Day 8: And 8 Dopey Things with Jordan Peele’s, “Nope.”

Hello Reader,

Yes. I’ve been gone for a few days, but I’m back to this future.

My next blog after this one will be on everything I’ve learned with cold email campaigns, but TODAY I have to address a movie I have a lot of conflicting feelings about before my brain’s erases them to make the day to day life easier.

Jordan Peele’s UFO sci-fi horror movie, “Nope.”

As a person who has consumed and created a lot of stories in my life the biggest thing that hurts me is waste.

Waste can come in a number of ways in stories, but the biggest culprit in Nope is plot waste.

What is plot waste?

It’s when you introduce aspects that don’t feed to the ultimate climax of a story.

Why have eight of the same kind of wrench for a job?

Exactly.

That’s what’s happened with Nope. It has incredible pieces that don’t add up to a greater sum.

I have a friend Jack who sees the opposite in stories than I do and he loves all the things I find wasteful in Nope. “Isn’t Hollywood’s inherent function to be wasteful, Kyle?” This is what Jack said to me. And to be fair. Yes. It is wasteful, but its waste often contributes to a lack of other stories, time, resources, and other things that could have been allocated to make more cool things in the world.

I personally love when everything leads to something.

“But the thing I love about David Lynch is-”

I know. Dammit. I know.

(as I slam my boba drink down)

I know.

(take a sip and chews)

But what I don’t know is at what point we didn’t want intentional things where every piece has a function? I think of early Spielberg films with this. His stories had an every part of the buffalo type of approach and this made me beyond happy because it felt like my time and attention was being taken seriously to result in the biggest emotional impact the story could muster with all its atoms.

I view stories like math or a machine. It has a function to create a desired emotional reaction and I love when all the pieces come together. I like when the Spirit Bomb (an attack from Dragon Ball Z where every living thing contributes a bit of its power to create the ultimate undefeatable move) is taken and launched at us hitting us right at the center of the emotional Death Star of this stories theme and emotional point.

Back to the Future is the biggest every part of the buffalo movie I’ve ever seen and it is a blast. It works on every level that others fail miserably at. It’s because it always takes seriously the emotional effect that it is going to have on the characters. A teenager being able to understand his parents that he’s resented his whole life. The failed physicist that finally gets to see something he will one day make, work. The awe and emotion is always the main focus in every moment. You can watch that movie over and over again and find something new. It plays to the first time viewer and the hundredth time viewer. This is what beautiful, intricate, connected stories can do. They can last and age like a fine wine growing more complex and intricate based on the same elements it’s always had.

Now, Back to the Nope.

I’ve seen many movies that feel like the pieces are greater than their parts like The Last Jedi, Black Panther, Annihilation, and so on and so forth. But I’ve never had as strong as a perspective on a movie and strategy to solve it as soon as the credits rolled on Nope.

¡TANGENT ALERT!

I was watching Showtime’s Yellowjacket with my partner Amy when she eventually said after the second episode as she put her hand on my shoulder like all the other times before to say the words I’ve come to be all too familiar with, “I think you’re on your own.” And she was right — I made the rest of the journey alone. Amy would come in and out of the room as I finished episode after episode credits somehow finding a deeper spot for my hands to go in my hair saying, “I think they’re doing something. There is going to be a reveal. There’s too much going on here to not do it. Why would the do all of this if they weren’t going to weave it in?” Amy sat on the couch to hear me say, “If they just do this and this and then that. And then it’s revealed that it is this. That’d make all this nonsense and weird choices make sense and be brilliant!” Amy sighed and put the same hand on my shoulder she always did, but this time it was meant to console this time as she said, “That would be great, Kyle, but do you honestly think they took the time and care to do that?”

And in that moment all the hope left me, but I still watched the rest of the show wanting to believe it was true like Santa Claus or Politicians. But Amy was right and this happens over and over again. Why aren’t people making due on the pieces they birth into the world? What is a song without its crescendo? Why aren’t they finding the meaning?

I used to work for Damon Lindelof (Lost, Leftovers, Watchmen) and we were the only two who were watching The Walking Dead in the office, so we’d have the weary recaps each week that only two people who loved the first couple seasons could have and are only left with the ghost of what once was. There was this episode where Lennie James’s character Morgan learns how to use a bowstaff from Benedict Samuel in the episode “Here’s Not Here.” I remember sharing my thoughts on what it was and Damon said, “Benedict Samuel should have been the guy in his monologue. The escaped convict. Then at the end when Morgan looks through his wallet he realizes that Benedict Samuel isn’t the character he said he was, but the convict from the story who assumed the identity of his victim.” My mind was blown. It essentially lined up and tied together all the plot that didn’t add up to anything. I immediately asked, “Why didn’t they do that? That would have been amazing. It feels so obvious now thinking about it.” He just said, “When you’re making the thing it’s easy to lose sight of the obvious.”

