Nope
2022 · Film · 130 min
Directed by Jordan Peele
Residents in a lonely gulch of inland California bear witness to an uncanny, chilling discovery.
8 positive8 neutralfrom 16 commenters
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17 comments on Hacker News
That Fry's is forever memorialized in the 2022 movie Nope
Theatres don't just show new movies. There's something very special about being locked in a dark room with a big screen to watch Alien or Barry Lyndon. Older movies especially look great in a theatre and some of the magic is lost on a smaller screen.
90% of any content is crap but you're missing out if you like movies and you haven't seen Sinners, The Bone Temple, or NOPE (to name a few recent great theatre watches).
It is often under-appreciated how many of the stories that trace back to oral tradition—including those that we refer to as fairy tales—are actually horror stories.
(I actually wonder if all of them were, to an extent, and whether the completely horror-free story experience is a relatively modern development.)
Thought experiment: take the plot of a modern horror film (such as one of my recent favourites Nope) and imagine retelling it in a simplified fairy tale style, preserving the horrific events. What you end up with is much more like an original fairy tale, before the modern adaptations that made them “safe for children”.
Our kids, both teens, are beloved by everyone they meet. I'm not exaggerating.
Our oldest, our daughter, has had a few jobs working in her craftland, and both loved it and was loved by her fellow employees and customers.
Our son is an open chess champion who is beloved by his chess club compariots. When he played out of his mind and won the open tournament, the cool part was that his chess club mates were really happy that he won, and a parent of one of his friends excitedly told me how happy they were. Even thought his son was much younger, my son's friendliness and kindness really endeared him to that young Indian boy.
The question is, "Why?"
First off, we're not particularly religious at home. We sometimes pray before meals, but we tend to eat when we're hungry, i.e. not all together, always. We rarely pray together because I feel strongly that religion is a personal affair. I also do not pray in front of them, to prevent putting any kind of pressure on them towards my preference. We Sufis feel there is no superiority in one form of religion over others, and I manifest that most deeply by letting them know that their path is theirs to choose. I'm only here to love them and teach them how to be lovingly kind and respectful to others.
Second, and probably most importantly: they have never had unfettered access to the Internet and we have no TV of any kind, and they do not have or use smartphones or social media of any kind (except our daughter is a good navigator in the car).
We did have Hulu for a minute, but mainly for the powerful "Summer of Soul". We have also watched some Tubi for, for example, "Death on the Nile" and a few select others. And the old Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series are a mainstay, as well as a few select movies, such as the Avengers series and "Knives Out", but it is very minimal, nothing too sexy, and nothing at all too violent.
And ZERO internet or social media. Sure, we might look some stuff up, we watch some stuff like Tosh Show (after I pre-screen it), but stuff more like Veritasium (that they love), and some random YT videos we find interesing. Plus, we watch a fair bit of NHKOnline for Design Stories, 72 Hours, and, of course, Grand Sumo Highlights (just for how entirely foreign and intense that sport is) for maybe a decade now. They have their favorite EPL and Serie A teams, plus Champion's League, as they like to knock the ball around at the park. My son and I follow the NBA through a few pods (while he chesses online on his computer, which is in the living room with this one, our "media computer") and the occasional highlight.
My point here is that I keep their media appetites satiated with interesting, curated content, but they're spared the titilating fiction that I grew up on. The only horror movie they've seen (multiple times) is Jordan Peele's fantastic "Nope". But absolutely no gratuitous sex stuff, whatsoever, not that we don't have the occasional conversation about such stuff. And we watch a bit of comedy, with three of Tom Papa's stand-up specials on Tubi being a big recent hit.
The important thing is that we human beings have a part of us that gravitates towards the lewd and lascivious, and our media is naturally permeated with it, and they just don't need it, and my approach has worked. They help the family around the house because they understand that they're valuable parts of the team and that doing good work is good for everyone. And when they do catch wind of something gross (usually said by a comedian), they appreciate that we'll talk about it but that we screen off that part of the world for them.
I was exposed to porn at a young age (6th grade recycling dumpster "Oui" magazines) and then Playboy Channel and HBO in my early teens. No teenager needs Animal House or Porky's in their lives. Being homeschooled (our daughter's choice because middle school orientation was brutal, and our son to play more chess), they're also not socialized by kids with smartphones who watch "Game of Thrones" rapescenes and whatnot.
My daughter has listened to and/or read half of my favorite author William Gibson's novels, plus Anna Karenina and lots and lots of other literature plus Langston Hughes' own poetry collection plus the biographies of some famous women. We all together listened to 2018ish's Pullitzer Prize-winning 900pg biography of Frederick Douglass (5-6 hours/day for 2-3 weeks, weekends off), so they know how brutal America is to Black folks, and how talented and capable they are. And my son and I have listened to Stephen E. Ambrose's "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldier" multiple times, and we all love his book and Tom Hanks' miniseries "Band of Brothers". My son and I have also listened to a lot of the excellent podcast "Fall of Civilizations".
