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This process yielded two versions of the same footage — one in color and one in black and white. Despite the fact that the creature (given the official Latin classification of Occulonimbus edoequus by its scientific advisors) heavily evokes the sleek and otherworldly saucers found in old B-movies, Nope purposefully leaves its origin up to one's own interpretation. Like the shape-shifter in The Thing or the Xenmorph in the original Alien, this utter lack of neat backstory makes it that much scarier by tapping into our collective and never-ending fear of the unknown in the face of vast and apathetic cosmos. The initial saucer design of the alien seems to derive from a couple of different Angels, mainly the fifth Angel Ramiel and the sixteenth Angel Armisael. When appearing as a saucer, Jean Jacket is able to maintain a stationary form, not unlike Ramiel's seemingly unbreakable appearance as an octahedron. As for Armisael, not only does the appearance of the Angel seem similar to that of Peele's creation, but there is a slightly similar fusion effect between the two creatures; staring at Jean Jacket's eye for too long will cause the viewer to be consumed, not unlike how Armisael can infect a being with its mass.
NOPE’s Science Consultant Reveals the Name and Inspiration for the Movie’s Alien
NOPE's Science Consultant Reveals the Name and Inspiration for the Movie's Alien - Nerdist
NOPE's Science Consultant Reveals the Name and Inspiration for the Movie's Alien.
Posted: Tue, 20 Sep 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
It's all the little details — ones that might have been negligible on another tentpole offering — that build up this atmosphere of realistic immersion. The biggest influence on the entity's natural environment, of course, was the Steven Spielberg classic that invented the modern day blockbuster. "Jordan said, ‘The skies are going to be some of the biggest challenge because this is the playground of the film,'" continues the VFX supervisor. "You want the audience to look at the sky and you want the audience to question what they’re going discover in there. And if we do our job well, you’re gonna look at the sky and you're going to be scared. It’s the same way you watch Jaws. You're not going to go for a swim right after seeing the movie, you're, looking at the ocean differently." Aside from two close-ups, every single shot involving sky (and by extension, the stationary clouds in which the Jean Jacket likes to hide) were completely digital. "We did a year of R&D to create a system that would allow us to construct cloudscapes like you would build the sets," Rocheron says.
How Classic '80s Movies Inspired The Costumes of Nope
And only occasionally, if those comb jellies, for example, are going to eat prey, they will very quickly do that, and then go back to that stealth mode. Incorporating scientific advisors into the movie just makes it more realistic. I think when you make a movie that has a realistic thread through it, then it’s definitely more scary. In the universe of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the term “Angel” is used to describe a mysterious species of gigantic creature, ancestral variants of humankind that have lain dormant in and around Earth for countless millennia. Throughout the series, the actions of the clandestine secret society SEELE, and NERV, the secret government agency led by Commander Gendo Ikari, collectively invoke the wrath of the so-called Angels, rousing them from their centurieslong slumber and leading them to attempt to destroy humanity. Aside from an appetite for unsuspecting humans, the biggest similarity between Jean Jacket and Jaws (or “Bruce,” the crew’s nickname for the animatronic shark used in the film) is in how little each creature is seen throughout most of their respective films.
Filming
To circumvent Jean Jacket's effect of shutting down all electrical equipment in its vicinity, Holst brings a hand-cranked IMAX film camera. The group sets up a field of battery-powered tube man props to track its location in the sky. However, a TMZ paparazzo trespasses onto the field and is thrown from his electric motorcycle when it shuts down near Jean Jacket, which promptly devours him. While capturing footage of Jean Jacket, Holst climbs a hill to sacrifice himself for a better view and is consumed along with his camera, forcing the remaining three to flee. Angel survives an attack from Jean Jacket by becoming entangled in a tarp and barbed wire, causing the creature to unfurl into a new, larger form resembling a jellyfish. "Nope" premiered in July 2022, but even now it still has many fans talking.
Evangelion's Angels served as design inspiration for Nope's alien entity
Peele adopts Spielberg’s approach of suggesting the antagonist’s presence rather than explicitly showing it, and also wraps that approach into Nope’s larger themes about the perils of seeking out spectacle even at the expense of one’s own sanity or life. Dabiri also noted that there was a lot of footage and lore surrounding Jean Jacket that was ultimately cut from the film, which he hopes to someday see released. Instrumental to that success is the Haywood’s neighbor and business rival Ricky “Jupe” Park (the great Steven Yeun, all smarmy kindness and smothered trauma), a former actor who survived Gordy’s rage as a child only to profit from people’s morbid curiosity about it as an adult.
How Evangelion's Terrifying Angels Inspired Jordan Peele's Nope
I felt Nope, through the journey of the film, effectively expressed this idea that humans are curious to discover every nook and cranny of an idea such as extraterrestrial life, and the great lengths one will go to capture something as grand as the first aliens perhaps could (will?) take us to the point of destruction. If there’s one thing I’ve learned between Get Out, Us and Nope, it’s to expect the unexpected from writer/director Jordan Peele. The filmmaker who started in sketch comedy before becoming one of the most innovative voices in cinema today isn’t out here delivering the same brand of what he’s done before in his work, and this really shows through Nope. Coming out of Nope, which has become the most successful wholly original film of 2022, what impressed me the most is how Peele's latest flick played with my expectations before my viewing and during my viewing, and ultimately became an even more satisfying concept because of this collective experience.
There are major design changes between Sahaqueil and Jean Jacket, but the influence is loud and clear. A comparison can be seen between Jean Jacket and the Ophanim, but a few of the Angels in Evangelion can directly influence Peele’s creature from above. There are some similarities in status and appearance between Evangelion’s Angels and the biblical description of angels. Before breaking down Jean Jacket’s design and purpose, it is important to understand what the Angels are in Evangelion so we can better understand their influence on Nope.
