Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)

Granted the trailer's been out for a little bit but just to kick off the thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In8fuzj3gck

aliens are real

i think it it had a big enough budget to do what the script wants it to do

And one last trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgmq_8PlRY

sight unseen, i have to think Nope falls comfortably under the cultural category of "films that really need to be seen for the first time in the theater, preferably in a full house, preferably early in the run"

Goddamn it, I just looked at the release date and for about 5 minutes misread it as June 22 instead of July 22.

Yeah, opening weekend for me.

probably my most anticipated film this year

the second trailer made me far less excited, but i'm still looking forward to it

https://www.avclub.com/keke-palmer-dozens-of-takes-nope-monologue-1849194931/am

I’ve gotta figure out where and when I’m seeing this over the weekend.

Whoa.

Non-spoiler: a character wears a Jesus Lizard tee in this movie.

Enjoyed this a lot

psyched.

Tickets bought for tomorrow, really looking forward to it.

It's a bit different from his other two. Dialogue mumbled and piecemeal and could be easy to miss bits, but it's not at all hard to follow. Beautifully shot and a creative yet simple premise.

Polar opposite of Us, which I also loved.

utterly awesome movie

not one but two visual references to akira??? omfg

I kinda want to go see it again in the theater - feels like I might’ve missed some details or subtleties (and dialogue, it does get a little mumble-y).

Also I should probably see Us eventually

the scene with the blood flying out of the alien-flying-object and dripping onto the ranch house was fantastic

it was everything i dreamed

*bumps fist*

cocking my eye at ppl on letterboxd describing this as too convoluted and/or messy but then again i loved us. i just think this was much sparer and more balanced on the whole, and the times it did veer from the main narrative only made the world feel deeper (and scarier)

i also thought the character work was excellent. the snl monologue is demonstrative of this. at first it seems like exposition until you realize, when peele (like really exquisitely) overlays his actual experience of the event, that the character isn’t saying what he means

to some degree no one in this movie is saying what they mean until shit really goes down. typical hollywood

can’t tell if i’m saying utterly daft shit about this movie or not, need more ppl to see it yesterday

That monologue was head spinning

Otm brad

letterboxd needs to stop putting negative reviews of this movie in my feed. anyway seems like some ppl are struggling with the extremely understated quality of daniel kaluuya's performance, but imo he is an amazing character, and all of that character is brimming in the negative space around his performance

this ultimately ties into how i feel about the ending, which, idk if i'm right or anything, it's just a reading, but i read it as commentary on the nature of making art, that we only ever access truth through the most indirect paths, and even then it's only the briefest glimpse, a single snapshot we took when we weren't even looking directly at it. imo this contrasts pretty deliciously with the cosmic gumbo-ass director's approach to documenting truth as well as with the extremely-online-fame-chaser on the bike during the climax

I’ve seen that criticism of DK, too. Like, what, you don’t realize that he’s playing a particular kind of person?

I read him as someone who was hurting from the sudden death of his father who was I over his head keeping the family business alive but feeling like he's ill-equipped to do it

And if that was you, would you be verbose? Nah

Sorry I mean "Nope"

The moments when he went “nope” were among my favorites in this movie (there were many favorites).

I was listening to a podcast review, and one of the reviewers had been around horse dudes growing up, and this is apparently how a lot of horse dudes are - they’re very quiet and relate more to horses than to other people.

my friend jim wrote a spoiler-heavy letterboxd review that is among the more thoughtful i've read so far https://letterboxd.com/jimmc_grath/film/nope/

i feel like i was paying pretty close attention but i love that the film didn't(?) explicitly explain how the gordy's home incident tied into the rest of the plot, if it does at all... it could just be an inexplicable event that shaped the rest of steven yeun's character's life or it could have some resonance with the thing hovering behind the clouds. i'm suggesting the latter purely because of the suspended shoe, which also could just be an impossible image that yeun gets obsessed with and which feeds into his obsession over controlling and displaying this impossible image for others in the sky. anyway it's good to not tie these things up sometimes, because when i was talking about the movie with my gf and her friend we had three totally different ideas of what happened and how the incident figured into the present day events of the film

I think it may have tied in because Jupe used the incident for publicity purposes when opening his theme park, and having that little Gordy's Home museum in the back of his office, which he jokes that he 'charges' people to tour. To me that suggests that he is exactly the narcissistic opportunist type, who has a "UFO experience" and instead of telling anybody, secretly decides to create a ticketed event one mere month later featuring said "UFO/alien" without properly vetting the danger he was putting himself, his family, and the audience in. and of course, it blew up in his face.

oh yes absolutely! there's def a persistent theme of people exploiting their own tragedies for attention and money

and ppl having to process something inexplicable and horrible and unprocessable that happened to them and thus doing it in all the wrong ways

I understand the criticisms of DK's performance, but I also think they're wrong. I wasn't too fond of either of the main characters initially -- OJ too reserved, Emerald too self-absorbed -- but that changed by the end of the movie. I'm glad Peele is on a level where the studio can't force reshoots to make his leads "more relatable" or w/e. (Obviously there is also a whole racialized element to this, which I feel unqualified to speak to.)