They understand the importance of love and they know enough of history to understand how brutal most of this world has been and still is, to some extent. We watched Jan6's debacle unfold live on CNN's live website, to our shared horror. That this orange bastard pardoned those fuckers is truly evil, and my kids understand that full-well. We hold no ethnic animus, or consider ourselves superior in any way to others, except perhaps in our worldview that centers on universal compassion, kindness, and mutual respect.
They have NEVER -- and I mean NEVER -- had an ill word said against them by anyone, ever, and that's no exaggeration. A teacher of our daughter's cried on their last day when she pulled me aside to tell me how much she will miss our daughter, and our son was chosen to be in the 4th grade class that spent part of the day mainstreaming ASD kids; he was chosen for his kindness. We love and care for each other, without even having to ask. We enjoy hanging out and we laugh a LOT, with each other, at each other, and, most importantly, at ourselves.
So, when I say that nothing in the universe is more important than we human beings choosing compassion, for one and all, I mean it, and I have the fucking proof. And when I say we're living in a world full of purblind fools who are destroying this world with their ignorant selfishness, I know what I'm talking about.
Wake up to compassion, my friends. Both your and our collective happiness is at stake.
"There's still time to change the road you're on." --Stairway to Heaven
And I've always sworn around the kids and let them swear freely (but only in the house), because that's the only way to learn the difference between profane and vulgar. Fucking is a very useful word, so long as it's not the verb form, but even that rule was broken when, at the end of Bale's Batman trilogy, Ras al Ghoul's daugher betrays him, after having slept with him, my wife asked why she did both those things, our daughter replied,
"She fucked him before she fucked him."
I couldn't be prouder that she both understands that truth and knows enough to not say it in public.
The film Nope addresses such phenomena and has an intriguing conjecture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nope_(film)
I really liked a line in that Nope movie:
"He got caught up trying to tame a predator. You can't do that. You got to enter an agreement with one."
If you’re doing some kind of documentary work, like showing how a city is being affected by a drug or a major homelessness problem, photographing someone in that group is basically necessary, but taking the photo just to take it does feel like it’s crossing a line, so it’s hard. This definitely feels like it’s crossing the line, and really reminds me of the movie Nope, making a spectacle of something that shouldn’t be.
All the time.
Recent films that I can remember: John Wick 4, Top Gun: Maverick, NOPE.
All of them had the forced break.
That's is why I called it two separate axes and not two ends in a single axis. You need a base level of technical competency to understand what the limitations of your equipment are to leverage it to the fullest extent and avoid doing things that will just plain not work, and the technical features are needed to accomplish specific things, but artistry is till required. Feature films have been captured on iPhone (you can say that is little more than a stunt, but it still exists).
Not everyone is filming Barry Lyndon with f/.95 aperture in candle-lit scenes. Watching older films where both the glass and the film were subpar compared to what's available today, where the grain was high, the focus puller wasn't at the top of their game leaving characters somewhat out of focus (when looking closely, maybe not noticeable at 480p or 720p), but the films are still enjoyable. Parts of The Batman were filmed on a Helios 40-2, an objectively terrible lens when it comes to it's optical characteristics, but it can evoke a look that you can't otherwise get which helps with the mood the cinematographer was trying to capture. You won't be able to capture the vast expanses of night time scenes of Nope (filmed as day for night with infrared cameras) with subpar equipment. You need full sharpness for easier rotoscoping when dealing with VFX. You want the best cameras available to capture miniatures of spaceships like in 2001 or Interstellar to make people believe these are real spaceships. You can leverage a new technology in a new way, like 28 Days Later used new at the time digital cameras (that would nowadays be considered subpar) for easier application of effects like undercranking and lower production costs, or how they used 360 shutters in Collateral. But you can also make a film like The Man From Earth that was shot in a single room, with a bunch of actors and an camera that was average at the time, or Saving Private Ryan simply undercranking and using really short shutterns to ensure that the beach landing scene was crisp through and through. Everything Everywhere All At Once didn't have Marvel-budget level gear, but they still made one of the best movies of the past few years.
I don't fully disagree with what you're saying: better tools expand the envelope of what you can accomplish. But technology is in service of the art, not the other way around (unless you're producing marketing material for the manufacturer, I guess ^_^).
