Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022)

[DarkImbecile]

Jordan Peele released a teaser poster for his next film, Nope, starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun and set for release next July

[therewillbeblus]

Jordan Peele released a teaser poster for his next film, Nope, starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun and set for release next July

Principal photography has reportedly wrapped, per Hoyte van Hoytema, who has confirmed himself as the cinematographer of the project- as well as that parts were filmed in 65mm IMAX format

Glad to read that Euphoria's Barbie Ferreira is involved

[cantinflas]

NOPE

[DarkImbecile]

Man, what a frustrating disappointment this was. Peele brings his usual flair for striking images and moments of inspired humor and/or horror — the opening shot, for example, is delightfully unnerving — but where Get Out and Us were successful to varying degrees at being engrossing genre narratives, Nope just falls completely flat at giving the audience much to care about on a pure story and character level. The protagonists are mostly superficial, the situation they're in doesn't seem meaningful to them beyond the most basic of motivations, and the resolution doesn't feel anywhere near as significant as Peele wants it to be. The underlying thematic targets Peele has here — which, even if you find them more coherent than I did, just don't feel half as vital as those in his prior films — can't add much value if the basic narrative machinery sputters and jerks too clumsily too enjoy.

The film, mostly shot on 65mm by Hoyte van Hoytema, looked good enough in my IMAX screening, so it has that going for it; on the other hand, the special effects and design elements are fine at best, never really awe-inspiring in the Spielbergian way Peele would clearly like them to be. He was clearly swinging for something beyond what he'd done in the past with this film, and I respect the effort, but this is a big-time miss. I hope Peele refocuses himself on his next project, and I'm sure he'll have plenty of support for it, but I can almost guarantee that this will be his least financially successful film and the most mixed response from audiences he's ever had.

A brief, underexplained handful of aggravations, each of which left me more deflated than the last:

SpoilerShow

• The speed with which Brandon Perea's Angel clues in on and accepts what is happening on the ranch defies even a generous suspension of disbelief, and — through no fault of the actor's — his character is ultimately unnecessary and doesn't even provide much in the way of comic relief.
• Steven Yeun's Jupe is far and away the most intriguing character in the film — his seemingly blissful reminiscences of a childhood on-set disaster and mini-museum devoted to the incident are begging to be explored — and seemingly the one whose past and present story fit most cleanly with the thematic points Peele is trying to make... and yet he's done away with in a far too rushed and unsatisfactory fashion. If he had been the protagonist — instead of the game yet misdirected Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya as siblings on a struggling horse ranch — I suspect this would have been a more successful film.
• The way Michael Wincott's cinematographer — the amusingly named Antlers Holst — captures the footage that is the core group's primary goal fifteen minutes before the end of the film and then immediately sabotages the whole endeavor (for reasons implied only by an extremely brief action a few minutes earlier) is so irritating, I was involuntarily shaking my head at the screen. Even worse, the other characters proceed to act as if they still have to get the perfect shot of the alien, when it's not at all clear that the original film is lost! It totally undermines the suspense of the film's final moments for no discernible reason! Ugh!
• Also, the fact that the characters endanger themselves and others — including an absurdly shoehorned and cartoonish paparazzo character — just for footage that might temporarily offer them fame and riches may be part of Peele's point about what we're willing to do and exploit for success in a media-driven world, but it doesn't in and of itself provide the characters with anything close to a relatable motive for what they're doing, leaving me at least decidedly uninterested in how their endeavor turns out or whether they survive.

[Finch]

Walter Chaw's mixed reaction

His subsequent work takes on water before it leaves the shore, and I'm not convinced he sees it above the din of his vision. (....)

I think a lot of people will call Nope thought-provoking--and many of those people will have called Us thought-provoking, too. There's probably even an overlap with people who thought Tenet was thought-provoking. If you boil it down, I must grant that my thoughts are provoked by Nope but wish to add the caveat that it's possible to be fruitfully provoked, just as it's possible to be provoked because the plot is a mess.

The comparison with Shyamalan, I think, is fair, though Unbreakable is a very good second film (in some eyes, including mine, better than The Sixth Sense) while Us was a mess of a script, and Nope sounds like several good ideas and a lot of sloppy writing which would have gotten every aspiring writer told to go back to the drawing board. Everything else that Peele has produced (outside of Blackkklansman) has gotten mixed to negative reviews, too (Twilight Zone reboot and the negative reviews of the new Candyman really tore into that film).