The whole audience cracked up at the interaction between OJ and Em when the documentary filmmaker showed up with his non-electrical camera. Later I realized it felt like a moment straight out of the Key & Peele valet sketches.

as soon as Jupe mentioned the Gordy incident, I immediately knew exactly why there was someone in Jupe's audience with facial disfigurement in the trailer. and that they were going to show the incident in all of its horror (well-staged)

haha yeah i loved the appearance of his co-star

also loved the alien looking like a cowboy hat. kind of mad that the last set of trailers spoiled that a bit.

Saw this yesterday with my daughter and we loved it, though with a few reservations. One big way that Jupe's story ties in is that he didn't learn his lesson the first time that you can't tame or befriend a wild/predatory creature. Reaching out to knuckle bump your costars' apparent killer and feeding an alien horses, so much wtf Jupe! I haven't read every hidden text in this thread so sorry if I'm repeating the obvious.

Another random thought/connection:

When Parasite came out, I remember reading an interview, either with Bong or with his cinematographer, talking about how the whole set design process worked backwards from the director's hyper-specific vision for the film's final sequence (the father ascending the stairs out of the basement, into the sunny living room, with his son waiting there).

In my headcanon, I like to imagine a similar process played out as Peele set up that last shot of OJ framed by the gate, coming up out of the valley on horseback as the dust settles all around him. Like, How can you get a Black character into this iconic 1950s Western shot, and have the shot "make sense" in the context of the surrounding movie and carry the same affective weight that it would have in a classic Western, while telling an entirely original story in a contemporary setting?

Someone on the internet said the shot looks like the Muybridge film, which I don't agree with, but since the movie is sort of about spectacle, I do wonder if the entrance to Jupiter's Claim has the aspect ratio of a film frame

Also my idiotic fan theory is that all of Angel's band T-shirts have some narrative logic to them. Earth is mother nature, the Wipers is an apocalyptic event, Jesus Lizard is obviously the mix of the spiritual with the animal, being a Mr. Bungle got us into this mess and RATM will get us out

huge return to form after us which sucked ass. last 30 mins were peak spielberg level, nearly brought a tear to my eye in awe of the spellbinding magic of cinema. not as great of a script as get out, but i'm v relieved peel's still "got it"

Us is great, foh

other than tethered lupita (one of the craziest performances ever) i thoughtus was boring as hell and a clear sophomore slump

on the "good movie to write a thinkpiece about" v.s. "good movie to watch" spectrum, get out perfectly balances the two, us goes full thinkpiece, and nope leans more on the watchable end. the thinkpiece stuff in nope wasn't as flawlessly weaved into the narrative as in get out. i personally would've cut the whole steven yeun subplot (i couldn't follow the logic of keke palmer stealing his sign)

I don’t think the Academy likes it when you point out how they’re racist

(sorry, couldn’t resist)

loll

On a related note, MOMI has a really well-curated series of movies that got zero Oscar nominations despite being viable, in the mix, and certainly should've been up on merit:

https://movingimage.us/series/snubbed/

I stayed spoiler-free all this time... I'm in the midst of a run through recent big movies and Nope is so clearly ahead of most of what I've seen. No need to explain or dig any further, just a fucking, fun movie.

That's actually the second best thing about Nope, the best is that Agua Dulce, for once, gets to star as itself. Decades of filling in for some other places - or in the case of Vasquez Rocks, other planets as well.

the mirrorball is just a standard tool used by VFX studios - so when OJ has one he probably just copped it from antlers or w/e

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCfHQL4kLnw

https://beforesandafters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/hdri.jpg

playing in 70mm in new york right now. our screening yesterday was weird because the first reel wasn't delivered in time so the first 40 minutes were DCP and the rest was 70mm. pretty cool to do the A/B.

What were the differences?

the 70mm print had more dynamic range and was more contrasty than the DCP - so much so that it almost seemed 'washed out' for the first few min after the switch was made. but after you adjusted to it, it was great

Finally saw it. Pretty good.
I missed what caused flying saucer to become giant blooming iris/Lily diaphanous thing.

Good to finally see it. Good film.

Brandon Perea is my new crush.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, August 1, 202

I was otm

and this movie rules the second time

Really wanna rewatch on a really good screen/soundsystem. Loved it, and my only complaint was with the muddy presentation at our neighborhood bar-theater.

I wear my sunglasses at night so I can waaaaaaaaaaatch yooooou weeeeeave

I think about this movie an awful lot.

OK, I saw this again last night, I think for the third time, and it was even richer than I remembered it. Just an utterly original take on some familiar stuff, with metaphors bouncing all over the place, and the monkey scene and digestion scene were never more terrifying.

I’m sure I said it upthread but I still count myself lucky to have seen it twice during the theatrical run just so I could pay more attention to the excellence of the sound design at scale, on top of its general greatness.

