SPOILER REVIEW + EXPLANATION ! ‘Nope’ with Mike’s Theories on the Jordan Peele film

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mix Movie Podcast. This is a spoiler edition of a movie review. Today we're talking about Note, which I'm really excited to do because in my normal review, I really just got the chance to explain how that movie made me feel. But now I get to get into all of the spoilers, all the plot lines, and what at least this movie meant to me. And everybody was pretty divided on this movie. Some people loved it like I did, and some people hated it and thought it was a waste of time, not scary at all, one of the worst movies they've ever seen. And I feel like when it comes to a Jordan Peele movie, they are so polarizing that that is how the audiences are usually split. You either loved it, you got everything he was trying to say, or if you did it in that moment, you like to go research later and figure it out and then be like, oh man, that was really awesome now that I get it. And that's the type of movie fan I am. Or you watch it take it for face value, and if you go in expecting to be scared, expecting to have something kind of rock your world and it doesn't do that so you hate it, which is fine too. I think it's just hard to make something that is in the sci fi horror realm and able to meet everybody's expectations. For me, I just like seeing something made that is completely different, completely novel, even if it doesn't completely nail all those elements. I love a director like Jordan Peel striving to do something different, trying to make something that has never been made before. And that's what I feel like I got with Nope, and that's why I left enjoying it so much. But let's get into where this movie started, what it's about, because I never really even got into that in a normal review, because I think this is a movie. If you don't know a whole lot about it going into it, you enjoy it that much more. But essentially, it is a movie that deals with the paranormal. It deals with extraterrestrials. It deals with UFOs, and I am somebody who loves UFOs. I love all discussions when it comes to aliens. By myself, I believe in aliens. I feel like as we learn more and more about the world we live in, this movie did a pretty interesting job at tackling the sentiment surrounding aliens, the characteristics of aliens, and just how our society reacts to them. Now, where this movie kind of started and the idea began was with Jordan Peel wanting to create something that was a spectacle. He made and wrote this movie at a time that he didn't know if movie theaters or movies in general, we're going to be all right, if people were going to go back and watch movies. He thought he needed to create something so large and put on such a show that would get people back into seeds in the movie theaters. And that's kind of where the idea of Nopes started, the idea of creating a spectacle, And that is one of the main themes out of the entire movie that I really identified early on, and I feel like it's kind of sat with me here even a couple of weeks now after I've seen the movie, and you see this really from the very beginning of the movie, where they are on set. You have o J and his sister Emerald, continuing on their dad's business, who at the beginning of the movie died after a random object fell out of the sky, crushed his skull, went inside of his head, and killed him, and there was no real explanation given. But they had this business called Hollywood Horses where they live on a horse ranch. They trained these horses to be in Hollywood productions, and that's kind of where you get your first spectacle. Is there there help being film a commercial and they could just use C G I horses, but they have O J there and his sister and they are training the horses to be a part of this commercial. And the first kind of instance that you feel something is a little bit off is whenever O J tells everybody not to look the horse the eye, not to do anything sudden, and this guy comes up puts this reflective thing in front of the horse and the horse freaks out, which that will come back into play at the end of the movie. But this is where all the themes kind of start of working with animals, of show business, of the idea of just putting on a big production, which was a pretty big theme out of the entire movie, I think the biggest theme and what Jordan Peel was trying to say in this movie. I feel like it was his most ambitious attempt yet out of his three movies, and the one that maybe just didn't quite land with everybody, because it's a pretty hard thing to connect. You have this movie about aliens in this UFO and they're trying to capture the UFO get the Money slash Oprah shot that they talk about. But then you're kind of creating this idea of fame and this idea of having to record everything. And o J played by Daniel Kaluya, and the Emerald their brother and sister, and they realize that there is a cloud on their ranch that hasn't moved and it has to be the thing linked with all the crazy things happening around their ranch, so they want to capture it. They want to get it on film and HD quality unlike anybody has ever seen before, and they think by doing that that shot will make them rich and famous. And the entire movie kind of plays out that idea of people wanting to have fame, people wanting to capture things on film. And I just found that as kind of an interesting point to make, as this has kind of been our norm the last I mean even decade, but very much in the last few years, of everybody always recording something, and not only that, but it's almost like some things in our life don't exist unless we photograph it, unless we take a video of it. You weren't at a concert unless you filmed it. You didn't witness something cool if you didn't get it for your Instagram story. And now you're not really a part of anything unless you can put a clip up on TikTok. And you see this throughout the movie. You see it with the cinematographer who comes to help