When a filmmaker meets an alien

Part 1: A horror film that is not pure

First of all, the starting point of the film, Jordan Peele said in an interview,

He understands that many audiences don't want to see horror movies and dark stories at the cinema.

So Nope is an invitation to everyone in the audience,

There are no spooky ghosts and phantoms here.

Science fiction here, there is no brain-burning entropy reduction time backflow, cosmic black hole theory.

The suspense and thriller elements of the story are what Jordan Peele uses to grab the audience's attention,

A way to arouse the audience's curiosity and keep us watching.

What he really needs to do is get more people into the cinema to see the story he tells.

Jordan Peele's key word for a story is a "spectacle" spectacle

- the "spectacle" that Hollywood has created in countless blockbusters over the years.

Including but not limited to Spielberg's classics Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park,

And contemporary Nolan's Credo, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and so on, shot with IMAX film cameras.

Jordan Peele believes that these films gradually develop an "addiction to spectacle" mentality in audiences.

Look forward to the end of all Hollywood blockbusters, watching the leading actors desperate to carry out a spectacular battle!

And at the same time Jordan Peel created the 'spectacle' of Nope,

And it made O.J. and Emerald realize,

Not being attracted to the spectacle, not looking at the spectacle, is the key to escape and fight.

As the audience, we see the "alien creature" in the movie with various exaggerations.

But O.J. and Emerald didn't get a close look at the alien, which is kind of funny to think.

The key setup for this plot comes from Gordy's Home at the beginning of the film! TV series.

In Jordan Peele's view, Ricky "Jupe" Park, a young boy of Asian descent, and Gordy, a chimpanzee

It was the white family's "spectacle" for American audiences to consume and watch for entertainment.

It can even be traced back to blacks being bought and sold from Africa into the American South,

For entertainment, but also for torture and exploitation as slaves.

And since ancient times, here has never been without the promotion of capital.

Who is making so much money from the commercial success of one Hollywood blockbuster after another with an "all-black" cast and creative team? Not to mention the industry around movies.

Jordan Peele said in an interview that the film was not about race, but that the big-budget, all-colored, black-directed film could not have been made five years ago. For him, it's more about saying: "How are we recognized, who are we, and what are we? Recognized for who we are and what we are? ."

Gordy's Home! Gordy's counterattack, like a "fable".

On the one hand, human beings pursue the "spectacle", on the other hand, they cannot completely control the "spectacle" -- then the Bad Miracle can happen.

Ricky "Jupe" Park survived because he hid under a table and kept his eyes on a "standing shoe" instead of looking at Gordy, who was out of control. The "fist bump" at the end also conveys that Gordy actually sees Jupe as one of the same kind.

However, when growing up, Jupe always used artificial "spectacle" to perform and make money, and finally, along with the eager audience to watch "spectacle", "spectacle" sucked away.

And the "weapon" that OJ and Emerald finally fight against UFO together is an inflatable doll of Jupe, which finally makes the alien creatures be destroyed.

As Jordan Peele said in an interview, the creation of this film is a commentary on Hollywood blockbusters and industry phenomena.

Part 2: Reviewing Movies with Movies

Jordan Peele, who has written and directed all his life, has a lot to say about how to set up the duality of the story and how to resolve it,

Always has unexpected ideas, and the ideas are very original.

Let's think back to Us, "We" as his second book after fame.

The final fight between the two leading ladies -- the so-called climax,

In Jordan Peele's set up, he had the two heroines duel by "dancing"!

All the foreshadowing before is to make the climax seem more reasonable.

After I finished reading Nope, I had no idea.

From the point of view of film creators,

Jordan Peele didn't want to shoot the climactic fight scenes of traditional Hollywood blockbusters.

Therefore, in the plot of the film, he always deliberately set up a logic, so that the contradiction can be resolved in a special form.

You can easily see why the characters of Nope versus aliens are having a 'shoot' match!

Jordan Peele, from the very beginning, was never going to do something like we've seen a million movies,

However, I don t even remember the plot of the movie "humans vs. aliens."

Jordan Peel set up another 'win' mechanism in Nope - snap it, and it's a win!

So, we can see the characters in the climax of the film, are all desperately in the shooting!

Cameras, cameras have become weapons, and video recordings have become the winning strategy and trophy.

