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Fridge Brilliance
The initial teaser trailer samples a live recording of Stevie Wonder's "Fingertips", which includes him warming up the crowd by encouraging them to sing back, "Say YEAH", a humorous contrast with "Nope". Apart from the fact that he's one of the most popular musicians in history, what's the first thing everyone knows about Stevie...?
The title is an anagram of "open" — representing the rejection of the gaping maw of Jean Jacket.
The title can also be a rallying cry towards the film's central theme: where do you draw the line? In trying to capture a terrific, engaging spectacle, in risking your reputation, your responsibilities, your life itself for that one perfect shot — when do you stop? When do you say "nope"?
The film opens with a quotation from the Book of Nahum. The name Nahum is also that of the protagonist of H. P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space, in which farmland is poisoned and corrupted by an unfathomable alien presence which spreads from a meteorite which falls into the farm's water well. It's also another anagram — "human".
Other verses prior to the quotation in Nahum also seem connected to the action of the film:
1 " Woe to the bloody city [Nineveh]! it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not..."
3 "The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses..."
Furthermore, the quotation from Nahum is from chapter 3, verse 6.
Jupe describes the "Gordy's Home" incident as "6 minutes and 13 seconds of havoc";
Jupe later tells the Star Lasso audience that the UFO will arrive at 6:13 PM precisely.
It could also be argued that this quote applies to the Gordy's Home Incident; Gordy was put into a stressful situation with a lot of sensory issues that would agitate any animal with gaudy clothing and presents fit for human children (the abominable filth), he lashes out in pain and creates a horrifically bloody and violent scene (he was made vile by the environment he was forced into) and after he dies, he is promoted as an attraction at Jupiter's Claim (he became the spectacle).
While driving Otis Sr. to the hospital, OJ attempts to keep him awake by getting him to recite the names of their horses from memory. One of the last names Otis says is "Lucky" — the horse that carries OJ to the end of the film — as though gifting it to him.
Otis Sr. and Otis Jr. use the phrase "You good?" when checking in with one another. OJ later uses the same phrase when checking in on Ghost, the horse that Otis Sr. was riding at his moment of death.
Jupe initially describes Kattan's performance lampooning Gordy as "undeniable". A day later, at Fry's, Emerald uses the same word to describe what she wants to get out of the UFO footage.
Emerald reminisces that when the original Jean Jacket was taken away for the "Scorpion King" assignment, she was watching from the window, and her father refused to look up and look her in the eye. In the opening scene of the movie, Otis Sr. dies while looking upward, mere moments after asking OJ, "Where's your sister?"
Despite unknowingly looking right at the UFO, Otis Senior isn't taken. Given that it was busy expelling all the objects it couldn't digest, it likely couldn't see anything below it at the time, or it might not have been hungry, since the screams of its victims can still be plainly heard as it drifts by.
In her opening and closing scenes, Emerald is wearing an appropriate colour — bright green. It's more significant given the context of her opening scene: as much as she does covet the limelight, if her speech had been filmed, she would have blended in with the green-screened background. The Hollywood fame she covets — like Jean Jacket — is something which entices you before engulfing you.
While filming the commercial, Emerald forgets the third "great" when describing her ancestor because the speech she's giving is something she memorized from her father. And OJ's deadpan correction might not just be because she got it wrong and his general embarrassment at the situation, but annoyance because she left him out of her declaration.
Inviting OJ and Emerald into his office, Jupe flubs the idiom "my house is your house", instead saying su casa es mi casa. It's reasonable to assume it's an innocent mistake - but it could also be a subconscious "tell" that Jupe's ultimate goal is to buy out the Haywoods' ranch.
Jean Jacket’s true form in the climax seems to be just a threat display, as it never actually attacks anyone in this state, even reverting to its “saucer” shape to eat the Kid Sheriff balloon. Taking that into account, OJ’s survival at the end of the movie becomes much more plausible, since it literally couldn’t hurt him without reverting to its scavenging form.
The Kid Sheriff balloon has one eye closed. Jean Jacket has a single giant eye. Perhaps that's why Jean Jacket attacked the balloon: a big, floating shape with one prominent eye and dangling appendages (the balloon's tethers) caused Jean Jacket to mistake it as another one of its species, and it was either vying for dominance or attempting to mate with it.
