Is Jordan Peele's newest feature film boring or straightforward?
Nope.
The film packs a lot of spectacle, heart, and thematic meaning into its runtime.
Here's the ending of "Nope" explained.
"Nope" spans roughly six months, most of which we don't even see.
It begins with the death of Otis Haywood Sr. when a piece of metal shoots into his brain.
The authorities blame a freak accident for this, but six months later, his children OJ
and Emerald develop a different theory: A UFO is responsible, and their father's death
is part of a larger pattern of violence.
What's especially significant about this six-month time period in the context of the larger story,
of course, is that we simply don't know exactly how much chaos the UFO caused in those missing
months between Otis Sr.'s death and his children discovering what's really going on.
Whatever else happens in "Nope," one thing is clear: The real toll of the events of the
film is likely much higher than what we see.
"What's a bad miracle?"
OJ Haywood is living with trauma that he's reluctant to address.
He witnesses the death of his father at the very beginning of the film and spends the
rest of "Nope" trying to keep the family's horse ranch alive and kicking.
For much of the film, he seems to be quietly failing in that effort, and the reminders
of his father are never very far away.
Over the course of the film, we see several flashbacks in which OJ recalls lessons from
his father about life and horse training, lessons that he's then later able to apply
to hunting the UFO and, ultimately, surviving it.
By the end of the film, as the dust is literally settling, OJ emerges as a survivor of something
that claimed his father's life, succeeding in his own way at something his father never
got a chance to master.
In some ways, OJ has just performed the ultimate feat of animal wrangling, growing beyond his
father in the process.
Though she claims to be busy, Emerald Haywood is someone on the hunt for greatness.
When the UFO begins to menace the ranch, she thinks she's maybe found her shot, a moment
that can propel her to something bigger and a chance at achieving her dreams.
Of course, once she convinces OJ to go along with her plan, Emerald finds she's in way
over her head, particularly when certain family resentments start to creep back in.
For Emerald, this is a chance to make the family business about her for a change.
When everything starts to go sideways, it challenges her view of what her family is,
strengthens her bond with her brother, and most importantly, forces Emerald to realize
her true strength in ways she never did before.
When her brother names the UFO "Jean Jacket," after the horse her father took from her,
Emerald takes on the responsibility of finally finishing the struggle, getting the shot,
and even defeating the entity.
By the end, she's come into her own.
When their own efforts to capture the UFO on film turn up short, OJ and Emerald turn
to Antlers Holst, a famous cinematographer they met once on a commercial shoot, who is
intrigued by the challenge of photographing such a strange object.
Eventually lured out to the ranch, Antlers even builds a completely manual camera to
get around the UFO's ability to disrupt anything with a battery, making sure he's more likely
than anyone to get the thing on film.
In the end, Antlers does manage to capture footage of the UFO, but he also ends up so
driven by his own desire to do the impossible that he takes his portable camera and deliberately
goes into the belly of the beast, sacrificing himself for the sake of his art.
The question now, of course, is whether or not any of that art survived.
Both cameras were destroyed, in one way or another, by the UFO, and we saw at least one
film canister unspooling as it rolled down the hill, but there's at least one film magazine
unaccounted for, and we don't know what happened to Antlers' other film as he went up into
the creature.
It's possible his real legacy will be restored, salvaged footage of the UFO, his last great
cinematic achievement.
OJ and Emerald also get a hand from Angel, a curious and conspiracy-loving employee at
an electronics store who comes out to set up their surveillance equipment for them.
At first, OJ and Emerald want to keep Angel at a distance, but over time he becomes a
key part of the operation.
By the end of the film, Angel is caught up in the path of the UFO, to the point that
he seems convinced he's about to face his own death.
To counteract that, he wraps himself partially in barbed wire, hoping that the sharp fencing
will damage the UFO's digestive tract and help him to get free.
He's right.
The creature is indeed wounded, and Angel falls down into the desert, still alive even
if he is a little battered.
The film doesn't show us what happens to Angel next, but there's a very good chance that
he'll spend the rest of his life telling anyone who will listen about what he experienced,
regardless of whether or not he's got proof.
The film's greatest UFO evangelist has finally seen the truth, and there's no way he's letting
that go.
"Maybe you're in a UFO hotspot."
In the film's climax, Emerald rides to the closed Jupiter's Claim theme park, doing her
best to lure the UFO along with her, in the hope that she can use the camera at the bottom
of the wishing well to capture one last image.
Her plan pays off, as she uses a giant Jupe balloon to lure the UFO into the frame, takes
the picture, then watches as the balloon pops and destroys the UFO creature in the process.
As she declares victory, Emerald takes a moment to rest on the ground in the middle of the
theme park, only to realize she's not alone.
News crews who were there to cover the mass disappearances at the park are just outside
the gates, and if they didn't see the whole thing unfolding, then they at least saw part
of it.
So, did any of them get footage?
Are they going to steal Emerald's thunder?
Are they going to believe her when she tells her story?
One thing's for sure: They're not about to just abandon the story as it's getting interesting.