[knives]

The Sixth Sense was his third feature film as a director.

[Noiretirc]

I loved Get Out but I was bitterly disappointed with Us. I want to believe that Nope is a return to form. I really do want to.

[pianocrash]

Glad to read that Euphoria's Barbie Ferreira is involved

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She is featured in only one scene, unfortunately.

Peele has some worthwhile dots to connect (Debord, Muybridge, trauma, the gold rush, cameras, great band t-shirts), but his direction and writing skills can't quite pull it off what inevitably feels herculean in what amounts to 2022 Sagebrush Smartphone Jaws (I have to honestly blame the pre-show trailer of the forthcoming Idris Elba vehicle Beast for that one, and I'm so, so sorry). Kaluuya channeling Keith David's portrayal is wonderful in parts, and I agree that Yeun's character was infinitely a better fit for a feature-length protagonist, but we are all probably better off as it is in shorter form here. And while I don't agree with a lot of what ends up going on, I do love seeing Michael Wincott in any capacity, even if he exists only as a cipher for what turns out to be an eye-rolling demise. Oftentimes I can't quite jibe with Peele's sense of comedy in his film work, which seems to be his version of character development, so much of Nope ends up feeling like a stylistic clone of Us in tone, aka this is how all future Jordan Peele films will look and feel for the foreseeable future.

[OldBobbyPeru]

My one word review: Nope.

Expanded: What a convoluted, barely coherent mess this film is. Zero character development, and their motivation to get fame by capturing an image of the thing is a pretty lightweight point to pin a 2 hour 15 minute movie on. If the whole bit with Steven Yeun was cut, and it was 90 minutes about killing an alien, it could have been a fun movie if there were at least a small attempt to make you care about these people. As it is, it feels like 20 pounds of shit packed into a ten pound bucket. Apparently the rough cut was nearly four hours. The fanboys will be clamoring for an extended edition shortly. They can have it. Excellent sound design, though. I bet the Atmos on this will be amazing on the blu-ray.

[therewillbeblus]

After liking Get Out but not quite joining its chorus of superlatives, and finding Us too frustratingly overstuffed with mismanaged ambitions and forcing unfair demands on its audience, I was pleasantly surprised in finding Peele's latest effort to be far and away his best and most mature work to date, despite also mirroring as his least evenly composed. Maybe I feel this way because he finally seems to trust his audience to engage with the film he wants to make. Or maybe it's that he doesn't care as much what we specifically get from it. Or that this movie is so vast in its scope of experiences acknowledged that it's a strength how Peele leaves them there to remain sensations rather than beating us over the head with over-explanations. In this sense, it's a bit like Everything Everywhere All at Once's attempt to encompass everything while reflecting our multifaceted experiences of desensitization and sensitization, only Peele imbues humility to coyly undersell his private blueprint design. Actually, 'humility' seems to be a core theme of this film, reflexively so.

The line "One for you, one for me" is winkingly uttered in this film, and if my screening of Get Out and its crowdpleaser status catering to all liberals (even, perhaps particularly, the ones it's making fun of- threatening a hijacking of its argument!) was any indication of its intentions to pleasure viewers, here Peele ironically uses his biggest budget yet to deliver his most obscure and subversive work. It's directed more subtly yet pointedly at black experience, engaging with racially marginalized resilience in ways that are less easily defined - and yet the themes are so ubiquitous to American psychosocial experience that Peele can oscillate between his observational theses and give everyone something to latch onto without usurping the others' singular significances, restrained but clear enough where it counts.

On a purely surface level, Peele has more confidence in his enigmatic execution of themes than Us, as well as increased self-control to deliver understated humor compared to the louder nudge-y bits in his first two works. There's a Hitchcockian precision to so many sequences that subvert the payoffs, but even if this tactic is practically provoking audiences to repulse at not getting what they want, conceptually the self-conscious methodology is fitting for Peele's enveloped messaging.

