Why Jordan Peeles Nope Alien Story Is Even More Satisfyingly Scary Than I Expected
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Given its deep well of Easter Eggs and movie references, it's easy to see why the discussion continues. "Nope" is filled with clever callbacks and references to other notable Hollywood works, such as "The Wizard Of Oz," "The Shining," and even "The Scorpion King." It also pulls from the realm of anime, with its most recognizable nod being an iconic "Akira" bike slide. But Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk classic isn't the only anime that inspired "Nope." In fact, the Angels of "Neon Genesis Evangelion" arguably provided "Nope" with its most terrifying inspiration. "We were trying to play off Brandon's sort of natural effervescence because we wanted him to be a bit more cynical and over it all," states Bovaird. OJ, who suffers a major loss of confidence after losing his father, "doesn't really think about his clothes," Bovaird says.
The unique challenge of making a stalking, unfolding, alien entity that hides amongst the clouds - befores & afters
The unique challenge of making a stalking, unfolding, alien entity that hides amongst the clouds.
Posted: Thu, 02 Feb 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Filming
She asked a professional photographer friend to take pictures of her cradling a museum specimen of the new species on the beach, and announced the discovery on Twitter in the manner of a glossy, social media-friendly birth announcement. The tweet quickly went viral and received media coverage from several prominent outlets, including Smithsonian Magazine. Despite these two Angels seemingly having some sort of influence on Jean Jacket, none are as obvious as the tenth Angel, referred to as Sahaquiel.
"I Wear My Sunglasses At Night"
To circumvent Jean Jacket's effect of shutting down all electrical equipment in its vicinity, Holst brings a hand-cranked IMAX film camera. The group sets up a field of battery-powered tube man props to track its location in the sky. However, a TMZ paparazzo trespasses onto the field and is thrown from his electric motorcycle when it shuts down near Jean Jacket, which promptly devours him. While capturing footage of Jean Jacket, Holst climbs a hill to sacrifice himself for a better view and is consumed along with his camera, forcing the remaining three to flee. Angel survives an attack from Jean Jacket by becoming entangled in a tarp and barbed wire, causing the creature to unfurl into a new, larger form resembling a jellyfish. "Nope" premiered in July 2022, but even now it still has many fans talking.
Evangelion's Angels served as design inspiration for Nope's alien entity
"Nope" uses audience expectations to its advantage, particularly when it comes to the alien monstrosity that gruesomely eats and digests its victims. Much of the film hints that the Haywood siblings' UFO — which gets dubbed Jean Jacket — is a flying saucer probably containing little strange people from a distant galaxy. However, the saucer itself is actually alive, and its simple circular form evolves into something akin to an artistic origami kite or even a jellyfish. Speaking with Befores and Afters magazine, "Nope" visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron revealed that Jean Jacket's form was partially inspired by classic sci-fi movies like "The Day The Earth Stood Still." However, minimalist Angel designs from "Neon Genesis Evangelion" also played a significant part. While Jordan Peele has fast become one of the most relevant and profitable of modern American filmmakers, “Nope” is the first time that he’s been afforded a budget fit for a true blockbuster spectacle, and that’s exactly what he’s created with it.
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So I created different names for all those different categories as well. And then for the unfurled form, the creature unfurls to reveal this beautiful kind of sail-like structure. So it kind of has this main sail that looks like its head and then these very dynamic pulley-like systems that control that sail. And then in the middle of that structure is its very ominous-looking square eye. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday.
One of the summer’s biggest blockbusters has been the alien horror film Nope, from director Jordan Peele. Nope has elements of many classic UFO films, with the Spielbergian charm of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the horror and destruction from The War of the Worlds. There are some marine species, most popularly electric eels but also ghost knifefish (great name), that generate electric fields.
Jupe's unresolved emotional scarring manifests itself in an alien design (one that vaguely recalls the eponymous creature in 1953's Robot Monster) the wannabe tycoon has commoditized at Jupiter's Claim. This imagined species leads to a memorable fake-out, in which Park's children dress up in alien costumes to prank the Haywoods. The ostentatious get-up of Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star and current operator of the cheesy Jupiter's Claim theme park, who foolishly believes he can exploit the alien being for profit on a weekly basis, made for one of the most iconic looks. According to Bovaird, The Goonies star Corey Feldman was considered for the part at one point before Yeun's casting. While Peele originally wanted Jupe to "play it down," Bovaird talked him into the idea of using "really loud colors" that represented the thematic hollowness of pageantry. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Jordan Peele is a big fan of the classics.
