So, I just saw Nope with some friends for Halloween and it became all I could think about recently. One of the things I realized is that Jupe and OJ are foils of each other in the most funniest ways possible:
Jupe is a fake cowboy, OJ is a real one.
What do we know about OJ? He’s a horse trainer, it’s his passion, he would risk life and limb to save his horses. He knows what they like, what sets them off, how to calm them down, how to tame them. His familiarity with animals is what helps him figure out what Jean Jacket is and what sets her off. He’s the first to really understand Jean Jacket. When they need to bait Jean Jacket out, he goes out on his fucking horse and stares that bitch down, even though he knows its what pisses her off. He has a standoff with a fucking kaiju and comes out alive. He’s a working man, always busy, always wears a hoodie and trucker’s hat because it’s practical. He’s lives in the desert, out in the middle of nowhere, in the frontier. It’s so out there and nowhere that it’s where Jean Jacket hides. He’s broke, he’s selling his horses to Jupe to make ends meet. He’s a loner, he’s an outcast. He keeps his cool, even when’s scared out of his mind. He’s gruff, he speaks sparsely but intently, he’s brave. He’s a cowboy.
Jupe, though? Jupe is a former child actor who owns a western-style theme park. He wears the gaudiest, glitziest cowboy outfits you’ve ever seen. He’s never touched a horse in his life. He doesn’t give a shit about them, he treats them like food. He gives this spiel about taming this wild chestnut stallion before the show but it’s all bullshit. When he’s trying to sacrifice Lucky to Jean Jacket, he tries to usher it out like it’s a fucking dog. “Get out. Come on, do it, now!“ Lucky doesn’t budge an inch, he commands no respect. He’s buying OJ’s family horses just so that he can kill them all. He’s pressuring OJ to sell his land, his family ranch, to him, for his theme park. He had a traumatic experience with a chimp on a TV show, and because that chimp died before it could do anything to him, he thinks he’s special. He thinks he’s chosen, he thinks he’s tamed Jean Jacket - this predatory, alien beast, like you would tame a wild stallion. He’s one of the first people we see die to her. He’s a liar, a sell-out, a thief, an exploiter.
Jupe dresses up like a cowboy, likes to acts like one, but he’s pretend. He’s not a cowboy, he’s a land baron. If Nope was a classic western he would be wearing a mustache and a monocle. He’s nowhere near the cowboy he thinks he is.
This is why Jupe dies to Jean Jacket while trying to exploit her, and why OJ comes out alive even when he’s pissed her off. Westerns were always about the frontier, the unknown, which is why sci-fi and horror work oddly well with the genre. Jean Jacket represents the unknown, a spectacle of the unimaginable a new frontier. She’s alien and dangerous and completely uncontrollable. OJ, the broke working man who works with horses and lives out in the frontier, respects the unknown, understands it, works within it’s rules. Jupe, the land baron theme park owner, tries to market it, commodify it, exploit it, turn it into a spectacle, and it’s ultimately what kills him. You can’t tame the unknown, you can only try to understand and respect it.
A land baron could never understand the frontier - the unknown - the way a cowboy can. God this move is good.
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