Which I guess is some kind of segue into the million dollar question of what the hell is going on here and why should we bother to do the legwork to see greatness where there appears to be curious clutter. There's a lot going on without overstating things, but to name a few crucial topical areas, Nope touches on how earnestly messy and blurred family dynamics can be and often are; the perceived responsibility of Legacy, especially in marginalized groups; how we cope with historical and individualized traumas- including the duality of optimistic resilience and tragedy of managing this with sublimation (Yuen’s facade of stability, Kaluuya’s ingrained dedication to branded ideology and various palpable apparatuses), and the displacement of cultural identity in America.

I love how the first time we hear the title uttered in the film is not as an impulsive response to an immediate threat. It's Palmer's answer to her brother’s rhetorical question about a “bad miracle.” This feels directly tied to Peele’s biblical quote that opens the film, but also religious or spiritual or otherworldly ‘unknowns’ in general: There’s a disquieting reaction we have to nebulous stimuli - something oppressed populations have more experience adapting to out of necessity, whether this results in passively shrugging off occurrences or actively reframing into opportunities. There's a reality to the concept of the 'gift of desperation' almost all people experience who are repeatedly 'humbled' by life, and Peele is targeting this experience from all angles. So it makes sense that a tragic moment leaning into this unsettling idea of a curse is capitalized on for monetary gain and publicity in the very next scene. It’s not lost on Peele that it’s worth recognizing the pathos in this alienating experience in the face of an invisible, unpredictable and threatening higher power that hasn’t exactly been "kind" to one’s people, and to simultaneously affirm the empowering agency of these people to manage these trials and tribulations on tangible terms. He allows Palmer to have a moment of 'Nope' denial, validating that one cannot and should not be some superhuman mascot for Resilience, but then shows how that resilience comes in many forms across his different characters' reactions to stressors. All of our life experience has led us to now and shapes our responses, and his deliberate pacing in pockets of silence is more than just to establish tension or suspense. It's to allow us time to soak up the realization that all of this matters.

The ultimate reveals and course correction of the film -from an open-ended, vaguely thematic exercise into a simplified narrative of one problem begetting one solution to actualize- is a self-reflexive fantasy Peele can only honestly execute after establishing both its fantastical 'Only In The Movies' nature and its real-life allusions. This is an allegory that works, because it’s broad, all-encompassing and is fair about its recognition of where and when it’s realistic or make-believe; making a statement or having fun. Through these juxtapositions -thankfully not split in a jarring manner but fluidly blended as one soup of experience we can all relate to peripherally- we are granted access to a unique wavelength in what is only Peele's Signs on its exterior. Peele finally uses the possibilities of cinema to translate something ineffable, in a manner that is less obvious or didactic than his other work, demonstrating expressive growth in restraint and balance of tones and ideas via the authentic and grounded subjective experience of these characters occasionally lifted into fear and wish fulfillment, and then back down again, particularly in its (almost-irritatingly) modest final series of shots.

I have a lot of scattered thoughts about this film, some of which indirectly address DI's criticisms, though I've tried to organize them in a way that makes some sense (not exactly 'easy' with this film!)

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I don't see the characters having "the most basic of motivations" to be a problem since it's a key point of the film. In a sense, this is a tale of survivalism, and how we get by day to day in the most banal of ways. Sure we want to be stars and special, but ultimately there’s a humility in existence, especially in our current era where the space between the dreams to be famous as social media influencers et al. contrasts so heavily with the small-sized reality of where we actually are, blended into an increasingly larger crowd of John and Jane Does. Success doesn’t drive the characters’ motivations in any authentic way. They aren’t particularly enthused about the plan to be the 'first' to document this invasion, but rather feel compelled to adopt a capitalist-individualistic attitude to ensuring they don't get left behind, and shrug about any higher meaning when it's posed. This is where the theme of desensitization becomes so integral, and also one example of how survivalism is elastically pitched as being about social standing and bootstraps-based promotion of opportunities in the face of an oppressive dog-eat-dog (or, animalistic) culture.

