment (again the same wrong things to do for a Gordy situation which is to not make eye contact and keep your distance). Even all the warning signs like BlueJeans showing up earlier than usual and making threatening motions don’t shake him from believing he’s safe. Jupiter’s Claim (to fame) ends with tragedy because Jupe majorly misinterpreted the situation and the animals. Instead of a stupid character, you understand that it’s actually his arrogance and desperation that ends his life and his family’s and keeps him from ever understanding what really happened with Gordy and BlueJeans
Logan not understanding the point of the guy on the motorcycle...Logan...his head is literally a mirror...and it is reflecting YOU! You personally, Logan! LOGAN, YOU FILMED A CORPSE!! HOW DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS!!
To me the best way to describe how Gordy relates to the film(especially to people who don’t get it) is that he is the catalyst to the events transpiring the way they did. If it wasn’t for the attack Jupe wouldn’t have tried to tame the UFO, and the UFO probably wouldn’t have flipped out in the way it did.
Great video! I also really liked the movie, though I guess I came away with a slightly different take on message of the movie. OJ has a line in the movie about how every animal has rules, and kind of implies that even trained animals will revolt against people who break those rules. I took that to be what connected Lucky, the UFO, and Gordy. Gordy was a trained animal, but he was treated like a prop that you could do anything with and there was a backlash for that. Same with Lucky when he was being trained for the set of that Hollywood movie, nobody cared if the horse was comfortable and a person got hurt, and same for the UFO. Jute thought he understood the UFO as something that he had somehow trained because things worked out fine for months, but then he lined up a bunch of people and essentially told them to look up at a sideshow freak, which even if the UFO wasnt interpreting anything that looked at it as food, would freak out some animals. I came away from the movie seeing it as advocating for respect for animals and to not treat them like things to be gawked at and exploited. That's not the only message in the movie, but that's the one that resonated with me the most off of one viewing.
Oh yeah totally, especially since one of the scariest moments (was actually the scariest for me lol) isn’t something supernatural but a man made incident. And the way we had to sit in that scene TWICE. It’s horrifying to watch Gordy’s confusion when he can finally calm down because he immediately goes back to his training just to be killed. Ugh breaks my heart
This might just be Jordan Peele's most layered movie yet and it's delivered in a way that forces you to work to find out what he wants to tell you instead of handing it on a plate, even moreso than his previous movies. You got animal exploitation subjects, the cost of searching for the ultimate spectacle, commentary on childhood fame, the dillema of family inheritance, deconstruction of UFO phenomenons, etc. In time this might just grow to be my favorite film of his so far but it's just hard to top Get Out lol
I was on the fence the first time I watched it, but I couldn't stop thinking about it after I left the theater. I'll definitely be seeing it again. The issue I have is that Jupe and the alien didn't deserve to die. Jupe went through an extreme trauma as a child (watching a chimp maim and kill the entire cast). Also, his arrogance and desperation are a result of the position he was put in as a tokenized child actor. Casting an asian kid and a chimp as best friends in a white family sitcom was done for spectacle. I would've liked to see him work through that trauma and find a way to release the alien, not kill it, and have some redemption at the end. Also, the movie is aligning the alien with Gordy, a "trained" animal that ultimately acted in its own nature when provoked. So, why kill the alien in the end and frame it as something positive? That might be a hot take 😂
I liked Jupe as a character too, and totally read into tokenization and being a model minority as part of his character. But as tragic as his death was, I feel there was a point to it and that he kinda had it coming. Jupe had no issues with exploiting the Haywood family as well as the multiple horses he bought purchased from them. The Haywoods also dealt with tokenism and racism in the movie. They were going through quite the rough patch and trauma as well. However Jupe had no problem with destroying their livelihoods, dreams and what they cared about. He was even trying to buy the ranch dispite O.J's "no". There is even a scene with his kids trying to spook them out of their own stable. Trying to scare them off their land. The Haywoods where simply a stepping stone for Jupe to reach J.J. So it shouldn't be a surprise that stepping on others to get a leg up can eventually lead to your downfall.
@@sweetpary I get that desire (Stephen Yeun is woefully underused in everything he's ever been in), but not all of us will have that moment before we die .
Im not the best at picking up themes and meanings but that does not stop me from trying or even enjoying the movie. I also love after the movie where I get to watch videos about theories.
I really liked the theme of the family being descendants from the jockey about whom we "know nothing about" but who is immortalized in this short with the horse, even though we know shit all about him and the context. It was sprinkled everywhere and was loving it while watching. It prompted you to ask if history was repeating itself, even down to it being analog cameras, and the seeking of stardom or proof. But also, how the jockey is unnamed and it's just "that jockey", "that family", while the white artist by end doesn't give a fuck about anything but his obsession's lol. And yeah, i thought the themes were super neatly tied, completely agree with your review. i found it hilarious and very thought provoking, but hey, who knows, i say this as an art graduate myself, so i don't know, maybe for others it felt a little "alien" lol. I'll leave now.
What annoys me is how people just go out and say nothing made sense and not bother to even search it up. I'm someone who can be bad at analysing, such as with the Gordy scene and it's full connection to the rest of the plot, but it took me 5 seconds to type it into Google and boom there's your answer! If you leave the film and think that it's just not your thing then that's fair enough, but if you believe you can be a full on critic like Logan is without doing some research then please get a grip. I fucking loved this film even without getting the full message at first, if you haven't seen it I fully recommend! The tension is absolutely phenomenal and there's some terrifying scenes :)
The question is, has Logan Paul ever been right about something? not watching the video because I haven't seen nope yet and am super excited for it. kthnxbye
I believe the chapters' names are a way to make it obvious that the trained horses, gordy and the jean jacket are in the same category. Ultimately wild animals that can't be really completely controled by their tamers. (Since every horse in their respective chapter fails to follow orders, leading many of them to death, but even Lucky, who stays in the glass cage while OJ tries to call her). This choice of titles feels to me like a big "if you didn't make the connection already, here it is:"
I went and saw Nope with my friend a couple weeks ago. I hadn't seen a movie in theaters since seeing Rise of Skywalker on New Years of 2019/2020. So this was my first theater experience in over 2 and a half years. And it was one of the best movie experiences I've had in my life. I study film, I want to make movies some day and Nope is exactly the kind of movie I want to make. I feel like a lot of media layely has reverted back to how things were in the 30s, 40s, and 50s where everything is spelled out for the viewer because they're not smart enough to understand anything implied. I think this in turn is making audiences expect to have everything explained to them instead of thinking about the meaning. I've been looking at eastern media for a while now (Eastern European and Asian) and noticing that so much of it is more implicit, that they don't hold the viewer/player's hand to tell them what everything means, but it's a journey that the viewer/player goes on to find the meaning themselves. I feel like that's what Nope did. It took us on a journey to figure the story out with the characters.
The reason the movie has chapters named after the animals is because Jordan is trying to get across that they're just as important, if not more important, than the people around them who wish to exploit them in some way. He wants you to see the animals as characters. If he hadn't done that you may not have remembered any of the animals names at all.
I truly don't understand anyone who doesn't see this as a work of genius. It is so unique and such a brilliant examination of our ruthless, self-destructive spectacle-obsessed modern world. US was probably my favorite with its examination of class divides, but NOPE plays on every genre expectation and then blows them all up in the best way.
I feel like nope is kinda almost like Donnie darko in the way of it not being fast paced or like a lot of action it's more so a lot of different shit going on that really requires you to fully pay attention and watching it again you get new things everytime you watch it again there's a lot of thought put into every aspect of the movie
I didn't find the chapters being named after the horses to be too random. Each chapter is named after the featured animal. At first, the horses who get eaten. At the end, the last chapter is Jean Jacket, which is the name they give the alien.
I like how he refers to it as a UFO instead of UAP like Angel pointed out in the movie. Especially since it was confirmed to be an animal, not an object as first speculated
Pepper is so adorable! Chihuahua mixes always have the most expressive and big eyes and I love them so much. Also, my God I am so tired of people refusing to do the most basic of media analysis when watching movies without cookie cutter plots. Like, you don't have to enjoy that type of media, but if you're gonna put out a "review," you should at least try to not embarass your poor high school English teacher.
