While watching Jordan Peeles hit film NOPE I was intrigued from the start. It seemed that there were so many underlying meanings that had yet to be unveiled and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen. Throughout the movie I took notes on some thoughts and predictions I had and I expected to be revealed in an obvious way towards the end. Although in actuality the ending wasn’t what I had expected and left a lot of the points that I thought would be revealed to interpretation or mystery, or maybe just a deeper meaning that I wasn’t fully grasping after only a single watch. But what I do know is that after re reading these predictions it was evident to me that a big theme in this movie had to do with animals, specifically their exploitation.

Something that really stood out to me as the movie progressed was the theme of animal exploitation. There was multiple instances of this in the movie and for a while I thought that this could have been the entire point of the movie in an underlying/deeper meaning kind of way. For one, Gordy the chimpanzee was being used for the hit sitcom Gordys Home! which had apparently been doing very well. But using real animals on strict sets is a clear example of exploitation and takes away their freedom and hope for a normal life. Gordy had enough of this as he went rouge and attacked people on set during the birthday episode. (Side note, something else I found interesting was that right as the balloons came out of the present and floated up into the air in this episode is when Gordy went rouge and the balloons are ultimately what destroyed Jean Jacket in the end of the film- thought this might have meant something)

Another example of animal exploitation was the horses which were used by Steven Yeun, who was an actor on set of the fiasco with Gordy all those years back. Instead of seeing this instance as a clear sign that animals shouldn’t be used for human benefit, he went in the other direction and capitalized on his experience and tried to make money and a living off of it instead. He not only has a room about the incident which he usually shows to people for money, but he leads a show that tries to show off “Jean Jacket” to a crowd and uses horses and animals as bait. This ultimately leads to his death as he got sucked up from Jean Jacket along with his crowd.

Finally, something I took note on during the movie was the possible deeper meaning of the misunderstanding of Jean Jacket. With the reoccurring theme of animal exploitation, and the discovery that Jean Jacket too was an animal, I wondered if Jean Jacket was just misunderstood as it too, was also being used to get the “impossible shot” a way to make money and fame.

I really enjoyed exploring animal exploitation in this film and Im looking forward to the class discussion in which we dive deeper into these topics. Im also excited to see other people’s blog posts and takes on this movie as Im still not completely sure that my predictions are correct! I think it will be really interesting to see other people’s point of views on this film.