Saddle up for the first spooky trailer for Jordan Peele’s Nope
Jordan Peele's next thriller stars Steven Yeun, Daniel Kaluuya, and Keke Palmer
Aux News Jordan Peele
The trailer for Jordan Peele’s next feature film has finally touched down (come on, it is Super Bowl Sunday after all). After giving a tiny preview of the film earlier last week, the director has shared the first full trailer for Nope, starring Steven Yeun, Daniel Kaluuya, and Keke Palmer.
For the first chunk, the trailer focuses on Palmer as the heir to the only Black-owned ranch of horse trainers in Hollywood, with a legacy going back to the first-ever motion pictures. It’s fun, it’s upbeat, Daniel Kaluuya is there being kind of snotty. Hey, maybe this will be a return of the Jordan Peele who wrote Keanu?
No, obviously. Things take a turn pretty quickly, with the power flickering out, weird lights appearing, and horses getting freaked out by something. We don’t know what that something is, but involves some kind of phenomenon in the sky, like a weird cloud or maybe aliens. Steven Yeun shows up for a second, there appears to be a woman without lips, there’s a chromed-out motorcyclist, and it’s all very strange and mysterious. Also: There certainly are a lot of those wacky waving inflatable flailing arm tube men… what’s that about?
The full cast of Nope features Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreira, Michael Wincott, Donna Mills, and Terry Notary. Kaluuya previously worked with Peele on the Oscar-nominated Get Out, but everyone else in the cast are first timers.
This is Peele’s third time in the director’s chair, with Nope serving as a follow-up to Get Out and Us. The director also helped pen the script for Nia DaCosta’s Candyman (2021), and like these three other films, Nope is expected to contain a mix of horror and social commentary. For Nope, Peele has teamed up with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Tenet, Interstellar), who shot some of the film in 65mm for IMAX. This means the film will be suited for an even bigger screen.
Nope is set to arrive in theaters July 22.
86 Comments
Now, bear with me: I initially thought – based on the mysterious cloud dragging a flag streamer – that this was going to be a surprise remake of “Killer Clowns from Outer Space’.
Don’t laugh.
In fairness, they’ve been making/not making/definitely imminently releasing/never going to happen-ing a Killer Klowns sequel for decades. A stealth remake by Jordan Peele seems entirely reasonable with all of that in mind.
I would love a remake of Killer Klowns From Outer Space that incorporates social commentary
Maybe the Killer Klowns were the friends we made along the way?
The real Klowns are the white people!This is not a joke
My thought was it was an homage to the Kite Eating Tree, which frankly is horrifying.
It’s not too far off base. I’d “NOPE” the fuck out of there if I saw a bunch of evil alien clowns.
Alien invasion?Seeing that horse in the glass box made me think of that horse scene in The Cell. Haven’t thought of that movie in a while, but still.
The horse is fiiiiiiinee
The Cell really is a small masterpiece. It might have been a proper masterpiece with almost any other lead than Jennifer Lopez.
She was ok, Vince Vaughn was like a pile of wet dirt. But agree that it is a minor masterpiece — production design, cinematography, costuming especially.
Time to rewatch The Fall and find out what Tarsem has been up to lately…
I’ve seen on FB that NOPE stands for Not Of Planet Earth
I preferred the working title, Neigh.
I thought Us And Candyman were extreme let-downs for me (though Us was the much better of the two) so I’m really rooting for this one to be good because I so want to like Peele’s movies.
He didn’t direct Candyman, though. I think he was the producer, but not the director. The director was Nia Decosta
I thought visually and symbolically Us was great, I just didn’t get along with the plot in the end which just derailed the whole thing for me. I know it’s fantasy and whatnot, but the whole shadow society with every person on earth or something having a double eating rabbits for time eternity and suddenly emerging just made me lose my suspension of disbelief.
Yeah Peele’s an excellent director visually but Get Out was such a great tight script, while Us felt overstuffed and unfocused. I hope it’s a classic sophomore slump – get more money and try to do too much – but I also really didn’t like the Candyman script which he co-wrote so I’m a little worried.
I found that Us works a lot better if you think of it as supernatural and not science fiction. Like I know that the explanation given in the movie is that the underground society was created as an experiment, which cues us to think of it in scientific terms and thus it all breaks down (the logistics of the underground society would be mind-boggling). But I think the movie leaves it vague enough that “experiment” could be “a wizard synched up our world with a hellish parallel dimension and the secret portal between the two worlds is underground.” If you think of it as essentially “evil magic doppelganger world,” it’s a lot easier to suspend disbelief imo.