This is a film that touches on how we as a species need to be desensitized to survive but also need to be hypervigilant to get the same result- and that imperfect and impossibly-static 'sweet spot' is what we're all struggling with. Part of me wants to read this as a film about the experience of marginalized groups, and Peele's perceptiveness to how people of color endure their lower-status positions in the social food chain. I think this is a fair reading but it's only one half of Peele's interest, as his other side wants to universalize our struggles. This side of the theme asks us to separate 'species' within human beings due to the socially-constructed categorizations of race yielding caste systems that segregate us further by forcing the adoption of separate defense mechanisms to cope with differentiated stressors. Kaluuya's disposition as he stays calm and patient in the car seems indicative of deliberately-racialized resilience. Kaluuya merely locks the door, doing the one thing within his power and knowing his limits in that moment. He doesn't overreact- he's accustomed to things happening to him that are unfair and violent and unexpected (the most chilling moment in the film is Kaluuya's delayed response to his father's death, a relatively unfazed reaction to unexpected objects literally falling out of the sky, aggressively beating down on the animals he loves and himself), but that unpredictability has become predictable. It's heartening to see OJ's morality trump self-preservation in rescuing TMZ only to then leave him to die when it comes to survival. That's the right answer, especially for someone who has needed to be mindful of finite resources and has been denies the privilege to avoid a humble revelation that sometimes one needs to expend his energy to protect him and his over moral ideals.

There are indistinct nods at gentrification- the history lesson of 'getting there first' as black people in the world of cinema, or drive-by lines about the importance of establishing the horse ranch family business, are explicit. And yet the sensations of non-marginalized groups dominating industries and casually pushing these people of color away into isolation are implicitly injected into the elisions of its fabric, but powerfully omnipresent. I felt the energy of Kaluuya's anthropological identity, in reference to others and under the weight of his own history and responsibilities (both perceived and real), through his performance perhaps most during silence- which is also where I felt these ubiquitous racialized themes of survivalism. It's a testament to Peele's unassuming yet controlled direction and Kaluuya's introverted acting that these sensations are so successful- though unfortunately they may be too elusive for many to notice or care.

Animals are used here for significance, but the intention feels... well, intentionally unclear. I found myself wondering if the animals represented marginalized species at times, and in the film's best scene we see a chimp mercilessly, reactively slaughter a bunch of frantic white people, perhaps giving off 'negative energy'. These people are not the chimp's peers but his prey, so then is the sole Asian kid, a young Yuen, a 'peer' of sorts, in terms of broadened marginalization? Is this why he gets the fist bump, a gesture of intimacy- where we recognize those who are humbled, who struggle? Does Yuen think he is the center of the universe because of that interaction when he was so young? I'm not so sure, but I think he thinks that moment made him special- as a defense mechanism of sublimation, a strategy to cope with trauma. At certain points like these I was reminded of The Birds, both in how it's thematically addressing our complacency and in Peele's self-reflexive approach to the aliens as 'viewers' like us.. where maybe we are the birds.

Another part of me wants to see this as universalized toward the desensitized-to-violence 21st century American, post-9/11 and knee-deep in internet chaos and active school shooting drills, and this includes the scene with Kaluuya waiting out the insanity occurring around his car while he's trapped in it without disclosing a noticeable reaction. This desensitization causes some not to act, but it also inspires impulsive behavior too. There's talk from Palmer early on about being the center of the world, and talk from Kaluuya about respectfully engaging with the world as a mere player on the stage shared with others, including his response to other creatures, respecting that they may not want eye contact etc. There is talk of taming animals. Finding humility in being tamed can be a strength, but so can fighting humility by demanding one's place in the world, as long as it's balanced. Sometimes that looks very unbalanced with dangerously egocentric tunnel vision, like trying to be the center of things taking the right shot on the top of a mountain at magic hour.. faux-invincibility of the dominant race? Or just simply overextending our ambitions outside of reality- a product of resisting humility either way.

The film's ultimate simplified endpoint seems to be saying a lot about how we attempt to make God's wrath or various harms tangible through a lens of territorial animalistic oppression that we can comprehend. Yuen may seem underused, but it’s precisely his denial of personal exploration through humble self-awareness that reflexively negates his ability to socially mobilize his way into the center of this film, ironically by trying to be the center in a superficial manner. Kaluuya is remarkable in a performance that channels the murky space between disengaging complacency and willingness to engage with humility. Peele may not be outspoken about his themes, but he does make it pretty clear that when his characters here lose humility, good things don't happen. In fact, I'm pretty sure they all die.