Jean Jacket eating the fake horse — which, by the way, is made out of plastic — is a concern people have in the real world regarding plastic waste, such as six-ring can packaging, being dumped in the ocean, where animals mistake them for food (sea turtles tend to think six-rings are jellyfish) and end up choking on/getting stuck in them. This happening earlier, in hindsight, is a hint to Jean Jacket's true nature as an animal, as if it was a craft piloted by beings as intelligent as humans, they would have recognized the ruse.
The fact the horse is made from plastic also explains why Jean Jacket struggles to regurgitate it — it's too tough to chew and resistant to digestive juices, but at the same time cannot be affected by electromagnetism the way Jean Jacket can expel metal objects, which aren't so much dropped as fired from its maw, as evidenced by the strength of their impact even from low heights.
On a meta-textual level, the film turns out to be a commentary on how casually and stupidly animals are regarded in movies, and trying to reach fame and spectacle at all costs. It turns out to be a Whole-Plot Reference to Jaws, a film which led to the unnecessary culling of shark species out of hysteria; Jean Jacket is even blown up by an exploding balloon.
When OJ asks if there's such a thing as a "bad miracle", he doesn't get an answer — but the Latin word for an evil omen is monstrum from which we get the term "monster." What do you call a bad miracle? A monster.
An omen isn't the same thing as a miracle, though, so that's not quite apt. A miracle is a fantastic and unexplainable event. An omen is a sign of foreboding that something bad is going to happen. The question if there's such a thing as a bad miracle is asking what the word would be for a horrible and unexplainable event. An omen would portend a bad miracle, not be one itself.
Monstrum or monster still works because some of the most famous monsters from classical mythology were literally created by divine intervention. Scylla and Charybdis, Arachne, Medusa, the Sirens, the Minotaur, all of these were created by gods to express their displeasure. They were literally bad miracles.
Aside from being named after a horse Otis Senior trained, Jean Jacket has a similar name to actual declassified UAPsGoFast and Gimbal.
OJ and Emerald's insistence on staying behind to get footage of Jean Jacket, even at risk to their own lives, might not just be done out of a desire to warn people about the creature or to get the money to save their failing business; it also seems to tie into their family legacy. As Emerald outlines during her first scene, she and OJ are the great-great-great-grandchildren of the first man ever to appear in a motion picture, and yet — despite this scene being a landmark moment in modern history — the jockey's name has all but vanished from history. Emerald and OJ are most likely all too aware of how certain industries often reduce people of colour to nothing more than a footnote in service of pushing a white-dominated narrative. With the Star Lasso incident being only days away from attracting the attention of the mass media, their determination to break the news first may be in part to make sure that their role in humanity's first contact with aliens doesn't get glossed over in the same way.
Speaking of how the media reduces the role of non-white people for the sake of a white-dominated narrative, Westerns have often been criticized for downplaying the fact that a great deal of cowboys in the Old West were non-white. The Hollywood-style depictions of the Wild West in the neighbouring ranch, and the status of the Haywoods as horse trainers, could be a nod to this fact. Hell, OJ baiting Jean Jacket into chasing after him and Lucky, while a rip-roaring theme plays in the background, is practically a Western in and of itself.
The alien plushies Ricky sells at Jupiter's Claim are short creatures with black bodies and pale faces. In other words, they look like chimpanzees.
In one scene, Ricky’s kids prank the Haywoods by dressing in their alien costumes and sneaking onto the ranch at night. When OJ first spots one of them, the kid is hunched over on all fours, much like a chimp.
Lucky (fittingly) is the only horse to survive the entire film (depending upon your interpretation of the ending). In addition, Lucky was able to survive the Star Lasso massacre because he ignored OJ's prompts to flee his plexiglass enclosure, essentially telling OJ, "Nope."
Lucky staying put is another example of caution over spectacle; Lucky was well-trained not to hurt anyone around him or accidentally hurt himself, and that training ends up saving his life.