I saw it twice in theater as well, ironically at home is the first time I've ever seen it with the aspect ratio changing to reflect the 70mm IMAX scenes

I realise I'm in the minority here because so many people roundly love this film. Maybe it's to do with not being from or living in the US, and an ignorance of the subtleties of the themes in this film. But I just found it completely mid. The throughline, if there was one, was lost on me for a start. Characters often did things that defied any sense or logic, and I found the denouement really frustrating because of that.
And, sorry, but it failed on the basis of being a horror or a monster movie because frankly a big parachute-sized plastic shopping bag just isn't scary to me.
More "meh" than "nope" - the performances were decent, and there were some rad needle drops throughout. It just didn't move me. Perhaps a repeat viewing might reveal more

But I just found it completely mid.

Welp. *hurls dl into the sky, where he is eaten by an alien*

Different strokes I guess. Worse ways to go than being devoured by a big white marshmallow

Did you miss the screaming and the blood spray?

this one's an all-timer for me

I did not think any of the themes in this movie were particularly subtle. In fact, as I posted thread, I think it’s Peele’s most straightforward film and is much scarier as a result.

I loved this movie and need to rewatch soon.

Different strokes I guess. Worse ways to go than being devoured by a big white marshmallow

What exactly did you think all those people were screaming in agony for? They were being slowly dissolved by digestive fluids!

there are worse ways to go than being digested?

Digestion scene was horrifying in the most memorable way

Digestion scene was horrifying in the most memorable way

My memory of the digestion scene is that it was oddly non-gory.. like, there was blood but the insides of the creature were smooth and almost "clean" - I was expecting some serious gristle but that's not what it was

there are worse ways to go than being digested?

Digested alive and conscious with your family around you.

At least the Sarlacc burped in Jedi

there are worse ways to go than being digested?

Trump monologuing at you for 15 minutes

I'm with Tracer. My memory of this film is that if there was any horror or gore, it was largely campy, slapstick and fairly mild.
I'm not trying to be tough here, I just struggle to think of this film as being any more scary than, say, Tremors. Or at least the Tremors monsters are scary in that they don't look like a cluster of pearlised balloons three days after a wedding reception, sorry

i like "nope" a lot, it's probably a B+ movie for me, but i prefer peele's two other movies to it. "get out" is the cleanest in terms of what's going on and what it means, but is "us" is my favorite.

wow I mean Tremors is a wonderful movie, but my experience of it is really night and day with how I remember Nope --- knowing silliness vs. profound dread, small-town worm monster romp vs. unsettling essay on America, the West, animal exploitation, Hollywood exploitation, etc. ymmv of course!

if there was any horror or gore, it was largely campy, slapstick and fairly mild.

Well, there is that prolonged scene of them frozen in fear in the house while the creatures more or less barfs/shits blood and viscera all over. And the entire monkey sequence is pretty vicious, albeit off screen.

I’m of the opinion that a movie doesn’t need to be Terrifier-level gore to be scary

I've never seen those movies, but as I understand it, they're *all* gore, no scares. "Nope" has this air of real dread that most horror movies lack, tempered by some humor and adventure (a la "Jaws") but also enhanced by such a novel impossible to comprehend creature design (that also happens to reflect a single-lens reflex camera shutter).

I should give it another go. Maybe i was expecting a different type of film or something.
No, gore isn't intrinsically scary, and a film doesn't need gore to be scary.
But I saw it with a friend who otherwise wouldn't ever dream of coming to see a horror with me and she left just as unswayed.
As a sci-fi comedy drama, I don't think scary was what it was going for was it? so I'm surprised people were calling it genuinely scary upthread. i got no sense of dread or fear from this film... unless people are scared of toilet paper?

I think it's more a fear of the genuine unknown, but there's also the degree of desperation (a different kind of fear) that convinces both camps to take their risks for personal gain (albeit in different ways). Anyway, you don't even see the monster in its full flourish until the end, so if you don't find anything unsettling before that, sure, the final reveal probably won't move the needle at all.

idk there is a lot of dread in the buildup??? like the scene when the teens are fucking with them is terrifying, to me, someone who is not scared of horror movies

and then the monster when revealed turns out to be a biblically-accurate angel. i kind of don't understand finding that cool

It honestly was my second favorite film of that year, flat out. The only thing better I saw was Everything Everywhere All At Once.

wait what? biblically accurate angel? Not much of a biblical scholar, but I don't recall angels being some form of ravenous cloud monster with an insatiable appetite. Am I missing a reference or something?

I don't remember that bit either

https://nofilmschool.com/inspiration-nope-alien-design

i was being silly

xpost I know next to nothing about anime, but that was interesting. I haven't seen Akira in ages, but that video about the homages to the Akira motorcycle slide is up there with videos compiling the Wilhelm scream!

One thing I love about horror is it's so personal and subjective. You either feel it or you don't. Arguing about whether a movie is scary or not is like arguing if something is funny, or somebody is sexy. If you don't; you don't. No need to keep going on and on about it.

Huh

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/jordan-peele-new-movie-removed-2026-release-date-1236505383/

And so we wait.