Jordan Peele, who wrote and directed the film,

He refused to follow the logic of the blockbuster.

All of his work, he's trying to create a world,

And give the world its own underlying logic.

His high is not the aircraft cannon battle aliens, but the significance of the film itself!

The excitement of the siblings in the film about their "homemade hand-made film camera,"

And finally the photographer goes crazy to get the impossible picture;

And the tension of changing film during the battle, it makes the hairs stand on end.

O.j. and Emerald also had a shift in their intentions for filming alien life,

From making a lot of money on the film, to simply protecting the family, recording and witnessing -- the theme of the film once returned to the essence of the film.

Part 3: The ambition to rewrite the history of cinema with images

Nope is not a casual inquiry into the history of film and the present day of the film industry, but rather a lasting one.

The first black biker to be recorded on video from Emerald on the Hollywood set.

(The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge, 1878.)

By the final shot of the film, Emerald, after the smoke had drifted away,

Gradually I see O.J. on horseback standing in Out Yonder's frame.

Past and present images overlap here,

It was as if time had been turned back, and the history of the image had been rewritten.

Much of the film's score is adapted from Morricone's western score,

O.j. 's "face-off" with aliens on a horse,

Each scene is creating new possibilities, arriving at a new place,

Use the image itself to echo the history of Western films, so as to write a new chapter.

Jordan Peele and Spike Lee are the same here,

Both of them use the film itself to combat the prejudices and problems that exist in the history of cinema.

It's like Spike Lee quoting "Gone with the Wind" and "Birth of a Nation" in "The Black Partisan."

Jordan Peele is here using O.J. 's image and movement,

To comment on the history of westerns and movies in the "white" era,

And give their own original, new hero image.

The aliens in the film can be imagined as the result of Jordan Peele's absurdity of the absence of history and social problems.

If you want to read too much into this, which I think is extremely abstract and volatile,

The 'Alien' who always hides behind the clouds

Is it not the invisible, ideological enemy we need to face all the time.

The problems of contemporary capitalism, the rise of totalitarianism, nationalism, racial prejudice and discrimination, and so on.

If we turn a blind eye to these problems, it may be a cloud in the sky,

They're very good at pretending to be part of our lives,

After a long time, we will become so used to it that we will not notice it anymore.

Jordan Peele did not ignore these problems.

He chose to expose problems, and the way he exposed problems was by making movies.

Ufos are like hidden crises all around us,

Everyone needs to fight in their own way, not necessarily violently,

Photography, literature, music and other artistic creations can also be used to witness this era together.

Movies have never been just movies. They also influence history.

Video has always been political, provocative and contemporary.

As Spike Lee once said, "Slavery in America is definitely not a Celcio Leone macaroni Western. It's a massacre! My ancestors were looted here from Africa and I owe them respect." .

When someone suggested that Django Unchained was just a movie and shouldn't be so serious, Spike Lee retorted: "Wrong! The Birth of a Nation caused people to hang Negroes when it came out. Images are powerful!"

Jordan Peele's "sci-fi Western" looks like a movie of "filmmakers versus aliens" nonsense.

In fact, he has the ambition to question the problems of the film industry and arouse people's reflection with the image itself.

The film begins with OJ's seesaw war with aliens. Every shot of OJ's actions and his galloping horse shows a large panorama, which is a further attempt to rewrite the image history created by white people with images.

The power of the film at the end is that it conveys that everyone can record and struggle with their camera, their camera,

It's like for so many years, countless artists of color have been "fighting" with all their might to be seen, to be seen properly.

All of this is to help O.J. and more people of color and minorities today,

No longer forgotten like the first black man recorded on video, but seen "truly"!

The 1878 film by Eadweard Muybridge, called "The Horse in Motion," is famous for demonstrating that animals can run with their limbs off The ground, while The black riders of history's first "film" were completely ignored.

The film was later renamed Rider and Horse/Rider and the Gollaping Horse, but the name of the black Rider was lost forever.

So, when I saw the last scene of the movie, when O.J. 's back on his horse,

I wanted to stand up and clap. I had a lot of orgasms.

Jordan Peele knew how to fight with the power of images,

And every creation of his is a profound expression!

A good movie, like a book, deserves to be watched again and again.