Fun Spielberg connection - compare the "editing the family vacation" scene in The Fabelmans to Cruise manipulating the pre-cog images in Minority Report. Both of them spinning the wheels of the past to find a clue in the footage
The Spielberg movies I've been re-watching and finding unexpected revelations are...well, pretty much all of them. When it was released, reviews of Empire Of The Sun accused him of lightening the source material, but now it feels like a therapy session. The scene where Christian Bale is reunited with his parents and can't recognize them? Yikes.
I think that scene is really moving. And Spielberg does something conceptually cool. The opening shot of the movie is coffins bobbing in the river. The final shot, after he hugs his parents, is the briefcase he lugged around all movie bobbing in the water - his childhood is with the dead now
When I first saw it, my reaction to the whole movie was, oh, Spielberg's trying to do David Lean. But now it feels like he may have filtered it through Lean's style as a way to distance himself from it--he wasn't quite willing to put his whole self out there yet, but it's fascinating what peeks through the cracks.
RE Nope: Can you unpack your comment about its "vagueness only increasing its metaphorical power"? That was personally what I found most frustrating about it, that Peele, while an incredible director, seemed to have no idea what he was trying to say. The beast is called "The Viewer" but also contains (in an early visual) one of the first moving images and is also a chimpanzee that can't be looked in the eye? Spent hours trying to figure this out but concluded it's a Rubik's Cube that can't be solved, which makes the film look vapid and lazily written.
I don't think you're wrong in finding the movie fuzzy. I just find that fuzziness intriguing more than frustrating. That amorphous mass in the sky is a bit like the movie itself. It's not a neat metaphor for anything but it suggests a lot.
Yeah, it's interesting -- at what point does an opaque film cross the line from intriguing to frustrating? I wrestled with this watching Elle (2016) as well. Both fun films to discuss, exhausting to try to make sense of (for me anyway!).
I also agree that the movie is fuzzy and agree with Keith that it's intentionally so. Definitely intrigued to see Peele trend from 'message horror' (which the internet has widely complained about as a genre/trend for the last 2-3 years and which he helped kick off 6 years back) to something that is intentionally obtuse and open-ended.
Also reminds me of Donald Glover talking about surrealism and how he feels like society won't let Black filmmakers work surreal - folks are always looking for a message, a theme, a statement. Certainly wondering if Peele had that in mind here a bit.
Anyway, hard disagree that any of this makes Nope vapid or lazily written - if it was, you wouldn't have spent hours thinking about it.
I don't think it's vapid or LAZILY written so much as it's BADLY written. The actions by the cinematographer at the end are in no way set up by the preceding 115 minutes and there were a million ways you could have made that less random.
How is it random? The guy is painted as someone who is very, very driven by getting impossible/unique/wonderful shots and he goes for it basically knowing what the result will be. This feels like one of the least hazy moments in the movie to me?
He's presented as being driven by one thing only - he's not suicidal, he just takes his priorities to a crazy end. There's a whole lot to think about in this side character and his little arc and how it ties into everything else going on in the movie thematically.
But I'll admit it wasn't as big a problem as when our characters see, like, 40 people get eaten by an alien and don't seem to care or be moved in the slightest.
That's an interesting argument/context -- but as much as I think about it I just can't see the VALUE of having the film being so vague. Vagueness is interesting if it's about vagueness in real life, but what real-life vagueness does this reflect? What meaning can take a viewer take away? How was this a good use of our time? I loved "Get Out" as much as I did because I could watch it and think about its real-life application. I did not get that here. So this might just be a disagreement on what the purpose of art is.
I say lazily written because I also think it's far more difficult to make something that's coherent and consistent than to make something that's obtuse (and effectively meaningless).
There are a ton of threads in this movie and I love thinking about them but maybe the broadest/most basic one is 'what cost is acceptable to entertain an audience?', which is not all that vague and certainly not all that hypothetical.
More broadly there are a ton of great movies that work in this sort of vein and to call them lazy because you don't like that it's more of a thinker than an explainer is on you.
Sure, but I don't see how that question itself has any application to all of the vague images in the film. Love any film that's a thinker, but not if it's thinking to no end. I don't need the film to explain anything to me, just for there to be some kind of logic to how it works, which I don't see here.