I interpreted the Horse Chapter titles as an indicator of the Victim of each section. This is subverted for the first time in Gordy's chapter given that it is named after the chimp, though the chimp is killed. Lucky subverts his chapter heading by surviving the incident when they were to be sacrificed and eaten. Jean Jacket's chapter comes after the alien is given that as a nick name. This infers that the alien will die at the end. At least that's how I interpret the chapter headings. Either way great video as always.
I saw the artistic guy take a mystery pill and the tech guy with him gave a look that gave he's taking some serious meds kinda vibe. That's probably why people have the terminally ill theory. A big artistic statement before his inevitable and impending death
the father rambles the names of the horses and other things while he is dying in the car. i have only seen it once so i don't remember everything he says, but thats why the chapters are called that i guess. in this order.
I also really loved this movie! Everything you mentioned I pretty much figured out on my first viewing except the shoe thing which is really cool! So for those that didn't figure out the themes, I hope they are able to piece it together on other viewings or from videos like this one.
When I watched Nope, I thought that the message of the film was just that animal extortion will always have its consequences because a wild animal will always be a wild animal. After watching your video, I've learned so much more. This is definitely one of my favorite movies this year and I love it way more than Suicide Squad 2
The TMZ guy point is so ridiculous because like, he wasn’t set up for a “grand reveal”??? He was the wrench in the climax, obviously he was gonna die immediately. If the grand reveal was because he was wearing a helmet, that just proves Logan wasn’t paying attention. They showed a mirror being a trigger for Lucky TWICE, and it’s already been established that the she and the alien have the same trigger. Like… it wasn’t subtle, dude. The part that I was happiest about, though, was Angel not dying, and not dying because he did something very smart. He wasn’t on the cover and I didn’t see him mentioned much before the movie, so I just assumed he’d die with the cinematographer. But he was smart, so he didn’t!
The dead meat podcast talked about the shoe too and they had the idea of how jupe focused on it and obsessed with it because this miraculous thing he focused on saved his life and added to what made him feel lucky and special. Its his "bad miracle" that Oj and Em talk about. And him keeping it is his was of reminding himself of what he believes is his destiny. But your explanation is great too. I think both work really well.
That's a great take about paying attention! I love it for that, I saw it at Alamo Drafthouse and kept saying "AHA!" when I figured out why certain things were included in the preshow. Hilarious that he didn't see how the chimp and ufo are related lol
I think the shoe is ambiguous on perpose, I always thought it was the representation of a “bad miracle” “the other shoe dropping” also makes sense, someone said it’s just that way because that’s how it’s displayed in Jupes office and how he visualizes the memory. Not everything has to have a clear explanation!
1) There is nothing to indicate that ANYONE was killed by Gordy on the TV set. Just because someone is beaten unconscious doesn't mean they die (yet). There ARE people who survive some pretty awful assaults and live. 2) The upright shoe in the Gordy rampage scene was an indication of Jupe's skewed recall of the rampage, where past and present are melted a bit together...the shoe on the set is in the same position as it is in the glass case in Jupe's TV collectibles room. It wasn't sitting upright in any environment, EXCEPT in Jupe's mind. 3) The movie was divided into chapters so you could see how separate events (like the various animals) were somehow connected to the overall story. Otherwise, an excellent critique!
My only two counterarguments here are the shoe thing with Jupe and the chapter titles. With the shoe, the interpretation I found that I really liked was that the shoe was in the same position as how it's displayed in the future, and represents how Jupe has warped his own memories of the incident over time because of the way he commemorates and sort of white washes a traumatic event. He's spent so many years talking it up and making jokes and seeing the bloodstained shoe stood up like that that it's starting to project backwards onto his actual memories. With the title cards, I found it to be a direct engagement with the tendency in Hollywood to view animals as props rather than living beings. It's easy to forget the horror of what Jupe was really doing, feeding live horses to an unknown entity, in the face of the spectacle that is the UFO, but those horses were important and loved by OJ, and he had every intention of getting them back. Each horse had a name and personality and temperament, and they were just thoughtlessly sacrificed. Similar to Gordie and the UFO, actually: their needs and wants and boundaries were willfully ignored in favor of the spectacle, and when they lashed out they were dismissed, mocked, demonized, or gotten rid of.
I can't finish this video yet because I haven't seen the movie and I want to avoid spoilers. All I want to contribute is that your dog is adorable and I would love to see more of her.
I struggled to pull the storylines together as someone who went to watch it once, casually (even though I still really enjoyed it). This clarified everything! Thanks ☺️
I hate that people are so invested in the idea that everything has to be explained or make perfect sense (thanks a lot cinema sins) that they forget that symbolism is a thing? The purpose of cosmic horror, which Nope is in the vein of, is that we don’t understand what is happening and so we are scared. I get it if you’re jaded by your middle and high school English classes or symbolic movies aren’t your thing, but “not getting” a movie doesn’t inherently make it bad.
And yet white boys are always going on about how great inception is even though that's pretty ambiguous too.
Well said.
Yeah I got to his first complaint and it's literally just a cinemasins line
For what it's worth, I follow some of the CinemaSins writers on Twitter and I know for a fact they already agree with you. And the ones who have already seen Nope said they really like it.
Haven't seen movie yet, but can agree that people treat art in a very consumerist one-way-street/ one-way flow, as a product or as definitive answer in the end (a yes or no) or told what and how to think- cinema is reflective of this.
And the Paul guy is reflective of this reductive thinking. Its terrible to think of his platform and how young ppl in particular are influenced by him.
Logan Paul literally went to the woods of Japan to get a shot that would temporarily ruin him. The movie is about him, and that fact went straight over his head.
I was looking for this comment. Logan Paul was literally the TMZ guy!! Of course he didn't get it
Egggggzactly!!
Hope it ruined him eternally
Yep he is an idiot and I just the movie it was great!!
it's not that it went over his head, it's that he realizes the movie is directly criticizing people like HIM, and he doesn't like that
I personally love the fact that everyone in this movie was really concerned with capturing footage above all else. I feel like it represents a lot of modern values our society has. That's why the guy on the motorbike is so hilarious. "Yeah I'm about to die, but how can I profit off of this in my final moments?"
Pretty ironic that Logan Paul, a man who made fun of a dead person for "content", doesn't like this movie
I loved how it's implied they killed the alien at the end but all anyone cared about is the picture
While some characters were motivated by profit, the plot of that filmmaker and his attempt to capture his best work was definitely motivated by passion for the arts rather than profit. I felt like that was a pretty moving scene.
@@PimPim4 it's sort of comedic in a way tho that he valued being an "auteur" more than his life. A friend of mine who watched the movie also said it reminded him of old cowboy movie tropes
He was more concerned with having a pic or vid of him being flung out of his bike taken than getting himself to safety when OJ urged to save him lol
I've always had the interpretation that Nope is about the exploitative film industry.
Animals are abused and exploited in the films
We see that despite Haywood ranch being an important part of Hollywood history it's on its last legs.
The alien represents spectacle and everyone is basically scrambling and doing anything they can to capture it. From opportunistic TMZ reporters, to people like Jupe who have previously experienced trauma being used to capture spectacle to now being attempting to become the one capturing it. Jupe is much like Jordan Peele, in that he went from actor to "director" basically.
Even Antler Hoslt, the veteran cinematographer, is doing everything he can to get the perfect shot. Notice how everyone in the film is technically a "crew member" both in what they do for a living which is setting up cameras, training animals, but also in their place in the plan of capturing Jean Jacket.
It's not UNTIL Holst endangers everyone by selfishly going after the perfect shot, is when shit hits the fan. We hear about Great Directors all the time, like Stanley Kubrick, Tarantino, David Fincher, real hard asses who are meticulous but are acclaimed for their work.
However we rarely hear about the crew, despite the fact that while the director might have a vision, their vision is nothing without the people who have the skill set to capture it. Which is why the real hero of the story isn't the visionary director, but it's OJ, who rides like a night in shining armor wearing his Scorpion King hoodie.
The film criticizes the industry in how it looks over the people who are the most integral in creating it. At least that's what I've gained from it.
The reason no one can look the spectacle in the eye is because it represents a camera, just like how you're not supposed to look an animal in the eye, when filming, unless you're breaking the fourth wall, you're not supposed to look in the camera lens.
I like your thoughts!