them, and he has the camera that doesn't have any electronics, so he's able to go around the UFOs, ability to shut down things that run, you know, through battery power or through any kind of electronic and he has a fascination of getting that shot, no matter what it takes, of just getting that shot, because that's the only thing that really excites him, and ultimately that leads to his death. He had already done his job of capturing the UFO on film, but he wanted to take it a step further, and to get the perfect shot, sacrificed his life. He went on to a part of the mountain or the hill or whatever and kept rolling on it until the UFO ate him. And that's how he went out. His fascination with getting the perfect shot because he wanted the better lighting. And then you also have the TMZ reporter who kind of comes out of nowhere, which was a bit odd. It was kind of an interesting placement to put that in the story. I got why he was there. He was the kind of outside noise of somebody wanting to again get that shot. And even as he is sitting there, actually laying on the ground after being hit by the force field and is in really bad shape, he wants o J to film him like he's still obsessed with like, oh man, this would make such a great footage. I'm probably about to die, but I need to capture this in order to show this later. He's just fascinated with that. So I didn't love I didn't hate the TMZ character in this because but I just felt that you kind of already got that point across with the cinematographer. It was kind of just adding that second element that other restating that same plot point. So I didn't feel like that character was completely necessary. So maybe I held that a little bit against the film. So I felt like that was the overarching theme that is kind of what Jordan Peele was trying to say in this movie. I did think it was going to be a lot more focused on aliens and maybe even with like an idea of money, and I knew that wasn't going to be the case early on in the movie, where you see the alien pretty like in the first twenty minutes or so, and you think, like, well, where is it going to go from here? But it turns out to kind of be a spoof of it's just the the kids who live at the other ranch coming to mess with him. That kind of gave me that feeling I had back when I watched Signs and seeing that alien for the first time. I was kind of scared at that point, but it felt like they were knowing it so much that that couldn't be the thing, and that ended up being kind of just a goof But credit to Jordan people for still giving me that kind of scared feeling and then kind of having that misdirection moment of it just being kids inside a costume. I did think it was going to have like an overlying message of like Little Green Men and it being kind of a metaphor where you think alien, but you also think little Green Men relating to money. I guess that kind of comes back to the fascination with O J kind of out of nowhere wanting to make money. Yes, he is struggling after not really being able to keep the business going as well as his father did, and maybe now the little green men in the spaceship could be his ticket to recovery. Maybe we just figured it out there. Maybe that's was the symbolism there. But I think my favorite part out of the entire movie ended up not being the aliens. It ended up being the character Jup played by Steven Yen. And I think this was the only freaking spoiler I saw before seeing this movie, and I really wish I had no idea and it wasn't so much a spoiler, but I didn't know that there was going to be some kind of monkey attack, and if I wasn't expecting that at all, I think I would have enjoyed it even more. But it still ended up being my favorite part out of the entire movie. I just loved the character Juke, who was a childhood star on this TV show, Gordy's Home. I loved the way that that TV show was introduced and how the scene was sort of revealed but not really and it just kind of kept flashing back and flashing back to that. I found that this also dealt with fame, It also dealt with the exploitation of animals and was able to tie back into the idea of the UFO creature in this movie. Now, Juke was on this TV show where they had a real chimp. It was doing really well in the ratings. The show was crushing it. But then one day there was an attack where he beat some people to a bloody pulp. And then although Jup didn't get attacked, he ended up being fine because right as Gordy was going to kind of do the little hand signal that they did on the show, he was shot by somebody and killed. But it was that trauma that he experienced on the worst day of his life that now was an adult, still holds and kind of carry something with him that he has built the shrine in this new Western theme park, that he has built this side show attraction to kind of hold and remember the worst day of his life. And he has this fascination with something so awful, which I just found so interesting. I found his character as he was rehearsing what he was going to say on the first day of this exhibit, where he you find out he has been taking the horses he's been buying from o J and feeding him to the alien, to the spaceship in the sky, and he is still trying to put on a show. He's almost trying to relive his childhood fame days of now exploiting a different animal. Instead of the chimp from Gordy's home. It is now this alien creature in the sky, and he wants all these people there. He wanted o J there to experience it. And it was almost like he didn't learn anything from being on Gordy's home. He didn't learn anything of that relationship he formed. What he took away from it is I gotta find a way to do that again. I have to find a way to exploit another animal, because that was awesome. I was famous when I was doing that. So it's like he's still hanging on to his childhood fame. He's still hanging onto those days. I mean, even his co star Mary Joe, who shows up at the event, she's still wearing her T shirt with her character's face on it while