But that’s Peele’s/the script’s fault. It dwelled too much on the mythology/science behind the world. When it would’ve been much better just saying “Hey this is the deal”.
My problem was that I was genuinely jazzed by the “this is actually happening everywhere” reveal. But I was jazzed for a Matrix “how the fuck and why” and the film delivered a mother! “premise doesn’t need to make sense because allegory”
That reveal was both arguably the high point of the movie and the moment it unraveled. There was a great, tight movie there focused solely on our main family. And then there’s a crazy high-concept movie where this happens everywhere. I don’t think they fit together very well.
I agree with you and VolunteerProofreader. I think it would have been better to either have a tight Matrix-style explanation that made everything make sense (which admittedly is really hard) or a much looser, handwavey solution (but one that still made sense). Having a solution that tries to make sense and fail is bad. I’m also not a fan of allegories that don’t work as actual plots, though I get that some people don’t mind that. (I watched Eyes Wide Shut for the first time, and disliked it for this very reason – it never felt like an actual set of events that real people were experiencing),
This is all interesting because I thought Get Out was near perfect in this regard. All the weird behavior in the movie works super well as an allegory for the white liberal racism and microaggressions that Black people face daily (I say as a Black man who’s generally worked in very white spaces). And the big reveal made all the weird stuff make sense as literal plot (that feeling that everyone was sizing you up was real because they’re literally trying to steal your body/life), while reinforcing the allegory (body-snatching as a new form of racism/slavery/cultural appropriation). That’s really hard to pull off once, so I can’t hate too much that Peele hasn’t yet done it twice.
Us isn’t about the plot, it’s about the allegory.
Yup, it’s all about the surreal message. Worrying about the mechanics of the Untethered is the wrong way to watch the movie. It’s like worrying about who cleans the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks.
It’s funny you say that, because I actually do sometimes imagine demons selecting the zigzag floor pattern and red curtains.
The Matrix was loaded with allegory and was also compelling plot-wise. Why shouldn’t a movie try to do both?
If I’m watching a movie I’m watching a plot
It was exactly the same problem Aranofsky’s mother! had: you need your allegorical plot to also be coherent on its own or the whole thing falls apart once you get what the gag is
It would’ve been so much better if he didn’t try to explain the others and just let it be a creepy mystery
They didn’t “suddenly emerge” though. By the time the movie is over it makes perfect sense why they emerged when they finally did.
The article literally says he only helped write Candyman
I literally know that – believe it or not co-writing and producing are important!
To each their own: I’ve not watched “Candyman”, but I loved “Us” way more than I loved “Get Out”, and I loved “Get Out” a lot.Also, by “loved” I meant “got scared shitless”.
Candyman is worth watching. It’s a little scattershot but also pretty effective as a horror movie.
Same. Peele is a master of metaphor and just the sheer head-trippy-ness of the plot was both horrifying and weirdly delightful.
Yep!
The history of The Horse in Motion is a fairly interesting one. It was part of an experiment Leland Stanford (founder of Stanford University) was working on about how horses ran.
I’m excited to see Peele’s latest work (especially after Us). I hope that Peele can keep all of the story elements tight and that we’ll be able to ‘suspend disbelief’ because I’m feeling a little bit of M. Knight Shyamalan awkwardness from this trailer. The voice-over narrator is throwing me too. First-person narration is extremely tricky and should serve the plot (see Joseph Conrad). I think he’ll pull it off though.And isn’t it interesting that white producers/directors can churn out the worst kind of cinematic dross and still get seen and paid, but our Black and Brown filmmakers can’t be anything less than excellent to be accepted?
They have exactly one Brett Ratner in Tyler Perry
So true. Wasn’t Ratner accused of sexual misconduct? I Hope the comparison stops there.
Your last point would be stronger is you hadn’t just mentioned Shyamalan.
The dialogue in the trailer about ‘bad miracles’ and the weirdness coming from the sky, glimpses of which we seem to get, makes me think we’re about to have some Old Testament-style, biblically-accurate angel shenanigans going on.
I was just recently reading a blog posting by Andrew Plotkin that actually goes into the optical phenomenon that causes “wheels” and “eyes” to appear in the sky which may be the source of the descriptions in Ezekiel. The point of the posting is actually about the problem of dead links and he was using the phenomenon as an example of something he was searching for with dead links, but as I hadn’t heard of a rational explanation of it, I thought the description was quite interesting.http://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/01/way-up-in-middle-of-air.html
Oh, nice! That is interesting!
My initial guess was that the aliens are extraterrestrial equines who are outraged that their horse brethren are being enslaved.
Beta Ray Bill!!
MLP origins!