To add to your interpretation, Jean Jacket literally “chews up and spits out” a washed up star (and his audience).
I think that's what the title cards are about too. It's each horse they're using in the scene and splitting it up that way is focusing on the things we don't think about and to show respect to the animals that are usually so exploited. Most movies we don't even know their names bc we don't care about them like we do actors. Plus they were his dads horses and he's losing them one by one
@@whatever3145 I saw someone else say each card represents an animal that is exploited in the movie. I think all of them appear on film/are on a movie set in the universe of nope at some point.
i really appreciate this interpretation!! thank you
And then at the end when Jean Jacket reverts to its true form, and its eye literally looks like a camera lens!
i think that with someone like logan paul, this film would fall flat just because his whole career is based upon him being a spectacle. the themes of the movie are a criticism of everything that he has done in his career and to make himself "big"
lol def hit a nerve
He's just mad because he'd be the guy on the motorcycle. The movie was awesome. Thank you for your analysis. You pointed out some things I missed.
The irony that he doesn't recognize himself in the movie 😂😂😂
And the helmet is just like the ball that scared Lucky the horse. That's when you're suppose to make the connection
My thoughts exactly lmao. Also seems like he might be insecure about his voice not being deep enough since he has such a huge issue with two characters having deep voices 🤣
@@TheFrdw Plus, with the black circle on the helmet, it looks like a staring eye.
for sure that would've been him. I remember perfectly well when Logan Paul made a spectacle of something he shouldn't have.
i love to see everyone dunking on logan for missing the point
quite ironic as well, considered he's the kind of person the movie critiques.
I was just about to say that. He is the kind of person the movie is talking about who very passively watches entertainment and then is mad when he doesn’t get the deeper stuff.
@@lkeke35 Right? The movie is about you!!! The call is coming from inside the house!!! But I guess someone like Logan would be as oblivious as the tmz reporter, so 🤷🏿♀.
"I'm in this movie and I don't like it!" 😤 vibes most certainly.
And its the fact that he's in nothing but bad movies🤭but criticizes this one? I'm confused
Logan Paul is like one of those animals that can’t recognize himself in a mirror
my thoughts on the animal chapters - the story is told with the focus not on the people who are dying, but on the animals (all of whom except Lucky die during their chapters). for example we get "Gordy" not on the opening, but during the part of the movie that shows Gordy's death.I think it's Peele trying to subvert the themes of the movie (exploitation of animals, human selfishness/arrogance) by naming and individualizing each of the animals that are treated as disposable objects, and who ultimately pay the price for being put into situations by humans where they are ultimately killed. it felt like a deliberate choice to remind the audience the story is really about the animals, not the people.
The last chapter is even "Jean Jacket" because that's what they call the UFO, and it ultimately has the same fate as the other wild animals.
This is an excellent point! (And, appropriately, the one exception to the rule is Lucky.) Though honestly? Even if it were just an artistic flourish for the audience to interpret, the fact that it’s not something that comes through clearly to everyone on first viewing doesn’t make it *bad*.
That’s a very interesting point, as a vegan that’s how I feel everyday with the cognitive bias of people “loving animals “ and also consuming and exploiting them
Also riding horses messes up their spine :(
@@straberryshinigami15g97 hi equestrian here, I see this misconception of riding hordses messes up their spines a lot and wanted to claritfy. Its safe to ride horses if you use a correctly fitted saddle (saddle fitters are trainned to remove/ adjust the shapes of saddles to be comfortable for a horse, your not supposed to just buy a saddle off the shelf and slap in on a horse) and you are in the correct weight range. Unfortunately rules around horses safety can be very lax which leads to dude ranches and other commercial riding centres not using correctly fitted saddles that do damage horses spines, making them lame and unridable. Its a huge problem in the equestrian community and an extremely valid concern as I deeply believe it counts as animal abuse. Id recommend donating or supporting local horse rescue ranches that can give a second home to these horses or that sponsor saddle fitting drives for underserved communities. Its a small nitpick but I wanted to let you know that your concerns are very valid, and that there is a safe and responsible way to ride horses since some equestrians get very defensive on this subject and probably wouldnt explain this.
I think Logan was expecting to be spoon fed the information which is not how Peele rolls at all. It’s okay not to understand but that doesn’t make a movie bad.
i was thinking back to Get Out in particular and while it’s still my favorite peele film, it’s the most obvious in its message. i think that’s why more people felt comfortable with the symbolism and themes, they were laid out as soon as the father said ‘i’d vote obama for a third term’
i’m really happy peele was able to build up to this incredibly symbolic film, it’s not for everyone but the ppl who get it Get It
@@morganburt2565 - I love a movie that expects me to do a bit of work to fully enjoy and understand it, but I also get that not everyone wants that. I think they're wrong, but I get it... ;)
I liked the film and it's themes like, "Humans assuming they have perfect control over animals, especially wild animals, are putting themselves and others in danger", "Tragedy is treated like a spectacle by the modern world, because we have increasingly blurred the lines between entertainment and real life", "Our ever-growing desire for extreme content means some people are desperate enough to monetize their own trauma"
"how to retweet a yt comment"
Absolutely nailed it. The only one I would add is "By viewing these spectacles, we are helping to create a market for them, indirectly causing more people to try to capture similar spectacles". It is not a coincidence that looking at Jean Jacket is what gets you eaten.
I didn't think about waiting for the other shoe to drop! My gf thought the shoe was a "bad miracle" which feels solid to me. We also felt like it was an evocative way to show a traumatic experience from a child's perspective, like of course you would fixate on something unrelated to the violence when faced with an experience so terrifying.
i thought the shoe meant how some people will ignore the terror happening and just watch a spectacle like a shoe standing up
That’s what I thought too! I like the other shoe to drop interpretation.
I thought of it like time feeling like it stops when experiencing something traumatic or even after the trauma. It was also a great visual shortcut-- just seeing the shoe immediately makes the audience recall the accident
I really like the "waiting for the other shoe to drop" reading!
I personally saw the shoe being up right as how Jupe saw it in his memory, seeing as that's how he has it displayed in his office. Like the shoe was never standing up right, that's just how he sees it in his mind due to the times he's looked at it in its case.
The upright shoe is the equivalent of the one house left standing after a tornado destroys a town. Most would say it was a miracle but it's actually just dumb luck. Jupe saw it as a sign at worst and an improbable distraction at best.
I blame cinema sins for starting this kind of "criticism."
Its definitely a contributing effort of people on the internet wanting explanations for everything they see instead of interpreting it as their own
I haven’t been keeping up with their stuff for years but I just always don’t take their sins seriously. From what I remember most are just jokes or exaggerated nitpicks for the sake of filling up time. In other words, just for fun
@@rhetiq9989 for something to be a joke, it has to be funny to begin with
Jupe was kinda a sad character to me. Yes, he was arrogant and thought he could train the UFO. But he was also traumatized and never dealt with his trauma. When asked about what happened, he talks instead about the SNL skit. He has a moment of vulnerability right before his show.
Also I loved the character Angel and just think he should get more attention :)
Yeah it made me sad how Jupe had a whole museum about the accident in his office yet he never acknowledged how sad or scary the experience was to him. Seeing his memory as a child vs. how he talked about it to others gave me whiplash
Interestingly, if you listen to the words he uses to describe the SNL skit, he's actually describing what happened that day but removed by a layer, probably to protect his traumatised inner child. E.g. " He was killing!"
@@ladymanga6575 right, because as a skit they usually would filter all the real horrific elements of the tragedy and convert it into humor. Maybe it’s his way of coping, turning tragedy into comedy
He literally gives himself up for exploitation, he’s just like one of the animals but he’s a human in the state of desperately throwing himself into the mouth of the machine hoping it will bring him some validation , being looked at and affirmed in existence in value, but the machine only knows how to chew you up and spit you out and leave you with more and more trauma
Oh yeah, Jupe is a deeply tragic character. His whole life is centred around a horrible tragedy that happened to him as a child, and ultimately I think his new show is all about him trying to regain control of his life, a worthy goal that gets him and his entire family killed.
Nope is the kind of movie that gets better the longer you think about it and the more you hear about theories after watching. Not that it isn't enjoyable initially but I think it takes a while for part of it to click in people's minds.
US is like that too, for me at least.