With regards to empty theaters, part of me wonders if this is where streaming might actually make a difference. I’d be curious to see what internal metrics show, but in my experience, movies that have been in theaters tend to get a lot more attention when they drop on a streaming service. To compare two movies from the same service this year, Glass Onion, a movie that had an extended/wide release by Netflix standards, felt like an event when it came to Netflix, whereas The Gray Man came and went without anyone talking about it.
I'm not quite despairing over empty theaters--I think there are a few encouraging signs, if only studios and distributors would notice them. I mean, TAR or Crimes Of The Future would never have been any more successful than they were, and Babylon was always destined to be a pricey cult flop. But Glass Onion did spectacularly well while only playing for a week in a small number of theaters, so audiences will turn out. Heck, I saw Confess, Fletch in a tiny auditorium, but that auditorium was packed. If it had actually gotten a decent release, who knows?
The IMAX-converted re-release of Jaws made a surprisingly healthy five million--only slightly less than She Said and TAR--and Fathom Events showings of It's A Wonderful Life and The Godfather made over a million bucks apiece. (They outgrossed Empire Of Light, which is gratifying.) Everybody's seen these movies, but folks still turned out to see 'em on a big screen. Where The Crawdads Sing, The Woman King, Ticket To Paradise--mid-level movies with mid-level grosses, maybe less than they might have made pre-pandemic, but still offering proof that people will show up for the theatrical experience. People are perfectly willing to pay money to see decent, well-made entertainment. But what was the competition for Avatar at the Christmas box office? Pretty much Babylon and Puss In Boots? Audiences like star vehicles, middlebrow dramas and non-IP action movies, at least when they're available.
Landmark did an 80s horror series every Tuesday this past October, and I was SHOCKED at how packed my screening of VIDEODROME was. I took it as an optimistic sign, although the empty seats at THE FABELMANS the following month was a pessimistic one...
Fun Spielberg connection - compare the "editing the family vacation" scene in The Fabelmans to Cruise manipulating the pre-cog images in Minority Report. Both of them spinning the wheels of the past to find a clue in the footage
Oh, good catch.
The Spielberg movies I've been re-watching and finding unexpected revelations are...well, pretty much all of them. When it was released, reviews of Empire Of The Sun accused him of lightening the source material, but now it feels like a therapy session. The scene where Christian Bale is reunited with his parents and can't recognize them? Yikes.
I think that scene is really moving. And Spielberg does something conceptually cool. The opening shot of the movie is coffins bobbing in the river. The final shot, after he hugs his parents, is the briefcase he lugged around all movie bobbing in the water - his childhood is with the dead now
When I first saw it, my reaction to the whole movie was, oh, Spielberg's trying to do David Lean. But now it feels like he may have filtered it through Lean's style as a way to distance himself from it--he wasn't quite willing to put his whole self out there yet, but it's fascinating what peeks through the cracks.
RE Nope: Can you unpack your comment about its "vagueness only increasing its metaphorical power"? That was personally what I found most frustrating about it, that Peele, while an incredible director, seemed to have no idea what he was trying to say. The beast is called "The Viewer" but also contains (in an early visual) one of the first moving images and is also a chimpanzee that can't be looked in the eye? Spent hours trying to figure this out but concluded it's a Rubik's Cube that can't be solved, which makes the film look vapid and lazily written.
I'm completely with you. I was actively frustrated in the movie theater
I don't think you're wrong in finding the movie fuzzy. I just find that fuzziness intriguing more than frustrating. That amorphous mass in the sky is a bit like the movie itself. It's not a neat metaphor for anything but it suggests a lot.
Yeah, it's interesting -- at what point does an opaque film cross the line from intriguing to frustrating? I wrestled with this watching Elle (2016) as well. Both fun films to discuss, exhausting to try to make sense of (for me anyway!).
I also agree that the movie is fuzzy and agree with Keith that it's intentionally so. Definitely intrigued to see Peele trend from 'message horror' (which the internet has widely complained about as a genre/trend for the last 2-3 years and which he helped kick off 6 years back) to something that is intentionally obtuse and open-ended.