Storyline
Given its deep well of Easter Eggs and movie references, it's easy to see why the discussion continues. "Nope" is filled with clever callbacks and references to other notable Hollywood works, such as "The Wizard Of Oz," "The Shining," and even "The Scorpion King." It also pulls from the realm of anime, with its most recognizable nod being an iconic "Akira" bike slide. But Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk classic isn't the only anime that inspired "Nope." In fact, the Angels of "Neon Genesis Evangelion" arguably provided "Nope" with its most terrifying inspiration. "We were trying to play off Brandon's sort of natural effervescence because we wanted him to be a bit more cynical and over it all," states Bovaird. OJ, who suffers a major loss of confidence after losing his father, "doesn't really think about his clothes," Bovaird says.
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Before diving any deeper, it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge the possibility that you may have never heard of "Evangelion" before or haven't had the chance to watch it yet. Don't worry — we won't go into any important plot details here, but having an elementary knowledge of what Angels are is mandatory to understand why its influence in "Nope" is so apparent. The "hyper minimalism" and "biomechanical design flair" of the otherworldly entities known in "Evangelion" as "Angels" were directly cited as one of the influences behind Jean Jacket's design — and it is extremely obvious and welcome. So for humans, we’re in kingdom Animalia, and then we go down to Homo sapiens. And so for each of those levels, we have to follow specific rules for naming something new.
What may surprise fans the most about Nope is the fact that almost none of the night scenes were actually filmed at night. "We shot in plain daylight in 100-degree heat of the Californian desert, which was a really interesting experience and a big leap of faith for us," Rocheron says. And Jordan Peele, the writer and director, attributes much of the inspiration for the alien as coming from sea creatures. Joining me to discuss creating a brand new creature to scare audiences is marine biologist Kelsi Rutledge, scientific consultant for the film Nope and PhD candidate at UCLA in Los Angeles. Peele shows us that when it comes to designing a creature from another world, play with the expectations of the audience and pull from what you know. The great thing about designing otherworldly creatures is that we, as normal people, have no idea what they look like or what they are capable of.
For example, you could use that to explain how the jamming worked; and you could use it for electric propulsion, which would in theory explain Jean Jacket’s fast flying without wings/sails. I think the movie worked well without those science details, but I was prepared with a few different explanations if people asked how Jean Jacket was able to fly so effectively without flapping wings. Right at the beginning, when they see the creature, instead of trying to get the money shot, if they would’ve alerted the authorities, then maybe people wouldn’t have died. If scientists and animal behavior specialists had observed the animal, we could have figured it out sooner. You can see how this looks very similar to the scene where people are being swallowed by the animal.
Jupe's unresolved emotional scarring manifests itself in an alien design (one that vaguely recalls the eponymous creature in 1953's Robot Monster) the wannabe tycoon has commoditized at Jupiter's Claim. This imagined species leads to a memorable fake-out, in which Park's children dress up in alien costumes to prank the Haywoods. The ostentatious get-up of Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star and current operator of the cheesy Jupiter's Claim theme park, who foolishly believes he can exploit the alien being for profit on a weekly basis, made for one of the most iconic looks. According to Bovaird, The Goonies star Corey Feldman was considered for the part at one point before Yeun's casting. While Peele originally wanted Jupe to "play it down," Bovaird talked him into the idea of using "really loud colors" that represented the thematic hollowness of pageantry. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Jordan Peele is a big fan of the classics.
She asked a professional photographer friend to take pictures of her cradling a museum specimen of the new species on the beach, and announced the discovery on Twitter in the manner of a glossy, social media-friendly birth announcement. The tweet quickly went viral and received media coverage from several prominent outlets, including Smithsonian Magazine. Despite these two Angels seemingly having some sort of influence on Jean Jacket, none are as obvious as the tenth Angel, referred to as Sahaquiel.
They’re assisted by a nosy, curiously needy clerk from an electronics store (bleach-blonde Brandon Perea, who quietly runs away with the film) and a legendary Hollywood cinematographer played by the great, gravel-voiced character actor Michael Wincott, whose presence in any movie always makes me absurdly happy. "It's almost like when you colorize an old black and white movie, except that this time, we had the real colors, because we were filming it, not inventing them," explains the VFX supervisor. “There’s a lot of marine animal inspiration in the way the alien moves, especially in its unfurled form, which is very similar to a bigfin squid, which have a beautiful billowing fin on their head. The alien moves in the sky like an octopus or squid, and its saucer form is directly modeled after the sand dollar. The creature’s ability to camouflage itself as a cloud is also based on octopuses, who have special skin cells that change color to blend in with the background,” Rutledge said.
Rutledge said she checked preserved specimens out from museums “like library books” and used a CT scanner at the UCLA hospital when it wasn’t in use to create accurate digital models of nose structures. She made 3-D printed physical models from the CT-scans that she put in a water tunnel, similar to a wind tunnel, injected with dye or miniscule, reflective glass balls to observe fluid dynamics around the nose in real time. One mystery of ray olfaction — the sense of smell — involves how they bring scent into their noses. Dogs, humans and most other terrestrial animals have noses connected to their throats and lungs that work like a pump to pull air, and the scent molecules it contains, into their noses. But rays, like other fish, breathe through gills that are not connected to their noses or throats and yet, without a pump, they can somehow still bring odors into their nose.
And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a spectacle. "I felt like it could be very kaleidoscopic in the world-building and colorful ... I wanted to help create something [that was] visually arresting." In addition to building and fine-tuning the monster, MPC also had to figure out a way to control every aspect of the heavens above the lonely California desert town in which the movie unfolds.
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