Slasher Cat, I agree. I enjoyed the movie initially but I definitely needed time to process it and think about it before I could formulate my thoughts about it. I think I need to watch it again.
I saw Nope in the cinema with a friend and we chatted about it on and off via text chat for a couple of weeks afterwards. It's a really fun movie to analyse and debate.
I love that every “take” he had was something that would be easily understood with basic media literacy… (but also the way that media discourse has rotten our brains to make us think that every single thing on screen has a huge backstory that we have to be shown hasn’t helped anything)
Really good example of just that is people wanting a season 2 of Squid Game. I got so confused when I saw articles and comments saying that there were too many loose threads in season 1 that needed to be explained and I'm just like, 90% of those threads are just means by which the story propels itself they don't need an elaborate backstory to make sense.
Big one I saw was people being like we need to know exactly why the cops plotline exists. And I'm like the show patently shows why the plot thread is there and how it ties with the greater capitalist critique the show is going for
Logan made a movie with king Bach…. And nope is the worst movie he’s seen. So he’s not watching his own stuff
🤭
I can relate. I wouldn’t watch his stuff either.
I mean, if I were Logan Paul I wouldn't watch my own movies either.
i think the reason for the horse names as chapters was interesting was that each horse was being hunted down by the UFO during that chapter. the last chapter has the name that they gave the UFO since “Jean Jacket” the UFO is the new “horse” being hunted down. expect this time, the UFO is the creature being hunted down by the protagonists to get the picture. at least that’s how i interpreted it.
but one of the chapter names is "Gordy" who is not a horse, so that doesnt really make sense
@@botanicalitus4194 because it showed Gordys backstory with him ultimately getting shot so technically he was "hunted down"
I have not seen the film...so this might be a dumb question. But how many are there? Could it be an allusion to the "four horseman of the apocalypse"? Just with what was described, and all of the destruction, that was my first thought that came to mind with the use of horse names.
@@whiskeykitty2196 no
Its giving respect to the animals. We usually never know the animals names in movies or notice the difference between one horse and another, so many movies w animals have caused so many animal deaths and usually that is swept under the rug. Also they're his dads horses and he's having to essentially sacrifice them to survive. The least we can do is know their names
I don’t understand how someone can not make the connection between the monkey and the alien. Both are about animals that aren’t understood by the majority of people around it, and eventually get provoked(the monkey by the noises on the set that day and the UFO by hunger and swallowing this fake horse and ribbon that was set up as a trap).
One of the ways the creature is misunderstood is that its genuinely not a UFO and by definition is a UAP. It's not an object, it's a alive so it's not a flying object it's an unidentified aerial phenomena. That whole conversation was foreshadowing but it's also about how something that seems like a trivial distinction from the outside can actually be very important. And that's kind of of subtly about how the language we use to describe different groups evolves and some protest because they don't understand the difference but people actually experiencing it understand the importance of the distinction.
@@laylagardner8728 like how conservatives want to define trans people by their version of sex and ignore the conversation about gender, expression, and changing sexual characteristics? Thats what I think of anyway.
@@Sophia-vk5bq omg, I'm mad at how much sense that makes within the themes of the movie. The viewers consuming the spectacle. The dehumanizing way that happens. The passive consumption of the viewers, the lack of understanding, the stillness of the cloud and how a UAP can't tell the difference between a real and a fake horse.
I don't know how balloons can destroy transphobia, but you only just gave me that read. Maybe it'll come to me lol. Am I remembering that right? The UAP tried to eat a balloon? There's something there, cause a balloon also set off the chimp.
@@uardito1454 It is pretty silly that it can’t tell a real, biological animal from a fake one, but maybe if its either not intelligent or maybe even just lacking context it might explain it?
I’m pretty sure it did but eating the ribbons gave it some kind of stomach pain that distressed it like the popping balloons distressed the monkey. And then it just explodes(in a much more literal way than the monkey lol) in another foreshadowed moment from the tv show. lol
@@Sophia-vk5bq it's not necessarily a matter of intelligence, we don't know how much that animal can perceive with it's senses.
Imma comment on his third point. The cinematographer that risks his own life to get a better shot makes sense to me. There are people who record natural disasters and risk their life to get good footage. People have died while studying volcanoes. I had a geology professor that said he would love to die in the field. (Not sure if he was 100% serious lol) Yes to the average person that is dramatic but to them the reward outweighs the risk.
Nope wasn’t my favorite and I feel like it was a little long. Maybe it’s something I can revisit and appreciate fully later. With that being said it made sense. There are a lot of themes to unpack. Also the fact that Logan Paul couldn’t see how the monkey ties into the plot says a lot…
The cinematographer wasn't confusing to me at all. It made sense that he was more about "the shot" than the risk to his life. I did think that the camera might be spit out and would be still usable. Guess not. I enjoyed Nope while watching it, but I think I need to see it again because I needed time to process it all. Yeah, Logan Paul is an idiot cuz it's so obvious how the chimp storyline ties into the main plot.
I tried to explain this movie to some of my family members who thought similar things as Logan. I couldn't really put my finger on it but you explained it so well. People like Logan don't really want to watch movies they just what something in the background with flashy fight Scenes and bright colors. I have no problem with that but its frustrating when they then act like movies like nope are bottom of the barrel, dumb, and "doesn't make sense" . Like if you payed attention for 2 seconds maybe you would get it.
dude … the first thing my mother said while walking out of the theater was, “why didn’t they make it purple?” in reference to holst singing ‘one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater’. what the fuck?
i’m convinced she didn’t watch the movie even though she stared at and sat through the whole two hours.
Wow the spoilers actually make me want to watch this even more what a clever twist on a sci-fi classic!
It's a weird recommend because it's better if you know nothing going in, but at the same time some people might roll their eyes when they realize it's "just" a ufo story midway through, and other people who showed up knowing it's a ufo story will be disappointed that it's not _really_ just a ufo story but it's actually doing its own weird thing. I can think of a lot of people being disappointed with it for not being what they thought it was. For me who showed up because the trailer was aloof spastic and chaotic, I showed up ready for the film to just do what it's gonna do and I had a good time
I didn't see anyone else mention it but there is a huge focus on eyes.
Seeing the director edit footage of animal eyes made me think about how eye shape in animals tells a lot about whether it's a predator or prey animal as prey animals have eyes on the side of their face with wide pupils to survey the landscape while predators have front facing, round pupils to better focus on a target and depth perception. OJ put reflectors on his hoodie as false eye spots similar to tiger ears to deter being ambushed, we see the Gordy incident through Jude's eyes even though he could have had his co-star give her edition of the story, OJ struggles with eye contact which is a form of standing your ground. Motorcycle guy having only one eye spot just like the monster, the emphasis on getting footage.
The video of the eyes got me, too! Before the reveal about how to stay safe from the alien, I noticed the creature looked like a pupil.
This movie really was so tidy.
Now I describe it as a space sand dollar or a space jellyfish.
Also the mirrored helmet looks very similar to whatever tool the set crew used that spooked Lucky. Perfect example how Hollywood just refused to listen to a dangerous situation.
A camera is an eye and that parallel is a foundational symbol in the history of movie-making! In fact the way that Otis dies (a coin cutting thru his eye into his brain) feels like a reference to a famous surealist French silent film that shows a closeup of slitting an eye with a razor.
Also on your next watch keep an eye out (ha) for all the things in the movie that are little dark holes (the UFO, the motorcyclist's helmet), which evoke the most basic kind of cameras, a pinhole :)
@@tillyqtillyq3750 that's exactly what I was thinking about!
@@SmilingGrouch the fact that it was killed by plastic ! 💀 it's an environmentally conscious monster,like how they did Godzilla lol (OK maybe I'm reaching idk)
Bruh cinematographer guy is _not_ over the top. Eccentric libertarian geezers are built like that. I know several of them irl. Very difficult people to live with. They get along better in secluded lairs. Hence the cameraman having a secluded lair.
This guy is literally my militant brother's spirit guide, and I laughed along with his demise because I just know that my bro would be like "THE IMPOSSIBLE SHOT! I love this guy."
It's not made up or even exaggerated; you just won't meet them at a party is all.
I know they had to cut a lot for huge ass run time, even dropping entire storylines like the Mary Jo stalker and honestly I wish there's an extended cut when the movie comes out because there's *a lot* more we didn't get to see.
