Nope's UFO Story Works Because It Isn't About Saving The World
This article contains major spoilers for Nope.
Nope, the latest film from Jordan Peele, is a UFO movie. Early trailers keep the unidentified flying object hidden, instead showing its shadow and the havoc it left in its wake. But, the final trailer, released last month, finally showed us the silver disc in all its glory as it buzzed mere meters over the California dirt where Daniel Kaluuya's OJ rapidly rode away on horseback. After a cryptic marketing campaign, Peele was finally showing, unambiguously, that he was making a movie about a flying saucer. With a July 22 release date and a significantly higher budget than Get Out or Us, it would be Peele's first summer blockbuster.
And yet, for a summer blockbuster about an alien invasion, its stakes are decidedly small and regional. Though Independence Day might seem like a clear genre forebear, the fate of the United States — let alone the world — is never in the balance in Nope. Other alien invasion movies, like War of the Worlds, Signs, Men in Black, or Edge of Tomorrow, focus on a few characters, but make it clear that their plight is tied up in the wider fate of Earth. In Nope, it's never suggested that the current crisis goes much further than the Haywood Ranch, where Daniel Kaluuya's OJ and Keke Palmer's Em train horses for Hollywood.
RELATED: Jordan Peele's Nope Has A VR Experience Courtesy Of Meta
In true Jordan Peele fashion, there is, of course, a big, spoiler-y twist. The UFO, it turns out, isn’t actually a UFO. It's a singular, biological entity. We don't know how it got to Earth, but we do know what motivates it: hunger. The imagery of alien abduction — a tractor beam drawing unsuspecting earthlings up into the guts of a metal vessel — is repurposed here into
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