Nope

I am subscribed to /r/publicfreakouts, /r/actualpublicfreakouts, and /r/publicfreakoutsreborn, among countless other catalogs of today’s LiveLeak and WorldStar content. On Instagram and Twitter, I regularly scroll past videos of people puking in nightclubs. Animals violently grabbing people through cage fences. A gender reveal party gone wrong. I see the occasional post from a friend’s family barbecue. Back to the drunken street fight clips. A car exploding in Rio. It’s terrible for me. It makes me a more anxious person. It makes me a worse person. And yet I can’t take my eyes off the spectacle. Portable, ubiquitous video capture is up there as one of the most significant inventions of the 21st century, giving persecuted groups the ability to capture indisputable evidence of their mistreatment. But the monkey’s paw of that gift has been the corruption of how we process the drama and tragedy of real life. It’s just. so. entertaining. You want to know how to make a name for yourself in high school? Where I teach, all you have to do is to get really good footage of a fight. I see it constantly. Something is brewing in the hallways - boom, phones out. Get a good angle and that video will be everywhere by fifth hour. At least they have the excuse of being young. For more guilty parties like myself, so much of our modern entertainment is now the real-life spectacle happening in the world, beamed to us through the power of the internet. These episodes we witness are full of so much real pain and suffering, and we watch it as emotionally detached as if it were fiction (if not moreso). Imagine this: You are on social media, watching a video of a man carrying a precarious wedding cake to an eager bride and groom. What do you think is probably going to happen in the video? More importantly, what do you secretly hope to see happen? That is but one question that Jordan Peele is imploring us to ask ourselves with the prismatic Nope, a return to form after exploring his boundaries with the impressive and enjoyable, albeit preposterous Us. Yes, I’ll finally start talking about the film. Nope makes Us all the more worthwhile, for it’s clear that he learned from that experience. Get Out was such a strong three-ball juggle, a masterpiece of precision on a honed set of themes, so when Peele tried to introduce a fourth and fifth ball to the juggle in Us, they fell as the third act unveiled itself. Still far from a sophomore slump, he needed to test his limits, boundaries, and calibrations for how to blend several themes together into a genre narrative that balances plot satisfaction with thematic power. I think he cracked it with Nope, maintaining the ambition and complexity without the messiness. The film is completely marvelous on a technical level, begging to be seen and heard in IMAX. Hoytema sits comfortably upon his IMAX throne, and I pray he gives us another home video release as gorgeous as Tenet. The sound is stunning and otherworldly. The music is big and bombastic. The storytelling is trademark Peele left-of-center, and it all comes together in a couple bravura moments of epic horror filmmaking, both big and small. Daniel Kaluuya, though deeply understated, is on absolute fire here. Keke Palmer is the show-person of the piece, a classic high-energy foil, and while her character shines once you settle in, good luck taking your eyes off Kaluuya. From a character perspective, Steven Yeun’s might be the most fascinating, and his performance is a masterful “tip-of-the-iceberg” type of execution. Whereas Us withered upon reflection, Nope only continues to unfold and reveal further layers. Animal exploitation. Race. The under-seen in Hollywood. Holding it all together, though, is his humble and self aware request for us to reconsider what we watch, and how those choices and addictions shape our world. Amid the thematic aspirations, it’s also a riveting movie theater spectacle in the traditional sense - Jaws, Tremors - harkening back to a time when blockbusters were escapes from reality, reminding us how staid (and honestly, boring) real life was. We all lived in ignorant bliss about the intensity and horror of human life, and our stories were our anxiety playgrounds. Prior to Nope, the last blockbuster event to capture the eyes of Americans wasn’t a film. It wasn’t even fiction. It was the fucking Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. Droves of internet denizens worked overtime to exploit the shit out of that thing, and my ick alarm was ringing loudly. Peele’s film couldn’t have landed at a better time, but the roots of this phenomenon stretch back some 30 years to another court case from which Kaluuya’s character’s name is unsubtly pulled from. (As seen from the second trailer, the climax of the film literally has “OJ” on a “bronco” fleeing from an aerial spectator.) According to my mom, it was the first thing I ever saw. Along with the rest of America, she was glued to it everyday from her small kitchen TV while carrying me in her pregnant belly.  I guess I’ve found my origin story. The day I saw footage, been noided ever since. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I STAY NOIDED. I SEEN FOOTAGE. I SEEN- I SEEN FOOTAGE.