I would give my left kidney to see that storyline play out!!
"Logan Paul is wrong about-"
You could finish this sentence with virtually anything and it'd still be a true statement.
If theres anything ive learned about film and cinema is that everything (framing, lighting, images, dialogue, etc) has a purpose and meaning. Nope, to me, was much more cinematic and artistic than what i think a lot of people were expecting, especially in the day and age of blockbuster and the slew of marvel films that are getting pumped out. If anything, as you said, Logans questions and "critiques" are indicative of the passive viewing of movies. I really dont think he grasps symbolism or artistic imagery. I didnt understand Nope in its entirety the first view but i can understand that i have to think and analyze a little lol. That is what peele is seeking to do- to create a think piece. Hidden and symbolic meaning in his films arent new
His tweets annoyed me I swear he didn’t sit with this film long enough
They never do.
He could have sat with that movie forever and a day and still been clueless because he's not capable of analysis.
The thing I'm so perplexed about when it comes to Logan's review is how he thought the movie was discordant. I think it's confusing, sure, but there is a lot of obvious connective tissue, like three main themes that appear over and over, themes that are hard to miss. It felt like poetry, rhyming, each stanza (chapter) using an overall continuous prose, but I couldn't quite make out what the poem was about. Obviously, I have a better understanding now, but saying that the movie is disconnected is kind of mind blowing to me.
It's so obvious too - the title cards tie together that all these beings are related as animals. I'm not great at getting themes in a movie the first time through, and I wasn't quite getting it until the title cards popped up and I was like OH DUH.
@@janine7384 Its definitely discordant.
The movie make us feel empathy for the horse at the beginning because people are agitating it but the film is jubilant when they end up killing this amazing animal in the end.
She gets her picture for Oprah and the film seems to want us to celebrate that and yet the film criticizes Oprah for exploiting a real life animal attack victim.
I can go on and on.
@@Theyungcity23 But the Alien is a metaphor. So NOPE, you are not ment to be happy she "killed" it as an animal, but to see it as the camera to the spectacle being shattered. Also, the part about it implying they might get the money for their pictures ties to another theme of the movie, about compensation for those that are usually exploited in the spectacle but dont even get recognition (in the case of the movie, black people). So yeah, i disagree. The animal exploitation angle is one of its themes, but not the only one, so ofc it overlaps.
@@grmgt It also represents actual animals because or the monkey story line. The themes are all over the place.
I didn't think this movie was slow paced at all, I thought it was dense with things happening, but that's because I think the meat of the movie isn't in the alien at all (well, the people and horse meat is), but rather in the exploration of how the exploitative pursuit of entertainment at all costs brings out violence and insanity. There's endless references to the history of Hollywood's treatment of people and animals, from the first man on film being an uncredited Black man; to repeated visual and aural references to The Wizard of Oz (infamous equally for the utopian iconography for the dangerous working conditions that saw several lead actors severely injured, wounded "Toto" and had its child star hooked on drugs to make it through filming); right up to their plan to catch the UFO almost being ruined by a TMZ photographer trying to capture the tragedy porn of a former child star being eaten by an alien.
loved this video as i’ve also been looking for excuses to talk about Nope any chance i can. that part where Gordy had stopped attacking everyone really stuck with me because you could see him come out of his rage realizing parts of what happened. him wiping the blood off of his face and trying to move the sister’s foot for example. by the time he reached Jup, the balloons were no longer popping. i agree that the table cloth blocking his eyes probably helped save him but i also think by then Gordy’s rage had passed as he gestured for the fist bump with Jup. also LOVED the detail of the balloon ending the fight between Jean Jacket and the farm being one of Jup. he got this complex thinking he has a way with animals and can “tame the beast” so to speak. amazing film and video!
Holy crap this comment made me appreciate that ending so much more... popped balloons made the monkey rage....jupes popped balloon saved the day wow
Tbh I was immediately traumatized by the UFO corral show (well the end of it), and the inside of it, and the screams of the people dying as it hovered over the house. I felt suffocated and trapped and scared and it gave me a panic attack in the theater. Not to say I enjoyed that but when ppl say it wasn’t a scary movie, yeah ok 👌 also I was genuinely freaked by clouds when I walked to my car. I legit called my husband and laughed cuz it felt like how I assume people leaving jaws felt about open water. I would call that effective.
It’s the proper way to scare in horror movies. No cheap jumpscares or sudden loud noises, they make you immerse yourselves in the real horror like watching people getting digested alive and it’s thousand times scarier than any jumpscare there is
Nope has some of the most terrifying audio of any horror movie of the past fifty years.
@@jamesdominguez7685100%. I’ve always hated the sounds chimpanzees make when they’re upset or agitated, so the Gordy scene wasn’t fun.
For me I really like the shoe. On my first viewing I didn't really get that it was supposed to be "the other shoe dropping" or anything like that, but instead it just felt so thematically correct in the context of the Gordy's home incident. I think for something to be a spectacle it has to be more than a tragedy, there has to be an element of unreality to it, even a bit of absurdity. Gordy's Home is horrifying in how kind of strange and ridiculous it is. There's a chimpanzee in a birthday hat running around on a sitcom set murdering people, like it's just so strange and absurd and unreal. So it just makes perfect sense that a shoe would fall in such a way it landed on it's end and stood up straight. When you think about it, a shoe getting tossed off and landing like that isn't impossible, just very unlikely. It feels unreal and absurd and yet it's happening. I feel like that's all of the tragedy in the film, it all kind of walks that line or unreality that creates spectacle.
whats crazy is that about two weeks after I saw that movie, something similar happened. I was in a hotel room in Mexico City (so random) and I was standing next to the bed bc I was reading some article about some secret Princess Diana expose (again: spectacle) when I realized I had to be somewhere in like 10 mins, so I threw my phone onto the bed, and it literally landed perfectly on itself. Like it was standing vertically- it was so crazy I had to take a pic of it on my iPad
Every time someone adds smth new to the shoe discourse it makes total sense and it has made this movie ten times better for me. I have to watch it again !!
thats exactly what i thought!! i was thinking it was tied into, like, the central theme of oddity and uncanniness and how we're all drawn to it
One thing I noticed about the deep voiced filmographer guy was that earlier in the movie you see him watching a recording of a snake eating a tiger (I think?). And then right before he lets himself get eaten, he tells Angel that they don't deserve to profit off something that powerful. What I got from this is that he believes that the more powerful creature has the right to dominate the weaker.
I feel like NOPE is a movie you have to watch more than once to really digest it.
I see what you did there.
There is definitely a way to critique this movie in a way that pays attention and understand film as a symbolic/artistic medium. It’s ok to not “understand” the film (especially after only one viewing) but Logan did NOT do that. And the fact that he still felt his opinions were worth a big ol’ Twitter thread that thousands of people would read, well, it kind of reinforces the observations that Peele was making.
Hi My Name Is Jennifer Romriell
I loved the film, but can definitely recognize it is the most distinct from the rest of Peele’s work. To me, Nope had a lot more abstract elements and messages than Get Out or Us. The other two had themes and messages that were pretty easy to understand whereas Nope takes some thinking and effort to make connections and fully understand what it was trying to say.
I agree. It's also my favorite film of his.
The guy who thought putting footage of a suicide victim on youtube was a good idea finding a movie confusing says nothing. I imagine most movies confuse him.
Specifically a movie that is about the horrors of filming a potentially dangerous situation for the spectacle of it - it's almost as if it's critiquing the type of guy who would film a corpse. Of course the movie confused him.
i loved that the tmz guy was faceless, made to run into a dangerous situation, desperate to get the scoop, essentially he was completely disposable. it reminds me a lot of the precarious situations journalists are made to be put in, the ones that they would get fired over or just miss a check they really need if they don’t agree. god i love this movie
I call it the “rice effect.” Some things refuse to be sweet and edible until they’ve spent a long time being mulled over. 🤯
I think the title cards are a way to clarify the theme: You get the first horses and start to believe "Oh, we're gonna see each horse get taken" and then the next one is "Gordy". So it's not about the horses dying. And at the end "Jean Jacket" is sort of the punchline to the setup. They are all just animals that can not be tamed. I'm a pretentious a'hole, I love title cards.
couple more theories of why the shoe is standing:
1. the idea of a “bad miracle” that’s mentioned in the movie. something that is so unlikely that you could call it a miracle, but it’s not a positive thing. like the alien. or like a plague. the shoe kept him distracted and he did not look Gordy in the eye, miraculously.