I feel like there’s a very similar classic science-fiction story with that premise but with dogs in place of horses. Or maybe it was a Far Side cartoon.
They’re here to save us from the “cow tools” cows.
The houyhnhnms are back, and they are pissed.
Yawn
There certainly are a lot of those wacky waving inflatable flailing arm tube men… what’s that about?
Well, Al Harrington’s Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man Emporium and Warehouse, in Weekapaug, had a shipping error, and he’s overstocked, so he’s passing the savings on to you.
YUP
This stupid trailer’s given away the mystery – the weird thing in the sky is the words “From Jordan Peele”.
Look again — it’s JORDAN PEELE FROM. What a twist!
From the creators of Lane Bike Slow.
Modest talent stretched thin, part VII
Is this the new season of the hit HBO series Luck?
Don’t beat a dead horse. Or several.
Or that one episode of Hannibal in which he threatens a guy and demands he climb back into the horse he’d been stitched inside.
Hope for a dope pope with a rope who can cope on the lope and doesn’t mope.
Sure but what if the twist is that it was all done by a Wizard Lizard in a Blizzard?
If this thing’s bad everyone’s going to call him the new M. Night
It depends on how contorted this gets in explaining itself. Get Out was tight. Us, I liked better but its internal logic struggled, which is exactly the feeling I get from almost every MNS movie. Like, I really like the first 80% of Signs and The Village, but he has to keep adding rules to keep the logic intact. The Sixth Sense is the same, really, but he got away with it the first time.
Although M. Night kinda made a recovery from the nadir of The Happening and Lady in the Water. Split was excellent. Glass was okay, not great, but not terrible either.
Split was schlocky. M. Night couldn’t get out of his own way there with that damn doctor character spelling everything out as if he thought he was so clever the viewers couldn’t figure anything out.It was so frustrating.
Ah, man. I like Peele but I don’t give even remotely half a shit about alien stuff in horror. Never have. The Xenomorphs are the only horror aliens I *kinda* find interesting.
What about Critters?
Those were funny, like the Graboids. Once you go over the top you’re in comedy territory. I think that was my issue with “Get Out”. It seemed like a comedy forced into the mold of a horror movie. Which was on purpose, I believe, tragedy being both the flip side of comedy and the outcome of horror. But it didn’t work for me.I didn’t see Peele’s second movie. Seemed too weird and high-concept for me. I realize that plenty of people think Twin Peaks is a masterpiece, Lynch is a genius etc. But I can’t help but feel like an inability to explain the plot and setting or to clearly articulate whatever message is intended is just as likely laziness and failure on the part of the creator as it is an allegorical or aesthetic choice.
They even failed to kill that one kid from Growing Pains though, which undercuts their menace.
Who said anything about aliens? Trailers are just about cloud in the sky.
Naaah…
YEP.I just hope I am left blown away by this like I was with “Get Out” instead of “what the fuck was that all about??” like I was after Us. He has such a gifted eye for weird unsettling visuals but hopefully he can string them all together into a cogent narrative.
I admit I had to watch Us twice before I really ‘got it’, but I really felt compelled to re-view it anyway. Maybe you’d like it more after another try? The rabbit business was bizarre. After watching again (and getting some insights from reviewers), I couldn’t stop thinking about all of the film’s implications. Pretty mind-bending.
I did give it another try and it still didn’t “land” LOL. I guess Get Out was more “on the nose” with its commentary and that’s what I was expecting with Us. I assume he had a point to make with Us but just didn’t quite stick the landing like everyone expected from a genius like him.
I felt like Us was a little too high-concept for its own good. Like, it looked cool. It was fun to watch. The idea was kind of interesting. But the internal logic of the movie just wasn’t strong enough for it to make sense.
She was an angelAlways smiling that’s because she had no lips
I saw a tweet that supposed that ‘NOPE’ could be a double entendre, also working as an acronym for ‘Not Of Planet Earth.’
Looks tiiight
Setting this film in a horse ranch is an interesting choice. I can’t imagine working with horses on a shoot. While filing Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro concluded that horses are “perverse, nasty motherfuckers.” I had to laugh at that because I agree.
It’s true, horses are terrible people.
Knope Says Nope to Nope
Hot take: Peele peaked right out of the gate, and even that was incredibly overrated.
I’m betting the chimp has something to do with that veiled woman’s lack of lips. Back in like 2016 we had a chimp raised as a surrogate child lose his cool when his owner’s girlfriend came over, and he REMOVED this woman’s FACE. Eyes and everything. She lived, and later became the first face transplant recipient, but she still was blind and had difficulty speaking.