All the scenes involving Gordy could be chalked up as a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, or a plot that doesn't get a lot of focus, but when you think of his scenes from a thematic perspective, it's a Small Role, Big Impact. Considering that the movie's key theme is the nature of spectacle, the addiction to it, and the insidious nature of attention and profit, Ricky's entire character embodies a person who has seen a horrific spectacle as a learning experience to never tame what you cannot control. However, because he is falsely led to believe that he can tame anything due to him calming Gordy (which may have been due to him inadvertently avoiding eye contact by the tablecloth hanging between them) and wanting to profit off of a spectacle that cannot be tamed, it's this ingrained belief that gets him killed.
Speaking of Ricky, he hypes up the SNL sketch about Gordy's tragedy a lot as being better than him to explain the tragedy, but from his description the sketch is actually awful at that, making it look like it was the mention of the word "jungle" that was upsetting Gordy. While part of it might be just an excuse for him to deflect it and avoid talking about his trauma, it's also an early sign that he didn't learn anything from the experience or understand what the problem was. Not only that, but the sketch also seems to ascribe human behavior to an animal, which is exactly the mistake Ricky is repeating with Jean Jacket.
The language used by Jupe to describe Chris Kattan playing Gordy is, "He's just crushing it, he is a force of nature, he is killing on that stage." As noted elsewhere, he can only process this tragedy by framing it as entertainment ("[SNL] nailed it better than I could"), but on a subconscious level he's still describing exactly what happened.
The sketch not only sounds badly written and like it's giving the wrong impression of what actually happened, but, from the way Ricky describes it, it sounds horribly offensive and insulting, especially to the still-living victims of the incident, Ricky and Mary Jo Elliot. In other words, the SNL sketch is exactly the type of media that the film criticizes; namely, that which tries to profit off of the suffering of others with no care for who it affects as long as it garners attention.
The Haywood family may have been named after Rita Hayworth, an actress and dancer who achieved fame in the 1940s and ’50s but grew to resent her stardom and status as a sex symbol. The themes of the movie are about the thoughtless pursuit of fame, the exploitation of acting stars (specifically performing animals), and how living beings shouldn't be made a spectacle, much like how Hayworth hated her nickname "The Love Goddess" due to her sex symbol status. Also, her birth name was Margarita Carmen Cansino, and she was forced to hide her Romani heritage by movie executives (including electrolysis to raise her hairline).
The name also has phonetic similarity to Otis B Driftwood, the character portrayed by Groucho Marx in A Night at the Opera — in which Groucho, as Otis, is employed as a business manager and invests money in the talent of an up-and-coming opera singer. Similarly, one of the horses is named "Firefly" — reminiscent of Rufus T. Firefly, Groucho's character in Duck Soup. Ironically, there is no such naming convention applied to Groucho's character from the movie Horse Feathers!
Both Haywood siblings are visually linked to Jean Jacket's true form: its organs are orange (O.J.'s name is the same as an acronym for orange juice), and its camera-like eye is green (Emerald's name is from a gemstone most known for being green). This is highlighted both by their clothing in the finale (O.J.'s orange hoodie, Emerald's green shirt) and their roles in Jean Jacket's defeat: O.J. uses himself as bait while Emerald tricks Jean Jacket into eating something that (it thinks) is looking at it.
When they first decide to capture Jean Jacket on camera, OJ brings up the possibility that people will think it's fake. Em ultimately captures Jean Jacket on an instant camera, which creates photographs that cannot be altered.
OJ's name could be interpreted as being more than an Unfortunate Name joke — the OJ Simpson trial's notoriety came in part from the role of paparazzi and TV turning the event into a public spectacle, while the movie is interested in analyzing the role of filming and profiting off of spectacle. People even visibly wince when they hear OJ's name for the first time, despite the fact he's clearly not the OJ in question.
The actress making the “unfortunate name” comment on the set has a name that also makes this moment delve into Hypocritical Humor. Her name? Bonnie Clayton, a name reminiscent of an infamous criminal duo in of itself: Bonnie and Clyde.
This connection also serves as foreshadowing: OJ’s role in the third act to get Jean Jacket to pursue him on horseback mirrors the infamous police chase.
The Haywoods' family history (and the history of film itself) began with what Em points out were still-frame photos assembled into a sequence. How does the movie end? With Em taking a sequence of photos which culminate in a single shot of Jean Jacket.
Jean Jacket's ability to move extremely fast and change direction nearly instantaneously becomes a lot more logical when it's revealed the creature is largely hollow. It has very little actual mass, especially compared to its extraordinary strength, so its own inertia and momentum aren't really an issue when it moves.
