#nope thoughts

[mingus-archives]

Another Nope (2022) Thought

What does it mean to be consumed? I am thinking of the moment after Jupe and the tourists are swept into the maw of Jean Jacket. When they are screaming, confused, trapped. As Jean Jacket hovers over the Haywood house, someone shouts and begs to be let out. Of what? Do they know that they are in Jean Jacket, the beast? That they are being digested? When Jean Jacket silences them, do they understand finally? There is something so horrifying, so visceral, about being in the maws of something and not even knowing it. Having your fate known by everyone but you.

And then I am thinking of the Haywood ranch. Of OJ and the horses, him slowly selling them away to Jupe, and thinking he can just buy them back. But the horses are already gone; Jean Jacket eats every single one of them. Jupe knows this, but lets OJ make his plan. He doesn’t tell OJ that his ranch is half-eaten, bleeding out in front of him. That he and Jean Jacket have been chewing on the Haywoods the whole time.

I am thinking about that horror, of being someone else’s meal, profit, plan, and of not knowing.

[updatebug]

One thing I absolutely adore about Nope is how much self preservation OJ and Em (And to a certain extent Angel) have. Like, when OJ goes to get Luck he obviously really wants to save the horse, but he is not going to go running out into the arena to try and get him and you know in a different film he would. Same when he gets back to the house. He leaves Lucky  in the trailer and he goes for the van, he doesn’t try and bring the horse with them. 

When the TMZ guy shows up on his bike, Em tries to convince him to leave, but she is aware JJ is hanging round. She tries to convince him, but she doesn’t get into an altercation with him and draw attention, she tries to make him leave, but she doesn’t risk herself to do so. Same with the others, when he goes through no one does anything to try and get his attention and stop him, they all just wait to see what happens. After the crash it’s only when the guy starts screaming that OJ goes to check on him, and even then once JJ shows up, OJ is perfectly willing to leave the guy and get back on the horse himself. (and again, in a different film, OJ would have dragged the guy along with him no matter what). 

(Obviously at the end OJ does make the big hero play but that is to save his sister which is different) 

I just like that this is never framed as negative. They’re not shown as cowardly or unheroic for doing this. And the big self-sacrifice play is so risky that most of the time the heroes only survive through the power of being the protagonist and the fact that we don’t really get that it this (until the very end) just makes the horror and their survival feel so much more tenuous and realistic to me. 

[mingus-archives]

Even More Nope (2022) Thoughts

The specificity of the vortex. In the desert, in the plains, the vortex is a singular tragedy. Floods, storms, fires, they hit everything. They touch everyone. But a tornado is specific. A tornado can take down a single house, a single horse, a single person. One building can be brought to its foundations and its neighbor left with just a broken window. And in the same way, a tornado can spare a single man.

Jean Jacket’s mouth is not a tractor beam. It’s a vortex. It’s a tornado. It’s choice of victim is specific. When JJ eats the TMZ reporter OJ makes it out unscathed, despite the fact that the two were mere feet apart. And that’s what makes it horrible.

But what makes it worse, you can see a tornado coming from miles away.

Gordy was a time bomb, an amalgamation of instincts placed into a setting made only to exacerbate them. In retrospect, it seems so obvious. Of course a chimpanzee, a species prone to violence, known to have man-killing strength, would cause a tragedy. But when Gordy does, all you can do is watch. All you can do is see the devastation approach and hope you’re not in its way. This is Jupe, caught in the wake of a tornado, in a singular act of havoc.

Em and potentially OJ’s survival can be attributed to their bond, their knowledge and expertise handling animals. But along with that is the tragedy, especially given that OJ may not have actually made it, that their survival was a stroke of luck. After all, when a tornado builds, there is no path or mercy, no story to tell, no motive. There is just those who survived and those who didn’t.