2. my favorite explanation tho. the idea of the shoe standing up is just how Jupe remembers it because he’s spent so much time now looking at the shoe displayed in its case. it’s turned even this violent, traumatic event into spectacle. a display piece.
What I read about the shoe in the opening scene is that it was another reason Jupe didn't look Gordie directly in the eye. In fact, it may even have been more helpful in that regard because it was unusual enough to grab his attention away from the attack. Like you said though, Jupe completely failed to understand how that all saved him, he just thinks of it as a trophy.
I didn't get the "other shoe to drop" symbolism when I watched it. I was thinking it was more just a focus point for Jupe so that he could block out the horror that was happening around him
I went by myself after class the other day. Everyone else was coupled up or in groups. Felt a little awkward. I loved Nope so so so much. Leaving afterwards most of the guys in those couples were complaining about the film- made me remember that being alone can be pretty great 😂😂😂
I was laughing at/obsessed with Holst (cinematographer) the whole time because I've met That Guy so many times since I'm an artist + went to college. I even saw some of myself in him, since I've definitely caught myself being super pretentious about art lol. For a lot of artists like that, dying for their art is often seen as not only a good thing, but as the ideal end to their life. I was caught off guard at first about people not understanding that, or just not 'getting' that character - I guess if you haven't met that type of pretentious art guy he'll come across even more exaggerated than he was from my point of view? But, yeah, he's not meant to be taken 100% seriously since he exists as a joking type of commentary
Reading your comment just reminded me of the photographer in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas during the motorcycle race, covered in dirt, can't see anything, yelling at HST that they need "TOTAL COVERAGE!" Same kind of character.
There's also these details from actual UFO reports, specific ones from ranches, so leaving the movie I was saying "THIS MOVIE IS FOR FUCKIN NERDS" in a loving way lol
Yeah my partner explained that there are a few scenes that are literal references to UFO sightings.
Nope is one of those new movies you need to watch at least twice to catch some of the themes and meanings. I think one of the themes of this movie is about animal exploitation and trying to tame a dangerous animal.
Yours is the best explanation I've heard for the Gordy storyline. I understood the theme about Jupe capitalizing on his trauma and feeling like it made him special as well as wild animals lashing out when we men try to tame them. But I didn't get that he only survived because he wasn't at eye level with Gordy and I didn't fully understand how that tied in with the rest of the film. Everything makes sense now.
I really like the idea of the "waiting for the shoe to drop" and it's very plausible! I didn't understand the shoe either but my sister looked up a theory that I also think is worth considering which ties into the theme of spectacles. People can't help but fixate on spectacles and the shoe being able to stand right up is in itself, a spectacle. Even in Jupe's terror, he can't help but be impressed by the shoe.
Maybe it was me but I didn't take the "look in the eye" thing so literally. I don't think Jean Jacket only ate things that looked it in the eye, I think it just operated as an animal/predator - who when you look it in the eye (or do anything to taunt it) gets pissed. Same thing with Gordy- I'm sure in the course of the filming of the show that Jupe looked him in the eye - I think he was just close with the animal and treated him with respect so when Gordy snapped he was able to not see him as a threat and express his rage at being treated like a toy on the little boy. I think reducing it to just looking in the eye is a little over simplifying.
Agreed. It has a lot to do with the persons general behavior atm, not only the eyes. Like Jupe stayed quiet, didn't move, didn't try to yell/control Gordy + the balloons had stopped popping so Gordy's rage diminished (since it was justifiably triggered by the sounds). Funny how Jupe didn't understand why he survived and later did the opposite to the "UFO" (tried to control it) sealing his death.
2:15 I'm not a Psych Horror connoisseur, but I am a Psych Horror snob. When someone says a movie that involves thinking and paying attention is bad because it's confusing, I just immediately assume it's them admitting their mental capacity for such media is limited 🤷 Just say you didnt get it and not for you.
the sound design for this movie is absolutely fucking incredible. I swear it gave me chills throughout the whole movie
I'm just gonna add RE: the horse chapter names, a common thread in Peele's films is an empathy for the suffering of animals. In Get Out, it's the dying deer. In Us, the rabbits. And in Nope, the horses. I've noticed lingering shots on animals that are suffering- especially on the face and eyes- in all three films.
In Nope, Kaluuya's character's understanding and appreciation of animals as beings, not just things (like simple movie props) is both a cause of his business troubles but ultimately the reason he prevails in the end. I believe the chapters being named after the animals is an invitation for us to empathise with them and see the film as their story too. I agree that this could have been developed further, however.
(SPOILERS) I also believe that a stronger and more daring ending would have been not to kill Jean Jacket at all. We are asked to view the UFO as an animal with emotions and drives. But animals are also innocents. It was not right to put Gordy in a TV show, and it was not right to kill him for reacting to the balloons in the way he did. It would be interesting to see a version of this story where the characters decide that it isn't right to kill a unique creature simply because it is hungry and territorial. But a lot more difficult to write, probably.
about the ending, I actually disagree w/ you there, although I do agree on your take in general. For me, they kind of had to kill jean jacket the same way Gordy had to die?? if that makes sense? Because when animals, especially trained animals injure humans, we generally put them down. Even if it was due to human error.
So, I think it made sense because it was pointing out that humans put animals down or get rid of them when they lash out, even if it was the human's fault. Like when Lucky "attacked" but didn't injure anyone, Lucky was sold. (Though we know in this case it was because OJ can't afford to keep Lucky after Lucky lashed out during the job.)
I think it was just hammering home the concept of the movie and saying that ppl will use animals and other ppl until they stop doing exactly what they want, even if what they want is horrible and against what the animals or person's "rules" are. And when people are done w/ that person or animal they are tossed aside or in dangerous animal's cases, put down if that makes any sense. (If not feel free to correct or ignore me :) )
I also interpreted the shoe as something just that cannot be explained. A shoe standing upright in the middle of pure chaos doesn't make any sense, as well as the scene this traumatic couldn't make sense for young Jupe, and why he was not killed too and accepted by Gordy. He is obviously deeply traumatized, he keeps this shoe as a memento in his own personel museum (that he sells tours to, but nobody knows it's significant of the shoe except him), he designs alien costumes to his kids that even looks like the weird shapes of the camera of the set. The UFO is him taking ultimate control of a situation beyond comprehension, like he couldn't when he was a child.
This movie has a big "STOP FUCKING WITH ANIMALS" subtitles for me, at least.
This film stayed with me and it's been a long time since a film has brought me so much excitement
I'm not usually one for the music trying to hype me up for the action scene. Usually I'm like "ew, music, go away".
But even then OJ riding past the balloons with the shadow right behind him and the funky cowboy beat kicks into full blast was incredibly effective on me. THIS IS THE CORRECT SONG CHOICE FOR MY BODY RIGHT NOW.
Cannot sleep and I love it 😂
I got to the cinema at least once a month.
Aside from Everything Everywhere All at Once, I have never had a movie theater experience impact me as much as Nope.
It was so entertaining and the themes/motifs were so layered, it was almost overwhelming! It gave me a lot to think about and I asked lots of questions. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And personally I think that’s the effect all moviemakers should try to achieve.