Jupe plays the Star Lasso music when he "trains" Jean Jacket for the show, which causes Jean Jacket to associate music with food, which in turn is why it eats Ghost when Em plays music at the ranch. When it next comes around for the Haywoods' fake horse, it eats the prop and is hurt, and then spends the rest of the movie after this "betrayal" attacking humans, particularly Jupe and his audience at the live show when he plays music. Not only does this illustrate OJ's "only make a deal" mentality of working with animals, but this is an actual phenomenon noticed in wildlife, particularly in bears that are conditioned to be fed by humans and then become aggressive when they approach random humans and either do not get the food or are attacked in defence.
How did the Gordy rampage start? A balloon popping in the wrong place at the wrong time. How was Jean Jacket caught on camera, and where did its rampage end? A balloon popping in the right place at the right time.
During the filmed footage prior to the "Gordy's Home" disaster, it's noticeable that Tom, the actor playing the father, is wearing a floral pattern shirt with prominent white orchids, not unlike Jupe's custom "Star Lasso" cowboy jacket many years later.
In the same footage, it's also notable that Phyllis, the actor playing the mother, is wearing a double necklace of white stones, which resemble a big toothy grin. Since showing teeth is a sign of aggression to chimps, this could have contributed to putting "Gordy" on edge that day.
The floating shoe has been a subject of heated discussion since the movie's release, but what if it relates to an idiom? "Wait for the other shoe to drop"? According to YourDictionary, its key definition is "to await a seemingly inevitable event, especially one that is not desirable". Taking this into consideration, the shoe would have (metaphorically) dropped if Ricky learned his lesson to never tame what cannot be controlled (and also that Gordy going out of control and mauling the cast was inevitable, with the balloons popping being the ones to drop that shoe). But because he never did, and the shoe remained standing. It serves as thematic Foreshadowing of Ricky trying once again to tame something that cannot be controlled. When that shoe drops again, the Star Lasso audience, Ricky, his family, and the Jupiter's Claim staff are eaten by the verything Ricky tried to control.
Notably, the shoe is marked with a single blood drop — foreshadowing the name "Jupiter's Claim", as Jupiter is similarly adorned with a large "Red Spot".
The name "Jupiter's Claim" is an ironic reference to classical mythology not noticed by Jupe. In Greek/Roman mythology, Prometheus, when instructing the humans he had created on how to offer tribute to the gods, gave Zeus/Jupiter two sacks. In one sack, Prometheus placed entrails topped with fine cuts; in the other, he placed good meat topped with guts. Zeus/Jupiter chose the sack topped with steak, creating the tradition of offering animal entrails to the gods and saving digestible meat for human consumption. This can be compared with OJ and Emerald setting out the plastic horse for Jean Jacket, causing it to become confused at an indigestible meal. In the myth, Zeus/Jupiter punished humanity rather than Prometheus by blotting out the sun, just as Jean Jacket "punishes" Jupe by eating him and his audience, and of course it disrupts electric signals.
Adding to the analogy, OJ is correlated more with Prometheus than Jupe, because the word "Prometheus" means foresight. Jupe, lost in nostalgia, is more akin to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus - whose name means hindsight.
Jean Jacket's true form resembles the floating dispersal phase of a jellyfish (as opposed to their stationary polyp phase), which is known in biology as the "medusa" phase. In Greek mythology, Medusa is a creature who can only be survived by never looking at her directly — which is exactly the most important thing the characters have to remember when dealing with Jean Jacket.
Jupe's rampant PTSD after the Gordy's Home incident is the indirect cause of many things throughout the movie. Asians and Asian-Americans (especially among the older generations) are notorious for misunderstanding or ignoring mental health, so it is extremely likely that his parents either thought he was "lucky" for surviving the rampage, or they explicitly turned down therapy because they thought it was unnecessary.
