While director Jordan Peele’s highly-hyped horror Nope didn’t reveal a lot of plot in its cryptic trailer, the forthcoming movie does seem likely to revisit an idea explored by a largely forgotten sci-fi flop. After the success of Get Out and Us, director Jordan Peele’s next movie was always going to be much-anticipated. Not much is known about Nope, which arrives in cinemas in July 2022.
However, the release of Nope’s first trailer does imply that the new movie’s story will reference a long-forgotten flop from 2011. While Get Out mined real-life racist history to ground its far-fetched story of body-swapping, Us used class warfare as the inspiration for its violent home invasion story of deadly doppelgängers. Now, Nope appears to mix classic Western symbolism with a sci-fi threat in a way savvy genre fans will have seen before.
Judging by the movie’s cryptic trailer, the premise of Nope is a contemporary spin on 2011’s period Western/sci-fi mashup Cowboys & Aliens. The largely forgotten flop pitted Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig’s eponymous cowboys against extraterrestrial invaders in a story that resonated with few reviewers upon the movie’s release. Fortunately for Nope, Peele’s movie is already making better use of the premise than Cowboys & Aliens did. For one thing, Nope centers on contemporary black cowboys where Cowboys & Aliens offered a less subversive version of the Western mainstay.
Not only is Nope not a tough-to-market period piece horror story like Cowboys & Aliens, judging by the movie’s trailer, the upcoming outing will also feature Peele’s usual dark sense of humor. One of the biggest criticisms aimed at Cowboys & Aliens was that the movie took itself far too seriously, building an absurdly po-faced plot around the inherently absurd titular conceit. Much like star Daniel Craig was accused of playing the super-spy James Bond too straight by some critics, almost all viewers and reviewers alike were united in the belief that Cowboys & Aliens could have done with a serious injection of humor and fun given how silly its premise sounds.
Furthermore, the very fact that Nope’s story still isn’t clear from the movie’s trailer means Peele’s horror movie won’t repeat Cowboys & Aliens’ mistake of trying to sell a weird Western to audiences who have no interest in the sub-genre. Weird Westerns are infamous for failing to succeed at the box office, so marketing Nope as a mysterious horror movie rather than playing up its Western elements with the title (as Cowboys & Aliens did) is a canny business decision by the filmmakers. Ultimately, hiding the movie’s premise in promotional materials, setting the story in contemporary times, and casting a more diverse set of ranch hands means Peele’s movie will likely steer clear of many of the creative choices that caused the 2009 release to flop. However, Nope may still bring back the basic premise of Cowboys & Aliens, albeit in a very different form.
Key Release Dates
Nope
Release Date:2022-07-22