After spending much of the film building up his new show at the theme park, Jupe finally
reveals what he's been working on in one of the film's most memorable sequences.
The new "Star Lasso Experience" at Jupiter's Claim is actually the UFO itself, which Jupe
has been watching for six months, learning its behaviors so he can lure it out to become
a public spectacle.
That plan backfires spectacularly because Jupe misunderstands how the UFO hunts, and
he and his entire audience are killed when the creature descends, sucks them all into
the sky, and devours them.
While he doesn't get everything right in attempting to harness the power of the UFO, it's clear
that Jupe has been watching it for some time and planning a show around it.
So, who did he tell, other than his wife and perhaps his staff, who are also all dead now?
Is anyone else out there aware of what Jupe was doing, and willing to talk about it?
Does the UFO have a wider sphere of influence than the film might lead us to believe?
The answer isn't clear, but the investigation likely won't stop with Jupe's death.
The opening shot of "Nope" is a seemingly incongruous shot of a bloodied chimpanzee
on a TV set, sitting next to what seems to be a dead human body.
Later in the film, we learn that this is Gordy, the chimp star of Jupe's second major Hollywood
outing, a sitcom called "Gordy's House."
During a shoot one day, a popping balloon set Gordy off, and he attacked his human co-stars,
seemingly killing two of them, before turning his attention to Jupe.
Jupe, who was hiding under a table, is terrified until he realizes the chimp actually just
wants to do their trademark fist bump, a sign of the bond they share.
Before he can re-establish that bond, though, Jupe watches as Gordy is gunned down by first
responders.
Though he tries to play it off in adulthood, Gordy's death plainly had a major impact on
Jupe, who takes some of that unresolved emotion and brings it to bear on the UFO.
If he could connect with a homicidal chimp, he thinks, he can connect with a UFO in the
sky.
He's wrong, of course, in keeping with Otis Sr.'s lesson that some animals just don't
want to be tamed.
It's a key part of Jupe's character that he's convinced he can do it, and an enlightening
subplot in the overall saga of the UFO.
Throughout the film, Emerald and OJ talk regularly about getting,
"The shot.
The money shot.
Undeniable— the Oprah shot."
This is an image of the UFO so impressive that even Oprah Winfrey will want to feature
them on television.
All of their early attempts, from phones to surveillance cameras, fail in this effort,
and even Antlers' attempts to get the thing on film with a mechanical camera may have
come up short when his film was put through the wringer.
Still, with help from the wishing well camera at Jupiter's Claim, Emerald makes the Oprah
shot happen, pulling off a beautiful shot of the creature just as it swallows the Jupe
balloon she sent up into the sky.
That Emerald managed to get an impressive shot to share with the world is not in question.
What's perhaps more important at that moment is what it cost her to get it.
She's lost friends, horses, much of the family farm, and nearly her brother and her own life
to get the Oprah shot, and now we're left wondering: Was it worth it?
It's a lasting question that "Nope" asks about every major spectacle visited throughout the
film, from TV shows to carnival attractions.
In the final moments of "Nope," Emerald stands up in the middle of Jupiter's Claim and looks
out into the distance.
She catches her breath for a moment, closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, she
smiles.
The camera shows us OJ and his horse Lucky standing just outside the gates that lead
to the park's arena.
Then the film ends.
"Nope" is a fairly straightforward, easy-to-follow film, but for the sake of covering all the
bases, it's worth at least entertaining the possibility that OJ died and that Emerald
is just seeing her brother through pure hope.
OJ doesn't make a move to interact with her in this scene, nor is he even moving his horse,
and the sign just above him says "Out Yonder," which could be a nod in the direction of the
great beyond.
Much of the main arc of the film is about Emerald growing up and learning to handle
things on her own without her father or her brother, and in killing the UFO, she achieves
that.
Maybe this is the film's way of telling us she's now moving beyond her family and into
something.
Or maybe OJ's just standing there, waiting to give her a ride back to the ranch.
Given the way the finale is staged, it's probably up to audiences to make up their own minds.
"So what happens next?"
During his opening remarks at the "Star Lasso Experience," Jupe describes the UFO, which
he presumes to be an alien spacecraft, and explains that he's taken to calling the aliens
"The Viewers."
It's a brief mention, but it's also a clue into the larger symbolism at work in the film.
OJ and Emerald work in the film industry.
Jupe is a former child star who's become a theme park promoter.
In other words, their entire lives are built in some way around getting "viewers" to pay
attention to them, whether it's on a stage or in movies, or just in a commercial.
Attention is a key part of their economy, and now they've attracted the attention of
a "Viewer" in the UFO that is a seemingly relentless, unreasoning consumer of content.
It doesn't care what you want or who you are.
If you're looking at it, it's looking back at you, ready to eat you alive.
By calling the UFO a "Viewer," Peele has made a fascinating point about the nature of spectacle,
our human sense of curiosity, and what we're doing when we treat other people as an "other"
to be observed.
It's a great metaphor in the middle of a thoroughly entertaining film.
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