A movie with horses invites comparisons to the Biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
Otis Sr. is the rider on the Pale Horse (Ghost) -"[The] Rider's name was Death, and hell followed after him". Otis' death begins the film, and precedes several months that could be described as hellish;
Rider Muybridge aka TMZ Guy is the rider on the White Horse (his motorcycle), who "wore a crown" (the motorcycle helmet) "held a bow” (Muybridge's elaborate camera array) and "came out conquering and to conquer". The White Horse rider's designation has been debated by scholars - often characterised as Pestilence, sometimes just called Conquest - and Muybridge as a representation of the predatory media certainly fits in the liminal space of these descriptions;
OJ is the rider on the Black Horse - called Famine - since his ultimate mission is to tempt Jean Jacket with a meal and then deprive them of it;
Ricky is the rider on the Red Horse, War, despite not riding a horse himself, since the colour red is most correlated with him through the film. He fits the bill in that Jupiter's Claim and the Haywoods - and later Jean Jacket - become aggressors to one another; and he can be said to be "ridden" by his latent trauma and by the ever-present Hollywood desire to be famous.
Other religious motifs appear throughout the story:
"Angel" is an easy one, but Antlers Holst is more complex: he is clearly a nod to Gustav Holst (writer of, among other compositions, "The Planets", including "Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity"). Gustav as a given name translates to "Staff of God" — an instrument which could be made of antlers as well as wood.
The praying mantis that obscures the security camera shot initially.
Emerald is wearing bracelets with the Evil Eye, a popular Middle Eastern symbol to ward against evil
In one scene Emerald can also be seen wearing a T-Shirt of the alt rock band 'The Jesus Lizard'
OJ is wearing a St. Christopher medallion. Apart from being the patron saint of travellers, Christopher is notable for unwittingly carrying Christ, in the guise of a child, across a river, only to find him becoming heavier and heavier, a notable symbol for a professional who works with horses.
Not to mention it's a sly connection to the first collaboration between Peele and Daniel Kaluuya, in which he played the main character by the name of Chris.
Emerald's name is a reference to The Wizard of Oz and the Emerald City — but this also provides a stealthier reference to the fact that in the original book by L Frank Baum, visitors to the city were obliged to wear green spectacles so as to shield themselves from its glamour — a device which turns out to be as false as the Wizard, since the spectacles only serve to make the city look as though it's green. Likewise, Jean Jacket itself is looking into the world with an emerald-coloured eye.
Taking the Wizard of Oz parallels further:
While researching UFO footage Emerald finds a clip of a talk show host interviewing another enthusiast, in which they make reference to "not being in Kansas anymore, Toto" and clicking together a pair of red shoes.
OJ is analogous to Dorothy, since he's looking to protect his home. Also like Dorothy, he has particular sympathy and affinity with animals - the various horses could all correlate with Toto.
Emerald is the Scarecrow, in single-minded pursuit of fame and fortune rather than a brain, cemented by her sewing up the "dancing men" that resemble scarecrows on the Haywoods' estate.
Holst is the Tin Man, coming in with homemade machinery and seeking a project he can put his heart and soul into; his terminal illness, along with his comment "I do one for them so I can do one for me" parallels with the Tin Man's origin in the book, where his body is replaced with tin on a gradual basis.
Angel is the Cowardly Lion, symbolised by his blonde hair and his hiding under the table during the "rain of blood" scene. He spends a few scenes in the Haywood ranch roaring into the air, and his chosen monopoly piece, the Top Hat, is analogous to the crown the Lion wears during his "King of the Forest" musical number.
Jupe is the Wizard, building a little city around a legend he earned through trickery, and maintaining his fame through more trickery. Like the Wizard, he is also in possession of a balloon which becomes essential to the film's denouement.
Jean Jacket is also tied symbolically to the Wizard of Oz's antagonistic forces. Jean Jacket sucks people up in a funnel of air, much like a tornado; the same thing that sends Dorothy to Oz in the first place. The Wicked Witch of the West can also fly on a broomstick, which she uses to spell out threatening smoke messages - not unlike JJ's solitary cloud.
Even Gordy somewhat echoes the Witch's frightening flying monkey henchmen.
The gang use Monopoly pieces to mark out their part of the final operation of filming Jean Jacket. This provides a connection to the real-life tragic irony of the game Monopoly, which began as a satire on the predatory nature of capitalism but ended as an exploited tool of capitalism (much in the way our heroes are attempting to exploit Jean Jacket). As in the game, the protagonists are attempting to claim a stake in Jean Jacket, charge others for usage of that stake, and make that stake exclusive to one party (or one group of parties).
