A Few Thoughts on Nope

*Spoilers.*

In my review of Nope, I gushed as much as I was able, which is tough when you can barely discuss what the film is about without spoiling important stuff. So we’re wading into full spoiler territory today, mostly looking at theme but it may veer into a few different topics.

One of the things I loved about watching Nope was seeing all these little throwaway moments and scenes that felt baffling or out-of-place at first, only to have them come together in critical ways in the second half of the film. It doesn’t get peeled back like an onion—it opens like a flower, the dense bud blooming into a wonderful array of overlapping petals that make up a superb whole.

The largest theme of the film, one that’s explored in multiple ways, is the connection between fame and exploitation. The Haywoods run the only Black family-owned animal wrangling business in Hollywood, and they claim to be descended from the jockey riding the horse in the very first motion picture. As Em points out, history lauds the man who invented and operated the camera but has completely forgotten about the man who was the world’s first movie star, stunt man, and animal wrangler rolled into one.

That idea, of opportunities for fame falling through the cracks, is further exemplified in the character of Jupe. His Wild West theme park, we learn, is inspired by his role in Kid Sheriff, his big break as a child star. “You were the Asian kid from Kid Sheriff?” Em asks with delight as she looks at the memorabilia in his office, later asking “whatever happened to” the talented young Black kid who costarred in the movie. We don’t know, and Jupe clearly isn’t the movie star he’d hoped to be. His acting career, it’s implied, fell off after the horrific, hushed-up tragedy that occurred on the set his sitcom Gordy’s Home, an incident in which the trained chimp began brutally attacking the actors during filming.

Because Nope looks at the exploitation of animals as well as people. The way everyone crowds around Lucky the horse and gets in his space on the film set, spooking him, as O.J. fruitlessly tries to get them to back off. The way Gordy the chimp was placed in an environment he was never meant to be in, withstanding various noises and stressors until he felt pressed to attack—in the end, he was shot and killed, and he definitely hurt people, but humans were the ones who put him in that situation to begin with. And O.J. and Em come up with the idea to save the farm by filming the UFO they glimpse in the sky over their property, dreaming of the big payday of capturing the perfect “Oprah shot.” When they learn they’re dealing with an alien animal instead of a spaceship, they use tactics out of O.J.’s horse training playbook to essentially get the creature to do “tricks” for the camera.

The most brutal, interesting moments of this idea of fame and exploitation come in the intersections between humans and animals. Whether it’s Jupe chasing stardom—first as a child and later trying to recapture it as an adult—O.J. and Em chasing dollar signs, or Holst chasing the perfect shot, all the human characters actively put themselves in dangerous situations with unpredictable animals in the hopes of getting what they want. They use these animals as they in turn allow themselves to be used by their desires, getting chewed up and spit out for the sake of “entertainment” (and in more than one case, that’s actually literal.)

The flashback of the Gordy’s Home tragedy is the scariest, most disturbing scene of the film. Jupe was clearly traumatized by witnessing that as a child, but he displays his trauma for clout, taking O.J. and Em into his hidden room of Gordy’s Home memorabilia and reminiscing about the SNL sketch inspired by the speculation into what really happened on the set that day. What’s more, he evidently didn’t take away the obvious lesson of “don’t work with a volatile creature who can destroy you,” because when he discovers the UFO, he and his family start secretly working on a routine to incorporate into the live show at their theme park. Even knowing that the thing sucked up one of his horses, he feeds it more, thinking he’s “training” it until he believes it’s predictable enough to build a show around it. Let’s just say, he’s very, very wrong about that.

O.J.’s expertise and affinity with animals gives him and Em the best chance to actually get the coveted money shot of the creature. With Angel and Holst helping them out on the camera side, they devise a plan that’s based on O.J.’s general knowledge of animals and his specific observations about the creature: drawing it out with movement, monitoring where it’s going to appear based on what gets affected by its EMP-like defenses, and staying aware of its aversion to eye contact to keep (relatively) safe. As O.J. points out, Jupe’s mistake was thinking he could “tame a predator” when, really, you can’t do more than “come to an agreement with it.”

But while O.J.’s knowhow protects the group, it can’t fully shield them. Unsurprisingly, much of the pull toward danger comes from that earlier itch for fame. Holst is hidden away, filming from a safer distance as O.J. takes calculated risks to get the creature to perform for the camera, but when he realizes “the light is going to be perfect soon,” the pull is too great. He can’t resist, and he points his camera straight at the mouth of the beast, not caring that it’s going to swallow him up. And while O.J.’s methods are more respectful to the creature than we’ve seen most characters behave toward any animals in the film, they’re ultimately still using the creature in the hopes of a big Hollywood payout, getting it to do tricks for their profit.

Everyone is complicit, everyone takes advantage of other living things, and everyone offers themselves up to the abattoir at the gates of Hollywood. What a film—I love it!