These two movies are my favorite ones this year so far as well.
with the shoe part, I've personally drawn connections between the impossible odds of that and the motif of the concepts of "bad miracles" and it being a through line with each horrible event that happens in the film. A terrible thing happening all around us while we focus on this incredible little oddity. like a nickel hitting a man in the eye, and only focusing on the coin, not the horrific death
That other shoe to drop thing is brilliant. I think there was also a Gordy chapter, so I think chapters were what you said about there being recurring animal rage themes, each chapter being a different story
i feel kind of bad laughing at Logan Paul's Nope hot takes, because they do kind of read like baby's first media analysis and maybe they represent an earnest effort?? but then in the first damn tweet he basically confirms he wasn't paying enough attention to catch even the most basic exposition in the film, like... you can't just not watch the movie and then say "plot hole ding" because you didn't understand it LMAO
i don't consider myself to be very quick on the uptake when it comes to noticing themes and foreshadowing in media, but i've grown to really enjoy practicing, and it IS something you can get better at with practice! but sometimes you have to be willing to meet a movie halfway if you want to be able to get anything out of it. i loved Nope, and imo it has a LOT to offer from just sitting with it and thinking about it after viewing. Steven Yeun's character in particular was so fascinating to me; one of the moments that stuck with me the most was immediately before the star lasso experience, when we come back from the Gordy's Home taping flashback to see Jupe staring off into space, but instead of looking like a man reliving the worst day of his life, he looks almost wistful, like this is a treasured memory for him. that and the callback to the balloons triggering Gordy's rampage, and a balloon of Jupe leading to the UFO's destruction at the end... chef's kiss
I interpreted the title cards as a kind of tribute to the named animals (aside from Lucky, who survived). It feels like a way of credit being given to the animals that are used, exploited, and ultimately killed for human entertainment, kinda like the whole film is a sort of memorial.
I watched the film with a friend who sometimes asked questions during the quiet moments, and, legit, I put together the "Jupe is repeating the hubris that destroyed the television show" thing as the horse came out, and I probably wouldn't have if my friend hadn't asked me
Understanding Nope is partly based on catching context clues/subtlety, not taking everything at face value, drawing parallels between events, and listening. Also being able to discern between what to take seriously and what to not. It’s not surprising the movie flew over his head
Also, Jupe was a character I actually had to think about after the film to understand why he made those decisions and why we had to get a backstory for him. It was really easy to think he was just a dumb guy looking for fame and profit at any expense and Jordan Peele could have made him a shallower character like that. Instead we get a pretty good parallel between the chimp and BlueJeans. An outsider looking at that chimp attack understands how fortunate Jupe was, but Jupe never realized how close to death/disfigurement he actually was the whole time he was on set with Gordy (played by 3 diff chimps). Instead the attack makes him believe that he’s special, probably cementing what he people told him as a child star (Srsly I should have known he wasn’t thinking right when he tried to fist bump the bloody chimp fist smh, he was a kid but he JUST saw that chimp pop off and start eating and beating faces. It’s also not recommended at all to extend one of your limbs during an attack by a large primate because they can rip it off) That ignorance follows him into his adult life where he still doesn’t realize how dangerous the ‘UFO’/BlueJeans actually is, despite eating large horses and not being able to communicate with it. Plus he got lucky again because BlueJeans didn’t eat him the whole time he thinks he’s ‘training’ it, when he was just feeding it. He even instructs people to sit still and keep watching (the same way he thinks he survived the Gordy attack) and it’s the exact opposite wrong thing to do at the moment (again the same wrong things to do for a Gordy situation which is to not make eye contact and keep your distance). Even all the warning signs like BlueJeans showing up earlier than usual and making threatening motions don’t shake him from believing he’s safe. Jupiter’s Claim (to fame) ends with tragedy because Jupe majorly misinterpreted the situation and the animals. Instead of a stupid character, you understand that it’s actually his arrogance and desperation that ends his life and his family’s and keeps him from ever understanding what really happened with Gordy and BlueJeans
Logan not understanding the point of the guy on the motorcycle...Logan...his head is literally a mirror...and it is reflecting YOU! You personally, Logan! LOGAN, YOU FILMED A CORPSE!! HOW DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS!!
To me the best way to describe how Gordy relates to the film(especially to people who don’t get it) is that he is the catalyst to the events transpiring the way they did. If it wasn’t for the attack Jupe wouldn’t have tried to tame the UFO, and the UFO probably wouldn’t have flipped out in the way it did.
Great video! I also really liked the movie, though I guess I came away with a slightly different take on message of the movie. OJ has a line in the movie about how every animal has rules, and kind of implies that even trained animals will revolt against people who break those rules. I took that to be what connected Lucky, the UFO, and Gordy. Gordy was a trained animal, but he was treated like a prop that you could do anything with and there was a backlash for that. Same with Lucky when he was being trained for the set of that Hollywood movie, nobody cared if the horse was comfortable and a person got hurt, and same for the UFO. Jute thought he understood the UFO as something that he had somehow trained because things worked out fine for months, but then he lined up a bunch of people and essentially told them to look up at a sideshow freak, which even if the UFO wasnt interpreting anything that looked at it as food, would freak out some animals. I came away from the movie seeing it as advocating for respect for animals and to not treat them like things to be gawked at and exploited. That's not the only message in the movie, but that's the one that resonated with me the most off of one viewing.
Oh yeah totally, especially since one of the scariest moments (was actually the scariest for me lol) isn’t something supernatural but a man made incident. And the way we had to sit in that scene TWICE. It’s horrifying to watch Gordy’s confusion when he can finally calm down because he immediately goes back to his training just to be killed. Ugh breaks my heart
This might just be Jordan Peele's most layered movie yet and it's delivered in a way that forces you to work to find out what he wants to tell you instead of handing it on a plate, even moreso than his previous movies. You got animal exploitation subjects, the cost of searching for the ultimate spectacle, commentary on childhood fame, the dillema of family inheritance, deconstruction of UFO phenomenons, etc. In time this might just grow to be my favorite film of his so far but it's just hard to top Get Out lol
I was on the fence the first time I watched it, but I couldn't stop thinking about it after I left the theater. I'll definitely be seeing it again. The issue I have is that Jupe and the alien didn't deserve to die. Jupe went through an extreme trauma as a child (watching a chimp maim and kill the entire cast). Also, his arrogance and desperation are a result of the position he was put in as a tokenized child actor. Casting an asian kid and a chimp as best friends in a white family sitcom was done for spectacle. I would've liked to see him work through that trauma and find a way to release the alien, not kill it, and have some redemption at the end. Also, the movie is aligning the alien with Gordy, a "trained" animal that ultimately acted in its own nature when provoked. So, why kill the alien in the end and frame it as something positive? That might be a hot take 😂
I liked Jupe as a character too, and totally read into tokenization and being a model minority as part of his character. But as tragic as his death was, I feel there was a point to it and that he kinda had it coming.
Jupe had no issues with exploiting the Haywood family as well as the multiple horses he bought purchased from them. The Haywoods also dealt with tokenism and racism in the movie. They were going through quite the rough patch and trauma as well. However Jupe had no problem with destroying their livelihoods, dreams and what they cared about. He was even trying to buy the ranch dispite O.J's "no". There is even a scene with his kids trying to spook them out of their own stable. Trying to scare them off their land. The Haywoods where simply a stepping stone for Jupe to reach J.J. So it shouldn't be a surprise that stepping on others to get a leg up can eventually lead to your downfall.
@@patrice6895 Very true. It's just hard for me to dislike Steven Yeun. I would have liked to see some self-relization before he was eaten though.
@@sweetpary lol, yeah Steven Yuen did a phenomenal job playing that role.
@@sweetpary I get that desire (Stephen Yeun is woefully underused in everything he's ever been in), but not all of us will have that moment before we die .
Im not the best at picking up themes and meanings but that does not stop me from trying or even enjoying the movie. I also love after the movie where I get to watch videos about theories.
It is a shame because Jordan Peele's take on spectacle and clout chasing is exactly what Logan Paul represents.
I really liked the theme of the family being descendants from the jockey about whom we "know nothing about" but who is immortalized in this short with the horse, even though we know shit all about him and the context. It was sprinkled everywhere and was loving it while watching. It prompted you to ask if history was repeating itself, even down to it being analog cameras, and the seeking of stardom or proof. But also, how the jockey is unnamed and it's just "that jockey", "that family", while the white artist by end doesn't give a fuck about anything but his obsession's lol. And yeah, i thought the themes were super neatly tied, completely agree with your review. i found it hilarious and very thought provoking, but hey, who knows, i say this as an art graduate myself, so i don't know, maybe for others it felt a little "alien" lol. I'll leave now.
What annoys me is how people just go out and say nothing made sense and not bother to even search it up. I'm someone who can be bad at analysing, such as with the Gordy scene and it's full connection to the rest of the plot, but it took me 5 seconds to type it into Google and boom there's your answer! If you leave the film and think that it's just not your thing then that's fair enough, but if you believe you can be a full on critic like Logan is without doing some research then please get a grip. I fucking loved this film even without getting the full message at first, if you haven't seen it I fully recommend! The tension is absolutely phenomenal and there's some terrifying scenes :)
The question is, has Logan Paul ever been right about something? not watching the video because I haven't seen nope yet and am super excited for it. kthnxbye
Your take is so spot on, and a lot of it is pretty clear if you give any thought to it which clearly Logan Paul did not.