Each Monopoly piece has another thematic connection to the corresponding character:
OJ is the statue — in the end, the master plan for filming and defeating Jean Jacket is dependent on him and his horse staying still for a particular period of time.
Emerald is the thimble — not only does she end up sewing, she also uses a machine to protect herself (and of course a thimble is a similar shape to a well).
Angel is the top hat — he aspires to become rich, and Jean Jacket sucks him in and then spits him out, not unlike taking a hat on and off.
Holst is the racecar — he's been brought in as an expert in fine-tuned machinery, and he in particular is in a race against time to get the perfect shot.
The establishing shot of the gang's walkie-talkies makes them resemble four hands, each with a single finger pointed upwards, at the sky.
During his "Star Lasso" presentation, Jupe is wearing a red-on-white ensemble that parallels the bloodstains that covered him during the infamous "Gordy's Home incident". The custom-made jacket features a UFO on the back beaming up, and alien heads on the collar not unlike the merchandise his family are selling. It also features many prominent orchids — which Jupe never finds out are a shape oddly similar to Jean Jacket when it goes into its threat display.
The back decoration of the jacket also features white lines emphasising the shape of Jupe's back (as is standard for cowboy jackets)...but combined with the prominent red and the 'beam up' imagery, it creates an unfortunate foreshadowing of the rain of blood that later hits the Haywood family home.
Emerald's motorcycle moves include a nod to the famous side-slide in AKIRA — a work which also involves a fleshy abomination engulfing hapless humans and crushing them to death.
Angel bemoans "them" changing the term from UFO to UAP, since it's less clear what UAP stands for. The accepted definition is "Unexplained Aerial Phenomena" — a term which better suits Jean Jacket, since "Phenomena" can include either an object or an animal.
Furthermore the answer to OJ's question, "Why did they change it?" is also a clue to one of the major themes of the movie: "Because an animal is not an object".
Jupe's relationship to his wife, on closer examination, feels more controlling than romantic — she's not just managing his appointments but also coaching him, dressing him, and feeding him lines from the side during his "Star Lasso" show — and when he comes to the Haywoods' ranch to invite them to the show, when questioned about where he got his plastic horse, he tells them "I'm not really sure. My wife would know." Jupe is still deep down a child actor, and as much as he loves his wife and has a family with her, he also needs her to be his co-star, handler, his manager, and likely a thousand other roles.
Certain eagle-eyed audience members have noticed that the Jupiter's Claim alien masks and dolls bear an uncanny likeness to the Panavision cameras seen on the set of "Gordy's Home" — adding an extra layer of meaning to Jupe's speculation about the "Viewers" inside the alien craft.
Jupe's office contains a poster for "Jupiter's Orbit", a TV show about himself and his family on Jupiter's Claim which either never got made or was quickly cancelled, and in the show he refers to his kids as his "satellites". In reality, the satellites of the planet Jupiter are mostly named for the mythological Jupiter's mistresses, representing his duplicitous nature.
The name "Jupe" is a homonym for the word "dupe", reflecting his trickery and his own denial of reality.
Emerald laments earlier that she wants "Fun OJ" back, and that his quiet and (clearly overwhelmed and grieving) self isn't showing her a lot of love. She gets her wish when she least wants it — at the fish restaurant, OJ proposes they go back and get the money shot just when Emerald wants to turn back. And when she buys in, he shows her love by naming the beast "Jean Jacket" as though giving her back the animal she never got to train.
All of the roles Emerald lists in her safety speech end up figuring into the plot: she directs, writes a narrative, sews props, handles a camera, and takes a motorcycle for a spin. Even her offer to cook reflects in the way her finishing move is to give Jean Jacket an irresistible meal.
The Gordy's Home disaster, as we the film audience see it, is a mirror to the arc of the entire film. Where it starts out being a scene of dark horror, in its final moments it gains a lighter and more sympathetic tone as we begin to grasp the greater context of why the events are happening.
The most likely reason Jean Jacket is so fragile it can be killed by a popping balloon is the same reason birds have hollow bones: for an animal as large as it is to be able to fly, it had to evolve to be made from the lightest materials possible and mostly hollow on top of that, sacrificing durability for the sake of minimizing weight. In short, Jean Jacket is a very plausible case of evolutionary Crippling Overspecialization.
