Jordan Peele’s horror movie, director Jordan Peele, and his reputation for twists and out-of-the-box thinking encouraged speculation among horror films about what the enigmatic title might actually mean.
Peele began his career in the entertainment world as a comedian, most notably in the sketch series Key & Peele alongside Keegan-Michael Key. In 2017, he made a big change by jumping to the horror genre and behind the camera with his directorial debut third revival of The Twilight Zone, Peele returned with his third horror movie.
Nope stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as OJ and Em Haywood, sibling horse wranglers who work in Hollywood. When they see an unidentified flying object, they set out to try to capture footage of it. However, things go awry, and the Haywoods find themselves having to confront not an alien spaceship but a mysterious, carnivorous monster, egged on by the actions of local theme park owner and former child star Ricky "Jupe" Park, played by Steven Yeun. Like Peele's other movies, Nope has a deeper meaning as well, commenting on society's addiction to spectacle and the exploitation and danger it leads to. Before Nope was released, the early trailers and marketing materials spawned many theories about the movie, including one about the title that didn't ultimately pan out. But how does Nope's title connect to the movie?
The Nope Trailers Spawned The Title Acronym Theory
Like Get Out and Us, Nope had an enigmatic title and marketing that didn't reveal many plot details. However, there are specific scenes in the trailer that made way for some interesting theories, including one that says “Nope” isn’t the real title of the movie, and it was actually an acronym for “Not Of Planet Earth”. This theory circulated widely, with some suggesting alternate phrases the acronym could stand for. When flying saucers appeared in advertising materials, it seemed to confirm that the movie would deal with aliens, lending more credence to the theory.
The trailer for Nope showed the characters looking at the sky in fear and some weird events happening around Haywood Ranch, but there are two scenes in particular that amplified the audience’s suspicions of Nope dealing with aliens: a scene where a kid is about to fist bump a strange-looking creature (which turned out to be the chimpanzee Gordo) and one where the upper part of an alien’s head is seen moving behind the horse stables. This ed the acronym theory, but in the end, these suspicions were dashed by the full movie. The title isn't connected to the plot at all.
What Jordan Peele Says Nope's Title Really Means
However, the acronym "NOPE" doesn't appear in the movie, and Peele has since said that the title wasn't intended to be an abbreviation. Instead, at Cinemacon Peele said that "Nope" was the reaction he intended to evoke in the audience (via Daniel Kaluuya's Otis Jr. when he considers exiting his van with the mysterious monster hovering overhead. Peele even said that he would thrive on how many times the audience said "Nope." While Jupe markets the monster as an alien flying saucer, in the end, there's no real confirmation that it is of extraterrestrial origin. The various theories around the title Nope show how the enigmatic phrase was successful in creating speculation, but ultimately, the abbreviation theory wasn't vindicated by the actual film.