It's important to track how Palmer locates and actualizes hers, and how Kaluuya -who in some ways appears to be humble all along- flexes his to places he himself was hiding from in his own style of complacency. Growth, or 'evolution' matters- and some philosophers have said that people who won't do this don't deserve to live. Peele draws an inclusive and broad portrait of this idea, hits his foot on the gas sporadically but intentionally, and then takes it off and refuses to play God when his audience most wants him to. Even if it's frustrating, it's brilliant.

There's a whole lot more. Relying on technology vs practical controllable means doesn't do well for people either. Innocent animals are sucked into the vortex of unknown consequences along with egocentric humans, perhaps Peele (humbly) acknowledging the unfairness and randomness of it all- that not even he, a filmmaker in control of his art, can control all the outcomes. At least he won't pretend like one man can hijack control and dish out the 'answers' to life's enigmatic meaning, or he has no interest to- Not in a film that presents us with reality and fantasy and mixes them together to bring clarity via the urgency and modesty in appreciating the mess as a mess.

I don't know, this is a tough film to love. It's deliberately playing against dominant audience expectations from blockbusters down to the soft music and series of docile shots ending the film. There’s a lot going on in Nope, but Peele feels more comfortable not feeding the audience what he’s thinking about, and it’s a better movie for it. I suspect DI is right- everyone will hate this and I'll be the sole vocal champion like last year's Last Night in Soho, but it's y'all's loss for not feeling what's there in the shadows. Our drives to either ascend or accept our place -tied to literal survivalism or existential importance- amongst our red-blooded peers, seems at the heart of the film. It's something we can all relate to, and if the film demands that we wake up and actively engage with its mystery with humility - just like the mysteries surrounding these grey and hazy concepts - that seems to be appropriately restrained rather than cheap and lazy. Or who knows, maybe I'm completely off base about everything I gleaned from this and it's a failure. But if that's the case, it's the most interesting failure I've ever seen.

[DarkImbecile]

It’s funny that you reference Last Night in Soho in comparison to this, because to me they’re both precisely ‘interesting failures’ and for roughly similar reasons. They both represent stretches in new directions for their often gifted but somewhat pigeonholed writer-directors, they both have plenty of moments of technical brilliance, and each has socio-cultural and self-reflexive ideas worth engaging.

Unfortunately, both are packaged in genres that come with certain expectations from the audience, and in each case Wright and Peele neither meet nor provocatively subvert those expectations. Peele clearly tries for sci-fi grandeur and character-driven suspense, and Wright clearly tries for psychological horror, and both simply fail.

This doesn’t negate what’s worthwhile about the films, of course — to the contrary, the interesting failures and flawed big swings from my favorite directors are often the ones I revisit more often than their obvious masterpieces, trying to tease out what works from what doesn’t. For example, my experience with Us is closer to the response you had with this film, because I think the the recursive structure and the horror elements work more than well enough to make the (admittedly sometimes fruitless) probing for meaning worthwhile. I’d also argue that Lupita Nyong’o has a more engaging central character to work with and gives a better performance than Palmer or Kaluuya do here.

I’m glad you got more out of this than I did, and I am grateful that Peele is trying and failing rather than safely repeating himself or allowing the Disney meat grinder to swallow him. If I found the baseline experience of watching the film more enjoyable, I’d be inclined to catch it again to see if I could excavate some of what you found.

[therewillbeblus]

I think the difference between what I see in both of those films vs you (and seemingly most audience members from what I’m gathering!) is that their respective filmmakers aren’t actually swinging and missing the things people think they are. They’re using familiar sandboxes but as ruses to subvert and draw us into engagement with uncomfortably enigmatic material yet the kind that postures at universal experience. The dissonance between expectations and what’s actually happening is too great and it’s fair for people to struggle to acclimate to that, or to just not care since it’s such a valley of nebulous depth we’re being asked to bask in instead. For instance, I do think that, like you, Yuen’s Jupe is in many ways the key to the film, but primarily in contrast to his thwarted potential to survive life on life’s terms, reflexively communicated by his screen time, devolved role, and exit. Kaluuya may be less interesting on the surface as the most ordinary of all the characters living a humdrum life, but his depth is quietly explored in such a unique way that I think it’s secretly his best performance (and I liked Nyong’o‘s a lot!) It’s no coincidence that there’s a magical end of him appearing in plain sight- not as an illusion but as a thematic intrusion on the part of Peele- finally fusing reality of his film’s ethos on humility with his godlike mastery over the medium’s manipulations, Tarantino style.