I believe the chapters' names are a way to make it obvious that the trained horses, gordy and the jean jacket are in the same category. Ultimately wild animals that can't be really completely controled by their tamers. (Since every horse in their respective chapter fails to follow orders, leading many of them to death, but even Lucky, who stays in the glass cage while OJ tries to call her). This choice of titles feels to me like a big "if you didn't make the connection already, here it is:"
I went and saw Nope with my friend a couple weeks ago. I hadn't seen a movie in theaters since seeing Rise of Skywalker on New Years of 2019/2020. So this was my first theater experience in over 2 and a half years. And it was one of the best movie experiences I've had in my life.
I study film, I want to make movies some day and Nope is exactly the kind of movie I want to make. I feel like a lot of media layely has reverted back to how things were in the 30s, 40s, and 50s where everything is spelled out for the viewer because they're not smart enough to understand anything implied. I think this in turn is making audiences expect to have everything explained to them instead of thinking about the meaning. I've been looking at eastern media for a while now (Eastern European and Asian) and noticing that so much of it is more implicit, that they don't hold the viewer/player's hand to tell them what everything means, but it's a journey that the viewer/player goes on to find the meaning themselves. I feel like that's what Nope did. It took us on a journey to figure the story out with the characters.
The reason the movie has chapters named after the animals is because Jordan is trying to get across that they're just as important, if not more important, than the people around them who wish to exploit them in some way. He wants you to see the animals as characters. If he hadn't done that you may not have remembered any of the animals names at all.
I truly don't understand anyone who doesn't see this as a work of genius. It is so unique and such a brilliant examination of our ruthless, self-destructive spectacle-obsessed modern world. US was probably my favorite with its examination of class divides, but NOPE plays on every genre expectation and then blows them all up in the best way.
I’ve been talking to people about this film damn near every day since it’s release. Thank you for taking the time to do this.
It makes me SO HAPPY to see this video. I've been seeing so many negative RUclips reviews and struggled to connect. This was so nuanced and lovely.
The dog staring at Kat cracks me up. In my head and thinking "yeah buddy, she's really good, I'm learning too"
I feel like nope is kinda almost like Donnie darko in the way of it not being fast paced or like a lot of action it's more so a lot of different shit going on that really requires you to fully pay attention and watching it again you get new things everytime you watch it again there's a lot of thought put into every aspect of the movie
I didn't find the chapters being named after the horses to be too random. Each chapter is named after the featured animal. At first, the horses who get eaten. At the end, the last chapter is Jean Jacket, which is the name they give the alien.
I like how he refers to it as a UFO instead of UAP like Angel pointed out in the movie. Especially since it was confirmed to be an animal, not an object as first speculated
Pepper is so adorable! Chihuahua mixes always have the most expressive and big eyes and I love them so much.
Also, my God I am so tired of people refusing to do the most basic of media analysis when watching movies without cookie cutter plots. Like, you don't have to enjoy that type of media, but if you're gonna put out a "review," you should at least try to not embarass your poor high school English teacher.
I interpreted the Horse Chapter titles as an indicator of the Victim of each section. This is subverted for the first time in Gordy's chapter given that it is named after the chimp, though the chimp is killed. Lucky subverts his chapter heading by surviving the incident when they were to be sacrificed and eaten. Jean Jacket's chapter comes after the alien is given that as a nick name. This infers that the alien will die at the end. At least that's how I interpret the chapter headings. Either way great video as always.
Lucky is also literally “lucky” in that regard
I saw the artistic guy take a mystery pill and the tech guy with him gave a look that gave he's taking some serious meds kinda vibe. That's probably why people have the terminally ill theory. A big artistic statement before his inevitable and impending death
Yes! I saw that too
the father rambles the names of the horses and other things while he is dying in the car. i have only seen it once so i don't remember everything he says, but thats why the chapters are called that i guess. in this order.
I also really loved this movie! Everything you mentioned I pretty much figured out on my first viewing except the shoe thing which is really cool! So for those that didn't figure out the themes, I hope they are able to piece it together on other viewings or from videos like this one.
When I watched Nope, I thought that the message of the film was just that animal extortion will always have its consequences because a wild animal will always be a wild animal. After watching your video, I've learned so much more. This is definitely one of my favorite movies this year and I love it way more than Suicide Squad 2
I love this video, I saw someone talk about Logan’s tweet but I didn’t have enough background info but in this video you explain things really well!
Just confirms he cannot process any kind of complexity in narrative and double entendre in that peabrain he possesses.
Aww! Pepper looks just like our rescue chihuahua/rat terrier mix Lucky
Aw 😍
She's a corgi/Chihuahua
The TMZ guy point is so ridiculous because like, he wasn’t set up for a “grand reveal”??? He was the wrench in the climax, obviously he was gonna die immediately. If the grand reveal was because he was wearing a helmet, that just proves Logan wasn’t paying attention. They showed a mirror being a trigger for Lucky TWICE, and it’s already been established that the she and the alien have the same trigger. Like… it wasn’t subtle, dude.
The part that I was happiest about, though, was Angel not dying, and not dying because he did something very smart. He wasn’t on the cover and I didn’t see him mentioned much before the movie, so I just assumed he’d die with the cinematographer. But he was smart, so he didn’t!
The dead meat podcast talked about the shoe too and they had the idea of how jupe focused on it and obsessed with it because this miraculous thing he focused on saved his life and added to what made him feel lucky and special. Its his "bad miracle" that Oj and Em talk about. And him keeping it is his was of reminding himself of what he believes is his destiny.
But your explanation is great too. I think both work really well.
That's a great take about paying attention! I love it for that, I saw it at Alamo Drafthouse and kept saying "AHA!" when I figured out why certain things were included in the preshow. Hilarious that he didn't see how the chimp and ufo are related lol
The dog standing on it's hind legs mimicking your hand movements in the background has me dying xD
"Pet the dog, Kat!" 😂
I think the shoe is ambiguous on perpose, I always thought it was the representation of a “bad miracle” “the other shoe dropping” also makes sense, someone said it’s just that way because that’s how it’s displayed in Jupes office and how he visualizes the memory. Not everything has to have a clear explanation!
1) There is nothing to indicate that ANYONE was killed by Gordy on the TV set. Just because someone is beaten unconscious doesn't mean they die (yet). There ARE people who survive some pretty awful assaults and live.
2) The upright shoe in the Gordy rampage scene was an indication of Jupe's skewed recall of the rampage, where past and present are melted a bit together...the shoe on the set is in the same position as it is in the glass case in Jupe's TV collectibles room. It wasn't sitting upright in any environment, EXCEPT in Jupe's mind.
3) The movie was divided into chapters so you could see how separate events (like the various animals) were somehow connected to the overall story.
Otherwise, an excellent critique!
My only two counterarguments here are the shoe thing with Jupe and the chapter titles.
With the shoe, the interpretation I found that I really liked was that the shoe was in the same position as how it's displayed in the future, and represents how Jupe has warped his own memories of the incident over time because of the way he commemorates and sort of white washes a traumatic event. He's spent so many years talking it up and making jokes and seeing the bloodstained shoe stood up like that that it's starting to project backwards onto his actual memories.
With the title cards, I found it to be a direct engagement with the tendency in Hollywood to view animals as props rather than living beings. It's easy to forget the horror of what Jupe was
really doing, feeding live horses to an unknown entity, in the face of the spectacle that is the UFO, but those horses were important and loved by OJ, and he had every intention of getting them back. Each horse had a name and personality and temperament, and they were just thoughtlessly sacrificed. Similar to Gordie and the UFO, actually: their needs and wants and boundaries were willfully ignored in favor of the spectacle, and when they lashed out they were dismissed, mocked, demonized, or gotten rid of.
I can't finish this video yet because I haven't seen the movie and I want to avoid spoilers. All I want to contribute is that your dog is adorable and I would love to see more of her.
I struggled to pull the storylines together as someone who went to watch it once, casually (even though I still really enjoyed it). This clarified everything! Thanks ☺️