Magic, spectacle and the wide-open Western of 'Nope'| MARK HUGHES COBB

So many elements of Jordan Peele's horror-suspense-thriller-unidentified filmic object "Nope" loft it above the gaggle of so-called scary flicks, those chock full of jump-cut-annoyances, smeared with buckets o' gore and guts, more stomach-turners than mind-blowers. It's the leagues of variation between Alfred Hitchcock and Tobe Hooper, Guillermo del Toro and James Wan, James Whale and George Romero.

It's knowing how to navigate landscapes between light and shadow, between science and superstition, between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge.

It's knowing how to sparingly use gross-outs and jump-scares, how to suggest and tease, how to subvert expectation and yet fulfill obligation. How to set 'em up, bump 'em, whistle past 'em, thump 'em, shake 'em, and finally knock 'em all down and out.

It's horses and cows.

About five years back, Peele began surprising folks who knew him mainly as a writer-actor of comedy, first on "Mad TV" for five seasons, then with frequent Mad-man partner Keegan-Michael Key on 2012-2015 comedy series "Key and Peele," which could compile a greatest-hits collection by simply releasing everything. Far more consistent, and hitting much higher hilarity levels than "Mad TV," "Saturday Night Live" or any such sketch-filled show since probably "SCTV," "Key and Peele" showcased its co-stars in such vivid, varied ways that you'd be forgiven imagining them as full-time writer-performer-comedians.

But that's just the iceberg's tip. While Key is continuing mainly to perform, Peele has essentially retired from acting, after his 2017 feature-film directorial debut "Get Out" jarred, cajoled and provoked audiences to a $255 million worldwide gross. Those digits may not boggle against superhero-heavy megahits, but distributors surely noticed that number when poised against a $4.5 million budget.

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I was one of those dopes who kinda-sorta figured Peele for full-time funny guy, and thus went to see "Get Out" without much on my mind — knowing too much in advance can dull the purity of an experience — walking out hours later telling everyone to see it, while not knowing exactly how to quantify what I'd experienced, why I was so enthralled. To say it's challenging is a start, yet it's also a ride.

That's Peele's genius: You can watch his films — "Get Out," the 2019 "Us" and this summer's "Nope" — alongside his two years as producer and host of the 2019 "Twilight Zone" reboot, lay back and enjoy, or microscopically analyze like a proper film nerd, or debate themes and subplots and meanings. As with any great tales of speculation, mystery and subcutaneous excitation, layers peel away to reveal more layers.

Like "Get Out," "Nope" takes its title from something Peele noticed Black horror film-fans yelling at screens. It falls into stereotype to say any group does any common sort of thing, but it's basically OK when someone within the group applies it for comedic advantage. Like in the way I can insult my brothers, but if you insult my brothers, you're walking on the fightin' side of me.

Peele uses "Nope" as in-joke, warning for oddities ahead, setup for inevitable "nope" moments, and further, for when characters on-screen "Nope" both in body and language, and ... I mean, you get it, right? Nopes all the way down.

Because the unveiling of the story is part of the joy, I'm going to try not to spoiler.

Horses and cows, that shouldn't be too spoiler-y, assuming you've seen trailers. One of the common complaints about modern movie-selling is that previews show too much.

Nope; not in this case. As with "Get Out" and "Us," from preview materials you can grasp a feeling of unease, mood and motion, without knowing too much. So horses, and some sort of unidentified object that scoops them up; that much you could see months ago. Daring, because that sounds like a chunk of plot. It's as much as "Twister" or "Tremors" had, and those were amusing.

But Whoa Nelly, is there so much more to "Nope."

Subreference: "Whoa Nelly" apparently originated with Pat Brady on TV's "The Roy Rogers Show," running 1951-1957, starring "The King of the Cowboys." A lotta folks might recognize Rogers; may even know the name of his horse, Trigger. Brady was a sidekick. Nelly was a jeep named Nellybelle. Though somewhat antiquated, the phrase grew into general use as an exclamation for surprise.

In "Nope," there's alternative history — or, being as it's closer to truth than much of what's been taught, maybe call it history — about film, and cowboys. Our protagonists — Otis Haywood Jr., played by Daniel Kaluuya, and his sister Emerald, played by Keke Palmer, both astounding in their quiet and kinetic, respectively, ways — are carrying on a generations-long tradition as horse wranglers, largely for Hollywood filmmaking.

That famous Eadweard Muybridge galloping equine image from 1887, considered one of the first series of photos assembled to create a moving picture, features a horse named Annie G. It was from Muybridge's series "Animal Locomotion: An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements." The photographer/scientist created more than 100,000 images, for 781 composite collotype prints.

All that we know.

But the name of the Black rider, one of the first motion-picture stars?

Nope.

Now Muybridge also created action pictures of a near-naked man, and a fully naked woman, and I don't believe their names have been noted either, but roll with Peele on this.

So in "Nope," our current-day Haywoods descend from that rider. It's a clever conceit, grounding this adventure-sci-fi-fantasy-horror-whatever in dirt-solid reality.

Looking at Hollywood's history of Westerns, you'd think Black cowboys didn't exist until Sidney Poitier's directing debut, on 1972's "Buck and the Preacher," starring himself, Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee, only a century and change after the Civil War.

Yes, there were Black actors in silent Westerns, like Bill Pickett, who actually was a cowboy, before cowboy actor. And Delroy Lindo brought legendary Black lawman Bass Reeves to life in 2021's "The Harder They Fall," and Reeves was also depicted, by Jamal Akakpo, in the 2019 HBO series "Watchmen." But most folks pressed to name a famous cowboy could probably cough up Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wesley Hardin and Billy the Kid long before remembering Reeves or Pickett.

Westerns whitewashed the fact that 25 percent of those who roamed the West on horses, rounding up herds, swaggering into saloons, engaging in gunplay with Native Americans, were Black. Some began as slaves, learning skills, then after the Emancipation Proclamation found open skies and plains preferable to whips and chains.

Peele feeds horses to the UFO, their beauty and majesty making their fate somehow more horrific than that of lumbering, comedic cows, the usual UFO-fodder. It's another smart twist, and Otis Jr., aka OJ — yeah — plays a smart cowboy. Unlike many filmic protagonists, he does pretty much all the right things. He thinks. He dodges dangers. And yet toward the end, he rides into the sunset to sacrifice himself.

Earlier, he asks "What's the word for a bad miracle?" Why, it's miracle, of course.

Terry Pratchett: "When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events — the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there — that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous."

One spoiler: "Nope" is decidedly NOT for children. The night I saw it, a couple of parents had to remove their kinder. Suffice to say, there are terribly upsetting moments.

Another: The meta-commentary isn't necessary to the enjoyment. Bad miracles spawn movie magic across the wide-open Western spectacle of "Nope."

Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com, or call 205-722-0201.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Magic, spectacle and the wide-open Western of 'Nope'| MARK HUGHES COBB