I think that’s what happened in Nope.

Okay, after all that ramping and vamping.

Here are my eight changes to solve the plot waste of Jordan Peele’s Nope.

1. Steven Yeun shouldn’t have been in this movie.

   1. He is an amazing actor, but his character felt like an inflation after they landed him. “We have Steven. We need to give him more!” Said some exec at Universal. What I mean by that is that they gave more to the character than needed because they had Steven Yuen, but it threw off the alignment of the rest of the story. Even though I think the Gordy stuff is some of the most powerful and visceral horror scenes in recent memory I still think we could have had that, just not with Ricky “Jupe” Park. This character should not have gotten the screen time and center piece of this story like he did when one character in particular, IMHO, was underserved highly. And that was Keke Palmer’s character Emerald.

2. Emerald should have been Ricky “Jupe” Park.

   1. We got next to no character development of Emerald who desperately wanted to be in the spotlight. Why is that? Because her father cared more about horses and her brother? No, give OJ and Emerald the Gordy tragedy. The Haywood family had the trained horses why couldn’t the father have had other animals, maybe Chimpanzees? OJ and Emerald could have been the kids in the sitcom since they were an industry family. OJ would have been Ricky under the table and Emerald could have not been on set that day. That way we understand why OJ has a connection with animals and how to act when they’re being violent, like he does with the UFO. OJ in the end could choose to look at the UFO showing that he’s not afraid of it anymore. The mirror he was looking at wasn’t his tragedy to overcome. In the movie that was Ricky’s.

3. Why the family business is hurting.

   1. Early in the movie Emerald makes a comment to OJ about selling the property to Ricky. Again if we flipped this and she had part of the family property and turned it into a mural of her brother’s suffering that’d make sense why they were estranged. He got to be the start when she always wanted to be. She isn’t getting the acknowledgment of her suffering she wants and neither is OJ. OJ was traumatized from Gordy and stopped acting and just helped on the farm as the family took a business hit from the blowback of the Gordy attack. All they handle now are the horses, but then when OJ is in the stable and the kids pull the alien prank he could be being traumatized and reminded of the Gordy incident. The way the UFO looks like and eye could have been mirrored to Gordy’s eye.

4. The house should have been sacrificed.

   1. They were setting up that when the UFO eats things it gets sick. I imagine if it ate a whole house it would have been turned to sheets fast. OJ would let go of the house that he had reverence for, but was a reminder of neglect to his sister. OJ stares at the UFO making it mad and runs into the house and seemingly gets sucked up with it. Emerald sees all of this devastated of her brother’s sacrifice, but like all good monsters it doesn’t fully kill the UFO and we think OJ is likely dead. Emerald runs off and gets to her fair ground and giant balloon. The balloon should have been a blow up of Gordy or her OJ’s character in the sitcom. That would mean when she let go this characterization that she is sacrificing the exploitation of her brother’s trauma and in turn defeats the monster.

5. The TMZ guy

   1. I don’t know what this character was all about. I thought it was going to be a cameo, but they didn’t even do that. A total waste. They should have had the director run in to get his harakiri-film-shot and messes up “the plan.” Also, I have zero clue what exactly the plan was. Again, a waste.

6. Lose Angel

   1. This character was meant for comic relief, but Keke has all of that and more and could have used the development time. Angel didn’t contribute anything thematically or conflict-wise to the eventual climax of the film.

7. The Well Photo

   1. I don’t get what this was supposed to emotionally mean and I don’t think Jordan did by the end of it. The Oprah shot? I think her decision should have been to not take the picture that would have been more satisfying and a true shift in her character and goals.

8. The Emotional Climax

   1. The end when Emerald sees OJ is alive and he sees that she is. They both recognize that they overcame what was keeping them from moving forward and now they’re able to do that together.

I believe story should be a laser, not a lamp. We should be headed to a single emotional point of revelation. Emerald and OJ didn’t change. None of the characters did other than going from alive to un-alive. This felt like Jordan watched a lot of criterion movies and took all the lessons for better and worse. This is why it fell flat for me when it felt like it could have hit as high a heights as its IMAX camera pointed to.

I loved Gordy. I loved the UFO. The fact that it was a bio-robotic animal weapon of sorts was so cool. Seeing the bowels of its ship was amazing. I love how it started to transform. I loved how it felt like Jaws in the sky. The part when it’s raining, but the area around the house isn’t. I love how it hid as a still cloud. I love the way it made me think about the sky differently once I left the theater.

Nope made me realize how rarely we as a people take a minute to look up at the mysterious sky above us or do another pass on a script.

And what a world it would be if we did.

-kyle