OJ (“I don’t think they’d take you if you don’t look at it”) and Em find absurdly low-tech ways to deal with the new enemy (flags and a giant blow-up doll may do the trick), but the others just want to make money off what’s happening, whether by filming the invaders (if, indeed, they are that) or, in the case of the promoter Park (Yeun was Oscar-nominated in “Minari” ) using them to stage an open-air performance.
DANIEL THE CAMERAMAN HOW TO
There are no scientists (as in “Arrival”, or “The Day the Earth Stood Still” ) to figure out who the extra-terrestrials are, or what they want, or how to engage, befriend, or defeat them-questions that would appear to be of little concern to Peele. Peele’s engagement with science fiction and alien invaders seems equally perfunctory. A final scene, in which a spectral OJ emerges from a cloud of dust on horseback, just outside the “town” and framed by an arch, can only be understood as an ironic, overly-determined reference, bringing to mind John Wayne’s more meaningful door-framed exit in “The Searchers” (1959). There is no romance in “Nope.” Nor does director Peele have any serious interest in the West as a place or phenomenon.
Only OJ, a courageous loner on his isolated ranch, has some wider sense of obligation: to his sister, the ranch, and their animals-certainly not to society at large, threatened by aliens. They do not, however, form a community, not even one like the dysfunctional trio of John Huston’s 1948 “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Everyone is either isolated or operating in a simulated environment. Three other male characters-a brash young tech guy, Angel Torres (Brandon Perea), who works at Fry’s Electronics (a California big-box store that ceased operations in 2021), a crusty, expert cameraman (Michael Wincott), and Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), promoter/entertainer-round out the ensemble cast.
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