The TMZ reporter notes that the entire area of the Haywoods' ranch is a blur on Google Maps. This may imply that when photos were attempted by Google's maps team, Jean Jacket disrupted their cameras — and further implies that it's been active for much longer than the six months we know of.
In a meta example, the film's first trailer features two noteworthy shots: one of an alien-like being running and hiding in the dark, and one of a bloodied, inhuman hand reaching to meet a child's hand in a grotesque mockery of E.T. This would later prove to be a Red Herring to mislead the audience, thinking the hand and the "creatures" were aliens, when in context it was the hand of Gordy the chimp, and Jupe's kids dressed in alien costumes pulling a prank, and hiding the film's biggest twist: the UFO is not an alien vehicle, but rather the alien itself.
Ricky's nickname, Jupe, becomes a very fun nickname connecting him to the truth of Jean Jacket in a couple of ways if you know your astronomy. One of the most well known features of the planet Jupiter is its big red spot. That spot, aside from looking like an enormous eye, is actually the center of a large storm system which is constantly visible from the planet. Much like how Jean Jacket uses the suction of air into a cyclone to draw its prey up into its mouth.
Holsts sings the song The Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley, because the titular creature in that song is a flying, people-eating Starfish Alien, like Jean Jacket, but the song is appropriate for several reasons, especially when one hears the full lyrics:
The Narrator in the song begs the People Eater not to eat him. Antlers would ironically die as the only person in the film getting intentionally eaten by Jean Jacket.
The People Eater refuses to eat the narrator because he's "too tough," just like how Jean Jacket spits out anything too hard to digest, and eating a large balloon proves its undoing.
The People Eater claims it came to Earth to join a Rock and Roll band, and the narrator references seeing it perform on TV. The film ends with Jean Jacket becoming (posthumously) famous.
When Otis Sr. is struck by the coin he goes limp in his saddle while Ghost wanders a few feet away, before falling off. After OJ returns from the hospital he sees a key had fallen and stuck into Ghost's flank. Anyone who trains horses knows they're flightly and will run from harm, so Ghost not running away after being stabbed by debris and having his rider fall off is a testament to how well he was trained, and how much of a master Otis. Sr was.
It also provides dramatic foreshadowing - if Ghost was that well-trained, how scary must the presence of JJ have been that he lost his cool and started running?
Ghost is also the horse which Otis Sr. describes to OJ as "[not] fit to be trained" in the flashback due to his territorial nature. Though the point of the flashback is to give OJ further context for his thought process, it also implies something about Otis' talents as a trainer: even though he thought Ghost untrainable, he still gave it a shot and ended up making him a high-class working horse. This can be further inferred as the encouragement OJ needed: if his dad did it, so could he.
This is later given a callback during the denouement: when Lucky comes back to OJ, he practices a trick, saying "Bang" and doing finger-guns to make him crouch down. The same trick Otis Sr. was practicing wth Ghost, moments before his death.
Not only that, but moments before, OJ had sprained his leg; training Lucky to respond to the "bang" trick allowed him to saddle up. OJ's skills saved his life.
To lure Jean Jacket out for the trap they have set (and in its eyes...eye, challenge it for the territory) Emerald plays "Exuma, The Obeah Man", a song that starts with....wolf howls and frog calls, ACTUAL territory challenges among real animals.
Jean Jacket is shown to be able to track people directly looked at, and OJ and the gang constantly deflect it by avoiding direct eye contact. While this is justified In-Universe as being because JJ is an animal, it also makes sense from a symbolic perspective. The movie runs with the theme of "spectacle" and that those who watch a spectacle unfold are as much a part of the situation as those who orchestrated it. The victims of the Star Lasso Experience all notably stare up at JJ before being eaten, unintentionally "feeding" into the spectacle. OJ, Em, and Angel refusing eye contact with JJ, by comparison, directly snubs the idea of them getting caught up in the glory of spectacle and focusing more on practicality, which ends up saving their lives.
Upon the realization that JJ is an animal, the way how OJ, Em and Angel evade and then eventually defeat it connects symbolically with the way animals in nature evade or even kill predators, and reflects their own personalities in the process. When OJ said that you need to play by the animal's rules, he wasn't kidding.