The big screen UFOs of post-World War II were an obvious analogy for America's fear of the Soviet Union. Peele's contemporary interpretation of the same visual, on the other hand, critiques modern society's insatiable appetite for spectacle and how people are always trying to find ways to exploit it in exchange for a quick buck and 15 minutes of fame. There is no denying the massive impact "Evangelion" has had on popular culture. Thought-provoking and action-packed, it was one of the series that broke down the common western assumption that Japanese anime, and even animation in general, was mindless entertainment for children. Sure, other anime also had a part in the disintegration of that stereotype (the "Gundam" franchise famously has a lot to say about the military-industrial complex), but few have perfected the bait-and-switch between fun mecha action and psychological surrealism quite like "Evangelion."
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For example, you could use that to explain how the jamming worked; and you could use it for electric propulsion, which would in theory explain Jean Jacket’s fast flying without wings/sails. I think the movie worked well without those science details, but I was prepared with a few different explanations if people asked how Jean Jacket was able to fly so effectively without flapping wings. Right at the beginning, when they see the creature, instead of trying to get the money shot, if they would’ve alerted the authorities, then maybe people wouldn’t have died. If scientists and animal behavior specialists had observed the animal, we could have figured it out sooner. You can see how this looks very similar to the scene where people are being swallowed by the animal.
Before diving any deeper, it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge the possibility that you may have never heard of "Evangelion" before or haven't had the chance to watch it yet. Don't worry — we won't go into any important plot details here, but having an elementary knowledge of what Angels are is mandatory to understand why its influence in "Nope" is so apparent. The "hyper minimalism" and "biomechanical design flair" of the otherworldly entities known in "Evangelion" as "Angels" were directly cited as one of the influences behind Jean Jacket's design — and it is extremely obvious and welcome. So for humans, we’re in kingdom Animalia, and then we go down to Homo sapiens. And so for each of those levels, we have to follow specific rules for naming something new.
They’re assisted by a nosy, curiously needy clerk from an electronics store (bleach-blonde Brandon Perea, who quietly runs away with the film) and a legendary Hollywood cinematographer played by the great, gravel-voiced character actor Michael Wincott, whose presence in any movie always makes me absurdly happy. "It's almost like when you colorize an old black and white movie, except that this time, we had the real colors, because we were filming it, not inventing them," explains the VFX supervisor. “There’s a lot of marine animal inspiration in the way the alien moves, especially in its unfurled form, which is very similar to a bigfin squid, which have a beautiful billowing fin on their head. The alien moves in the sky like an octopus or squid, and its saucer form is directly modeled after the sand dollar. The creature’s ability to camouflage itself as a cloud is also based on octopuses, who have special skin cells that change color to blend in with the background,” Rutledge said.
Peele adopts Spielberg’s approach of suggesting the antagonist’s presence rather than explicitly showing it, and also wraps that approach into Nope’s larger themes about the perils of seeking out spectacle even at the expense of one’s own sanity or life. Dabiri also noted that there was a lot of footage and lore surrounding Jean Jacket that was ultimately cut from the film, which he hopes to someday see released. Instrumental to that success is the Haywood’s neighbor and business rival Ricky “Jupe” Park (the great Steven Yeun, all smarmy kindness and smothered trauma), a former actor who survived Gordy’s rage as a child only to profit from people’s morbid curiosity about it as an adult.
There are major design changes between Sahaqueil and Jean Jacket, but the influence is loud and clear. A comparison can be seen between Jean Jacket and the Ophanim, but a few of the Angels in Evangelion can directly influence Peele’s creature from above. There are some similarities in status and appearance between Evangelion’s Angels and the biblical description of angels. Before breaking down Jean Jacket’s design and purpose, it is important to understand what the Angels are in Evangelion so we can better understand their influence on Nope.
What may surprise fans the most about Nope is the fact that almost none of the night scenes were actually filmed at night. "We shot in plain daylight in 100-degree heat of the Californian desert, which was a really interesting experience and a big leap of faith for us," Rocheron says. And Jordan Peele, the writer and director, attributes much of the inspiration for the alien as coming from sea creatures. Joining me to discuss creating a brand new creature to scare audiences is marine biologist Kelsi Rutledge, scientific consultant for the film Nope and PhD candidate at UCLA in Los Angeles. Peele shows us that when it comes to designing a creature from another world, play with the expectations of the audience and pull from what you know. The great thing about designing otherworldly creatures is that we, as normal people, have no idea what they look like or what they are capable of.
And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a spectacle. "I felt like it could be very kaleidoscopic in the world-building and colorful ... I wanted to help create something [that was] visually arresting." In addition to building and fine-tuning the monster, MPC also had to figure out a way to control every aspect of the heavens above the lonely California desert town in which the movie unfolds.
One day at the Haywood ranch, small metallic objects violently fall from the sky. One of these objects, a nickel, strikes Otis Haywood Sr. in the eye and kills him. Nope (stylized in all caps) is a 2022 American neo-Western science fiction horror film written, directed, and produced by Jordan Peele, under his and Ian Cooper's Monkeypaw Productions banner.
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