Nope

Back in April I was drunk shopping on Etsy when I came across a reprint of an old Jesus Lizard shirt. Practically a blind buy. If you've seen Nope, you know the one. Now, I didn't do my due diligence so when the shirt arrived I was amused to find it just had the cartoon wolf on the front but nary a mention of the band on front or back (no sleeve design either). Hey, still a cool shirt. Then not long after I see Keke Palmer in a Nope trailer with the same shirt and it hit me. If you search Etsy now, there are hundreds of those shirt reprints. Same way if there's a band shirt that Kurt Cobain wore or something a Stranger Things kid wore or any clout-y band shirt, there's reprints made so people can get the look. Same way if you reply to a tweet with something like "I want that on a t-shirt" a bunch of spam bots descend with sketchy links to sites where the image from that tweet can be printed onto a shirt. Walter Benjamin and all that jazz. There's a lot to unpack in Nope and I'll do my best to keep lazy takes from souring my appreciation for a really, really good blockbuster Summer popcorn flick. Really, no complaints. Just enough of "Oh, so that's what this is" without tipping into a stupid twist. Funny. Beautifully shot and designed. A few references that penetrated my cynicism coupled with the joy of realizing what the logline would be (no spoilers but it's '[Movie] but the [blank] is a [blank]'). Terrible theater experience: I somehow bought tickets to a captioned screening and, while I appreciate that those exist, it definitely felt like watching a pirated copy but with great sound. Warrants a rewatch anyway. Also, I was watching Cujo the night I bought the shirt and listened to a podcast about Cujo on my way home from the theater.