Also reminds me of Donald Glover talking about surrealism and how he feels like society won't let Black filmmakers work surreal - folks are always looking for a message, a theme, a statement. Certainly wondering if Peele had that in mind here a bit.
Anyway, hard disagree that any of this makes Nope vapid or lazily written - if it was, you wouldn't have spent hours thinking about it.
I don't think it's vapid or LAZILY written so much as it's BADLY written. The actions by the cinematographer at the end are in no way set up by the preceding 115 minutes and there were a million ways you could have made that less random.
How is it random? The guy is painted as someone who is very, very driven by getting impossible/unique/wonderful shots and he goes for it basically knowing what the result will be. This feels like one of the least hazy moments in the movie to me?
Because he's in no way presented as being suicidal.
He's presented as being driven by one thing only - he's not suicidal, he just takes his priorities to a crazy end. There's a whole lot to think about in this side character and his little arc and how it ties into everything else going on in the movie thematically.
Disagree. I didn't feel it was well set up.
But I'll admit it wasn't as big a problem as when our characters see, like, 40 people get eaten by an alien and don't seem to care or be moved in the slightest.
That's an interesting argument/context -- but as much as I think about it I just can't see the VALUE of having the film being so vague. Vagueness is interesting if it's about vagueness in real life, but what real-life vagueness does this reflect? What meaning can take a viewer take away? How was this a good use of our time? I loved "Get Out" as much as I did because I could watch it and think about its real-life application. I did not get that here. So this might just be a disagreement on what the purpose of art is.
I say lazily written because I also think it's far more difficult to make something that's coherent and consistent than to make something that's obtuse (and effectively meaningless).
"What real-life vagueness does this reflect?"
There are a ton of threads in this movie and I love thinking about them but maybe the broadest/most basic one is 'what cost is acceptable to entertain an audience?', which is not all that vague and certainly not all that hypothetical.
More broadly there are a ton of great movies that work in this sort of vein and to call them lazy because you don't like that it's more of a thinker than an explainer is on you.
Sure, but I don't see how that question itself has any application to all of the vague images in the film. Love any film that's a thinker, but not if it's thinking to no end. I don't need the film to explain anything to me, just for there to be some kind of logic to how it works, which I don't see here.
With regards to empty theaters, part of me wonders if this is where streaming might actually make a difference. I’d be curious to see what internal metrics show, but in my experience, movies that have been in theaters tend to get a lot more attention when they drop on a streaming service. To compare two movies from the same service this year, Glass Onion, a movie that had an extended/wide release by Netflix standards, felt like an event when it came to Netflix, whereas The Gray Man came and went without anyone talking about it.
What the hell is a “gray man”
I'm not quite despairing over empty theaters--I think there are a few encouraging signs, if only studios and distributors would notice them. I mean, TAR or Crimes Of The Future would never have been any more successful than they were, and Babylon was always destined to be a pricey cult flop. But Glass Onion did spectacularly well while only playing for a week in a small number of theaters, so audiences will turn out. Heck, I saw Confess, Fletch in a tiny auditorium, but that auditorium was packed. If it had actually gotten a decent release, who knows?
The IMAX-converted re-release of Jaws made a surprisingly healthy five million--only slightly less than She Said and TAR--and Fathom Events showings of It's A Wonderful Life and The Godfather made over a million bucks apiece. (They outgrossed Empire Of Light, which is gratifying.) Everybody's seen these movies, but folks still turned out to see 'em on a big screen. Where The Crawdads Sing, The Woman King, Ticket To Paradise--mid-level movies with mid-level grosses, maybe less than they might have made pre-pandemic, but still offering proof that people will show up for the theatrical experience. People are perfectly willing to pay money to see decent, well-made entertainment. But what was the competition for Avatar at the Christmas box office? Pretty much Babylon and Puss In Boots? Audiences like star vehicles, middlebrow dramas and non-IP action movies, at least when they're available.
Landmark did an 80s horror series every Tuesday this past October, and I was SHOCKED at how packed my screening of VIDEODROME was. I took it as an optimistic sign, although the empty seats at THE FABELMANS the following month was a pessimistic one...
Teen Weaver 🤣