I love combing over features, and learn about the mechanics of these amazing machines, and the theory of the physics of light (even knowing how it works, it is still feels like magic that you can take a full picture of an object that is partially obstructed as long as you can make that foreground element blurred enough). I'm a shit artist, but I trust one with a point and shoot to make something better than I can with my DSLRs. I can't wait to see what new story telling tricks people will come up with new tech, like Nope did.
Hahaha, I expected the criticism of my comment to be that too much of what I was counting as good is "high brow", in fact. Too artsy-fartsy. Leaning too much toward "The Green Knight" and not enough toward "Jaws".
[EDIT] Here, lemme just list the 2022 movies that I think were worth a watch if you're at all into the kind of thing they were doing:
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Glass Onion Top Gun: Maverick Bullet Train All Quiet on the Western Front Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Crimes of the Future Death on the Nile Everything Everywhere All at Once White Noise Nope Prey The Sadness You Won't Be Alone Dual The Northman The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (arguably just a less-exciting RRR, but hey, it makes up for it by also being shorter and non-horror comedy *is* a bit weak lately, so it gets in) Watcher Dashcam (one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a long time—you may hate it, but you'll feel *something*, damnit!) The Banshees of Inisherin
This is just ones I've seen (I usually manage, like, 1/2 of the films in a year that I want to watch, at best) and excluding a few that did in fact suck or that I didn't think quite merited inclusion (e.g. The Menu) or that are good for what they are but are pretty narrow in appeal (Violent Night). Like, I hear Cyrano is great, Emily the Criminal, Bodies Bodies Bodies, The Whale, and a bunch of others, but haven't made it to them yet (and, inevitably, I'll end up never watching some of them).
"Quite a few of those are sequels, remakes, or adaptations! White Noise was a book! Death on the Nile! One of those is a marvel movie!" yeah, I know—good luck finding an era in Hollywood when a ton of the films, and even a ton of the good films, weren't such. I reject that as, specifically, a complaint about this moment in cinema (it has more merit as a criticism of cinema in general)
as someone who used to work at a digital intermediary (DI) company (think photoshop filters but for film) most of this is bollocks.
> But every time I watch something made before 2000, it looks so beautiful to me
No, the author is confusing nostalgia with aesthetics.
Heat for example is a great movie, fun story, good suspense. It looks ok, but its colours are all over the place. you don't notice it, because its an old film and old films should feel like that.
The quote:
> Tungsten allows for more accurate color in camera but LEDs are cheaper, cooler, and more convenient. So the solution is to film on a nice digital camera and fix the color in post.
very much nope. None of the stuff you've seen in films since about 2005 looks like it was shot. No film ever gets to screen without colour correcting. In fact every setup will have a macbeth chart film so that they can conform the colours so they are consistent.
More over, film is colour corrected in 16bit log, which is way more colours than most of us can observe, and a fuckton more dynamic range than can be displayed.
yes shite LED lights have worse spectral response than tungsten, but its fairly easy to correct for (hell if you are good enough you can film under sodium lamps and make it look good. )
but ARRL lights have full RGB, with loads of effects that were not possible before. I as a mere mortal can light a room like the Holywood golden age for <$1000(but not with ARRL lights, because they are $5k each). For the big players, you can do something ridiculous like this: https://ymcinema.com/2022/09/26/lighting-a-desert-magnificent-bts-footage-of-nope/
> Another user mentioned that shooting on film required a level of forethought, planning, and patience that digital simply doesn’t
Yes, it also means that you can't take risks, because every foot of film cost a fuckton to process, you have to rush it to get developed, then view the rushes, print the stuff you like or re-shoot. reshoots are very expensive. If you miss a shot, then you are fucked, because it'll blow a hole in your budget.
digital allows instant playback, much less reset, and longer shooting in much more challenging lighting situations. For example Barry lyndon could be shot without custom lenses.
Digital allows multi camera shooting, meaning that you can get much better acting from everyone, because a "two shot" takes half the time.
So to the meat: "all of netflixs looks the same"
No, you are looking at fashion. Colour and feel of a TV show is completely under the control of the producers/directors/DoP. They colours you are seeing are a conscious choice. When the next Coen brothers movie pops up, you'll see a rush to have warm, low contrast rich colour movies again.
Marvel movies look like that, because they chose to.
Marvel Tv series look like that, because it was a choice.
They respond to fashion, which means that at the moment shit is dark and grundgy, because thats what's in.
Black and white will come around shortly.
TL;DR: the author is talking shit about stuff they are making assumptions about. none of the data there is accurate. Its just a reworked classic: "everything was better in the old days, the youth don't put any effort into the craft" which given that this is literally the tail end of the golden era of TV is utter risible bollocks.
Just a quick glance at Letterboxd....
Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Both Knives Out movies
Parasite
Nope (probably just in the "good" grouping, not great)
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That's, uh... just from the "popular this week" screen. And only the ones I've seen, so I know they're good. But I'm pretty sure all those are last five years, or close to it.
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Digging back to 2018 and later (we can say 2018 counts since 2023 just started, right?):
Annihilation
Sorry to Bother You
High Life
Midsommar
Uncut Gems (god it's so good)
Jojo Rabbit
The Lighthouse
The Green Knight
CODA
Spontaneous ([EDIT] It seems very dumb but wow is it a gut punch, when you start to think about what you're watching and make some connections to real life)
Red Rocket (small-scale brilliance)
RRR
Watcher
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I just realized I misread you as asking for 5 good ones from just one of the last 5 years, not 5 total from the last 5 years, but I think that gets the point across? Despite my leaving off a whole bunch that may be more taste-specific, not having watched even 1/3 of the films from that span I have good reason to believe are good, not exhaustively mining that timespan (I bet I could double the size of that list without changing how I was selecting them), and also omitting a bunch of more-popular movies that I think were at least decent.
[EDIT] Hell some years you could get to 2-3 good ones just by looking at what A24 produced that year, nothing else.
It's hard not to be cynical or entertain thoughts of Hollywood planning these things in case the show sucks. Because they can clearly do entertainment with diverse casting, non-white people, female leads and succeed:
- Tom Holland Spider-Man does not have a red-head MJ, Flash is Indian and the made up best friend is Filipino. - Domino in the Dead Pool movies is black. NTW doesn't seem to have the same powers and is gay. But I'm not sure what the current character status is. - Everything Everywhere All at Once - Black Panther - Shang Chi - Jordan Peele does good work: Nope, Us, Candy Man, Get Out - The Expanse - Life of Pi - Sandman swaps a bunch of stuff
Appetite for completely foreign media is much slower in English speaking countries but once in a while you get a major break through: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Parasite.
For iconic female leads: Terminator has Sarah Connor, Ripley from Aliens, The Bride from Kill Bill, Charlize Therons character in the last Mad Max movie. Buffy. I apologize for how narrow the genres are here.
I don't think the popular media for anything I just mentioned was too negative (maybe Black Panther?). Is it really just the fans? I bet the overlap of Rings of Power watchers and watchers of the stuff I listed is pretty big ...
edit: formatting
A) It taints the perception of the game beforehand. People look at an incredibly raw bit of gameplay footage and go "wow, this looks like trash!"
B) The guy who did the leaking apparently tried to sell the source code, which is just scummy and would likely result in significant retooling from the devs' side, which means time and effort wasted.
C) While I personally don't subscribe to the glamour and glitz, there is something nice about a clean rollout for something anticipated or a surprise release. I remember seeing the first trailer for Peele's Nope and being incredibly excited because I heard nothing about the movie prior to that. If it was leaked or the screenplay was floating around with spoilers, I'd be somewhat less enthused.
If you ever see the midnight premiere of a new movie you may be in for a treat. Assuming the film wasn't screened elsewhere already, really rough plot edits usually roll in right afterwards. Recently I saw the movie Nope not realizing it was the premiere and had this experience. If anyone's curious here's the version I read right after [0].
Since then I've tried to go backwards on articles and see them in their original forms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nope_(film)&oldid=1099781708
I think ball lightning is likely responsible for a lot of uap sightings. It may explain the phenomena to such a degree that we can consider it solved. But to explain ball lightning I think we are going to need some pretty unusual physics. My bet is on electromagnetic solitons in 3 dimensions, there are a few cool papers on the possibility. My other guess is that they are energy based life forms that aren't especially intelligent, drifting through looking for energy sources, hence the preoccupation with nuclear power sites. Half joking. Watch the film "nope" it's an excellent twist on the mystery.
Sometimes they are. Activision was created, at least in part, because Atari refused to give creators credit. EA originally featured the creators prominently https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/we-see-farther---a-history-of-electronic-arts
In the 90s there was, famously Daikatana's "John Romero is going to make you his bitch" ad. American McGee's Alice is another.
Currently, it seems like Japanese creators are the most known and in the West it seems more like studios are known. And in announcements they will use the creators and companies to get buzz.
However, that isn't really marketing. In film, for example, Nope was advertised as a Jordan Peele film. Most games aren't advertised that way. Games advertising seems to focus more on the new: new graphics, new play mechanics. This might be because film doesn't have the same visible advances year after year that games have. The visible differences between a 1980 and a 2020 game are much more obvious than a 1980 and 2020 film.
When it comes to smaller, more indie games, there are people like Johnathan Blow whose games get advertised as being "from the maker of..."