covering her face that has been disfigured from that chimp attack. So it is kind of a commentary on childhood fame, the things we do to create a spectacle, and I said we would come back to that first point I made about the horse and it seem gets reflection and it freaking out and causing them to do away with O j Services and just use a C. G I horse. And it was because he told him, you know, don't mess with the horse, don't look the horse in the eye, don't show him his reflection, and they did and that kind of came into play at the ending where they realize where if they didn't look at Jeane Jacket the name of the UFO in the eyes with their eyes, that they were kind of immune to his attack. And we saw this whenever he showed himself at the event on Jup's ranch and swallowed all those people, which was one of the best scenes out of the entire movie. And then the dumping of the blood on their house like that is That's why I felt this movie was an instant classic. That is something you'll remember that was reminiscent of when I saw a Jaws attack for the first time, or the blood coming off the elevators in the Shining or the blood shooting out of the bed on Nightmare on elm Street. I just thought it was a great ode to horror classics in a way that felt very two So they realized this that if you don't look Jane Jacket in the eyes, you don't get eaten, you don't get attacked. And at this point, I've been loving everything about the movie. I thought it was almost a perfect film. Lost me a little bit on the TMZ character, but that was fine. I just thought he was gonna have kind of a cooler role, kind of means something a little bit more, but that was fine. I wouldn't have ducked any points for that. I' just think the ending to me didn't feel as gratifying as I was expecting. It summed everything up nice. It I didn't feel like I missed anything. I was just expecting a little bit more of a Hurrah moment of all these crazy things that had been happening of o J kind of going through a lot, but yet not feeling any highs or lows. He kind of stays consistent throughout the entire movie, even after all these crazy things are happening happening to him, he still feels pretty normal and chill, which I thought was a cool take on his character, and he stayed kind of true to that, and then you have him in the relationship with his sister Emerald kind of become the last statement out of the entire movie of they've had this kind of feeling between them that hasn't been resolved and o J's relationship with his dad and Emerald kind of feeling left out of that relationship, and then o J doing this heroic thing at the end to kind of make up for that, and that kind of being the last note it goes out on. I just felt like it didn't quite get there for me. I could have had something a little bit more. And then even with Jeane Jacket kind of taking on this new form of realizing it needed to create a bigger spectacle in order to defeat them, and the thing that kind of ultimately takes him out is just them tricking him into eating some of the things and making him explode. And then it doesn't really explain if they were able to keep the footage that they shot on that camera, like did that footage exists or did it go away Whenever the the other camera guy went up into Jeane Jacket and the only thing they had were the pictures that were taken from the perspective of that well, so it was still an almost perfect movie to me, with all the themes it tried to tackle on, with all the characters it created, but only that it just created this last thing affect in me, which it's not very often that I think about a movie for days after seeing it. I thought about this movie for almost two weeks after I watched it, because I was rethinking, like, how did what does that mean exactly? Oh, well, this seemed did that His hoodie was orange, so that was a representation of this, and then the credits were orange. There were just so many fine details in it that I felt like everything existed for a purpose. It was up to me to figure out what that purpose was. And that's a lot of work to put into a movie that's a lot of detail. So I think if you really want to dig into it, there are even more things you can talk about and pull out of this movie. And it's very rare that a film like this exists that different people can interpret it different ways, and I think that is the sign of great art. This movie felt like art to me. It felt like a discussion piece that even if you hated this movie, you thought it was stupid, you thought, even though you understood some of the symbolism that was trying to be, you know, put across the screen, you still found it dumb. Like that's fine. I just still think it was a bold, ambitious movie. And if there are things being created that can still create these kind of conversations, that is important. There are so many great movies. Maybe it's not this one for you, but something that you can find that is new and novel and thought provoking and not the same thing over and over again. That is what I'm looking for. That is what excites me. So I think when it comes to where I see cinema wanting to go, I really love seeing Jordan's Peel being the one to kind of take it in new directions. So now I still stand by my rating. I still think it's a four point five out of five, easily in my top three movies of the year. Could probably battles between this and Everything Everywhere all at once. I would still rank it as my second favorite Jordan Peele movie. I would go Get Out, Nope, and then Us in that order. And I just can't wait to see what he does next. That has been my spoiler addition and my attempt at explaining the themes of Nope. Hope you enjoyed that. If you thought there was another theme, another thing you picked up on after watching this movie that I didn't hit on, let me know. Email me movie Mike D at gmail dot com, hit me up on social media at Mike destro And you can always find all those links in the podcast episode notes. And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.