NOPE

 In the modern blockbuster era, where "subverting expectations" is treated as both a radical political act and an inherently good way to tell a story, even a filmmaker as talented and creative as Jordan Peele can feel trapped. "Get Out" was a phenomenon when it released in 2017, one of the rare occasions in recent memory where...

• audiences embraced a wholly original concept. The film's domestic box office take, over $175 mil, was the biggest for an original film released that year (that was not historically based, or animated). The only films since to hit that number with that criteria were 2018's "A Quiet Place" and Peele's next film, "Us", in 2019.
• the major awards shows embraced a horror movie. We can go back and forth forever on what technically counts as "horror", but I would think that the most common answer for the last horror film to get love at the Academy Awards before "Get Out" is "The Sixth Sense" all the way back in 1999, and that failed to win any category. "Get Out" won Jordan Peele the award for best original screenplay. 
• politically confrontational cinema was fully in vogue. With the very successful and very obvious exception of Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper" in 2014, the general public spent most of the 2010s looking for escapism, not statements, in their movies. In-your-face politics became more common in the Trump era, absolutely, but none of those films ever made as much money as "Get Out", which for what it's worth put a lot more effort into attacking ostensibly left-leaning faux allies than actual conservatives.

 It was also instrumental in the rise of Jason Blum's Blumhouse production studio, which right now is a juggernaut synonymous with horror movies but had spent much of 2014 thru 2016 fumbling around with decently profitable but low quality films such as "Unfriended" and "The Gallows" and "Ouija" and whichever late stage Paranormal Activity sequel came out in those years. All of this is to say that Jordan Peele had a brand that stuck: you come to the theater expecting a horror movie with some comedy elements that has a very direct metaphor for a big-picture political issue. "Us" was that in 2019, and while the box office and critic reviews were very similar to "Get Out", the film didn't seem to go over all that well with the general public (a B CinemaScore audience poll, vs the A- for his earlier film, and a 6.8 average on IMDB vs a 7.7). 2021's "Candyman" reboot, which he wrote and produced but did not direct, was largely seen as more diminishing returns of the same formula.

 Along comes "Nope", which I excitedly saw opening night in a theater that was maybe, generously, half-full. "Nope" is great. It is not really horror, nor are its themes "political", in the way most people would use that word. What Peele made is a very intelligent and terribly fun blob, a movie hard to categorize into a genre (horror enough to disturb me but with almost no gore, chase scenes filmed with IMAX cameras, more jokes than "Us") with a plot that's simultaneously simple to explain (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer want to take a picture of an alien) and delightfully sprawling (sure, you *could* have told the story without the monkey, but why would you dull your messaging and sacrifice the most horrifying scene in the film to do that??). Unlike his first two films, it's not actually produced by Blumhouse, and unlike his first two films, there's no twist that demands you watch it a second time.

 And unlike his first two films, or I don't know, maybe exactly like his first two films, "Nope" treats its themes in a very literal way. The simplest thing you can say the movie is about is respecting nature. Gordy the chimp is treated like a prop, and not like a living thing, as the costar of a sitcom. That ends very badly. The movie teases us with Gordy's attack right at the start, as the sound plays over studio logos, and then holds the visuals of it for about an hour. I thought this decision was fine - maybe the audio tease is weird, maybe the movie could have worked without it, but showing it at the beginning would have over-promised on the horror aspect. My goodness, is Gordy's attack horrifying. Peele follows the holy rule of horror: show little and let the audience imagination go wild. The attack has basically no gore on the screen. But it carries a constant threat. And the sound of Gordy mauling a person is far more disturbing than a CGI monkey causing a CGI blood gash would have been. Gordy is an obvious thematic parallel with the alien, who the movie eventually calls Jean Jacket. The "twist", if you can call it one, is that Jean Jacket doesn't particularly want anything, except to eat food and not be gawked at by people. This makes it just like most big animals, as opposed to something truly alien. And OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) is a very good horse wrangler who respects dangerous animals, a simple skill that makes him uniquely equipped for handling Jean Jacket (this trope is one of the ways that "Nope" feels more indebted to action blockbusters or Spielberg monster movies than true horror). The visual motif connecting them all is eyes. Early on we see bad consequences for a film set when they show a horse the reflection of its eyes. OJ eventually figures out that looking down, away from Jean Jacket, is a safe way to avoid being eaten. In the middle, well, I think that demands its own discussion.

 Steve Yeun is a famous actor, in a movie which only has 3 of those. He was Academy Award nominated recently, and has a somewhat high profile. I say this because in that context, and the context of the film's marketing, his screen time seems quite small. He plays Jupe, a child actor on the set that Gordy attacked who grows up to run a theme park. Jupe is the key that makes the film about exploitation in a grander sense. Gawking at and not respecting large animals is exploitation, fine, that's a fair thesis, if not a super interesting one. Jupe is something stranger. Jupe wants to be gawked at. He proudly recites an SNL skit about Gordy attacking an actor that played his family. He makes money by showing people his secret room of Gordy memorabilia. He's exploiting himself, profiting off of his own trauma by selling it to people. We never see the people he sells this trauma to, but of course there had to be someone to buy it, someone who wanted to pay thousands of dollars to re-live Jupe's horrifying memories for entertainment. "Nope" leaves it ambiguous why Jupe was not mauled by Gordy himself. Maybe there is no reason why, which isn't a super satisfying answer for a movie but does fit in with the theme of leaving nature be. Maybe Gordy and Jupe had some sort of special connection, which is the idealistic version of this which I do not buy. I think it was as simple as Jupe and Gordy never locking eyes, the eyes being the main thing going on with OJ's horses and with Jean Jacket, and the Gordy attack scene pointedly featuring a tablecloth covering Jupe's face. To be sure, Jupe thought he and Gordy had a special connection. That's what inflates Jupe's ego to the point where he feels comfortable exploiting aliens at his theme park to make a quick buck. But hey, in a lot of ways I just think it's neat that we have a giant summer blockbuster tackling themes this interesting with scenes this open for interpretation. The ending follows suit: OJ's sister Em (Keke Palmer) successfully gets the picture of Jean Jacket, and then gets swarmed by TV news cameras. Does that mean she's going to have the credit for her role in fighting the alien taken away from her, like the jockey in history's first moving picture referenced throughout "Nope"? Or does it mean that, like Jupe, her whole future will be making a career out of reselling the most traumatic event of her life? I think Peele purposely wants both of those things to be on your mind leaving the theater.

 Not everything in "Nope" works. The director who joins OJ's team for the third act definitely doesn't. He has no traits except wanting the perfect shot, he's not funny or interesting, and he gets his perfect shot in a very dumb way that doesn't do the movie any favors. I think we probably could have used one more Steve Yeun scene, between the movie showing the Gordy incident and the alien show. But I fully believe "Nope" is about as good as genre blockbusters get. Mainly I hope its fine but not great box office, over $100 mil domestic but destined to come in under both "Get Out" and "Us", doesn't dissuade Jordan Peele from doing some more non-horror stuff in the future.