[swo17]

My one-word review is that I'm O-P-E-N to this being good, because I'm generally rooting for Peele and I liked Us more than most. I'll concede that's not actually a review though

[therewillbeblus]

I've been baffled by seemingly everyone I meet in real life or read critical pieces from on the internet misreading the closing shot of this film. I'm curious what people here think of the ending, but after three viewings, I'm ready to build a case for what seems obvious. Peele has been intentional not to outright state which reading is correct in interviews, but he has said that he's given us clear information in the film to indicate the answer and it's in no way ambiguous to him

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So, we all know that O.J. is dead, and Em is imagining him on the horse, right?

To assume he's alive would be to neglect all the evidence of the alien's animal instincts -and ethology in general- that O.J. has served as the voice of reason in successfully predicting throughout the whole movie. He stared the alien in the eyes to distract it from preying on his sister, and then the alien turns its face around to chase her after what is surely O.J.'s death/consumption of him off-screen. If he ran way, the alien would follow, or flinch in some way, but we see none of that. So if O.J. is alive, his entire characterization and philosophy and the grand themes of our interconnectedness and humility would all be misjudgments, lies, or for naught- and his sister's character development toward a fierce form of resilient humility wouldn't be for any reason, considering she's gleaned this skill from a growing bond with her brother and his insight...

On a more pragmatically formal level, it's pretty clear what's happening by the specific elision Peele uses during this 'O.J.-sighting'. Em looks over and we are prevented from seeing what she sees, then she closes her eyes, opens them, and she (and we) then sees O.J. (without any change, dirt, etc. to his spotless orange sweatshirt, I must add). She closes her eyes as if to image him there and then smiles and we see him. What other reason would there be to have Peele not show his image first, then have her close her eyes, then turn back ("Do I believe my eyes?") if he was actually still here. In refraining from offering that initial shot (which, from the look on her face, is the devastatingly vacant space where she wishes her brother would be- like what would happen... in the movies? Thematic relevance, anyone?), we must assume her intervention to close her eyes is to concoct the image of her brother -his spirit- in the final seconds of this story, her story, their story. Since he would be proud of her, as she is of him, and they can finally share that moment together- create a movie, as they've been reflexively trying to do all along.

Maybe this is pointless and everyone will agree, but I feel pretty strongly about this reading being the unequivocally 'correct' one, and moreover believe that its definitiveness makes the film's themes resonate much stronger (unlike the ending of a film like Inception, where the deliberate ambiguity serves its themes and the film wouldn't retain any of that moment's power if Nolan intended one correct interpretation over the other)

[Roger Ryan]

That’s how I see the closing shot as well. In fact…

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… isn’t O.J. and the horse positioned directly below the theme park exit sign reading something to the effect of “End Of The Trail”?

Yours is a nice interpretation and would agree is a correct one, but for me (admittedly, after only one viewing), the closing shot was straining to be another enigmatic image in a film that revels in big, meaningful images and ideas without offering much beyond metaphor. Had Peele avoided dividing the film into chapters (which only seems to expose the frailty of the story’s structure) and developed the Jupe storyline more in parallel with the siblings’ story to where they each reach their own conclusions closer to the film’s end, I think I would have been won over a bit more. As it is, I felt like the cherry had already been placed on top of Peele’s sundae with forty minutes of run of the mill action left to get us to the end.

[therewillbeblus]

I definitely feel for those voicing a desire for more Jupe, but I think Peele's choice to elide his character development only makes the deductions we make about him more effective, and reinforces the theme that humility is the crucial virtue for survivalism. We can be empathetic to Jupe's defense mechanism to avoid his trauma, and to sublimate it into a belief that he is special in his ability to bridge a connection with foreign creatures without suffering harm (I'm reminded of a 9/11 documentary I watched with survivors from the World Trade Center who believed they were saved by God vs. others, not intending to pose as superior or be cocky, but because they craved an explanation for surviving their trauma), but because he doesn't meditate on the reality and hasn't been forcibly 'humbled' as O.J. has, his narrative will be eclipsed. It's this indiscriminate maneuver towards his character that plays directly into his narrative arc and simultaneously subverts cinematic expectations in thematically appropriate ways.