OJ seems to establish a relationship of mutual intimidation with JJ, which involves understanding the alien's hunting patterns, and respecting its territory until he purposefully doesn't in order to rile JJ up. OJ's tactics of aggravating JJ only to dodge him and making direct eye contact while backing away is often how apex predators deal with each other to fight over territory (for example, chimps and other primates that are very territorial). It gets to the point where JJ is so aggravated that it shifts into a more defensive and intimidating form. As The Stoic and an animal trainer, it makes sense that he's the least intimidated by JJ.
Angel, by contrast, takes up the behavior of a self-preserving prey animal. JJ tries to eat him, but he covers himself in blue tarp and metal spikes (albeit, unintentionally) that makes it difficult for it to do so and allows him to escape relatively unscathed. In nature, animals (like certain bugs and reptiles) who aren't especially strong or fast try to make themselves hard to eat in other ways, like being spiky and tasting bad. Angel is a Cowardly Lion, so it makes sense that his tactics serve self-preservation.
Em tricks JJ into eating a plastic balloon, which ends up killing it. Prey animals who aren't very good at self-defense will often stoop to confusing the predators so they eventually lose interest, which includes making themselves seem like a bigger threat than they are. Em releasing the balloon tricked JJ into thinking there was a bigger creature to deal with, which ended up killing it. Em, despite being scared, is still determined to get the job done and refuses to back down even if it might cost her her life.
All of the major characters have a subtle Color Motif:
OJ's is orange. His name is a slang term for Orange Juice, and he wears an orange hoodie in the film's final confrontation scene. Orange, symbolically, is a symbol of both caution and for gaining attention (it's often used in construction sites to both warn people of ongoing construction, but also to be eye-catching in order to do so). OJ is both a cautious guy, but also very willing to take JJ's attention to get the shot.
Emerald's is green, as its her name, and she wears it in the finale as well. Green is often symbolic of greed, envy and motivation. Emerald wants to make money and receive fame, but she's also slightly envious of how OJ was their father's favorite child. Still, she remains completely motivated to get the shot, even at the risk of her own life, and to eventually kill JJ.
Jupe's is red. He was splattered by blood as a child during the Gordy's home incident, and as an adult he wears an all-red cowboy outfit. Red is a very vibrant and attention-catching color, even more so than orange, but it's also symbolic of danger or blood, foreshadowing his eventual death and how he kickstarts the carnage at the Star Lasso Experience. It's also an inversion of the clothes Jupe wore during the Gordy's Home incident because Jupe wore white clothes that became stained with blood after Gordy was shot in front of him. His red and white suit has more red than white, representing how he's going to get more blood on his hands because he couldn't accept and move on from his trauma.
Angel's is grey/brown. He often wears very dull colors that blend into the background. As the Cowardly Lion most afraid of Jean Jacket, it makes sense why he doesn't want to stand out too much. Not to mention, going through a bad breakup, he may be feeling a little more withdrawn and introverted.
Holst's is black; he wears an all black outfit, has a massive black camera, and we first see him (from Emerald's point-of-view) lurking in the shadows behind his camera at the Bonnie Clayton film set. Fitting with the 'mood' of the color scheme, he is the most dry and cynical out of the group and turns out to be a Death Seeker willing to kill himself to achieve his goal.
JJ made the exact same mistake Jupe did. JJ survived the first encounter with streamers (the iron horse). But even after their tense encounter with OJ deploying streamers, JJ decided to ignore the the streamers on the balloon. And it destroyed JJ.
"Sunglasses At Night" by Corey Hart, played during JJ's night-time attack on the ranch, tells the story of a haunted "fixer" type whose shades hide his broken heart over a lost love who betrayed him. Apart from the broad thematic connections, the song seems to comment specifically on the relationship between JJ and Jupe (and Jupe and the Haywoods). A choice lyric:
"And I wear my sunglasses at night/ So I can, so I can/Forget my name, while you collect your claim..."
Rumor has it that the song's title comes from Hart wearing sunglasses in the recording booth to shield himself from an air vent - i.e., from something directly above him.
Another way in which it shows the cast and crew of Gordy's Home severely underestimated how dangerous a chimpanzee can be? During Gordy's rampage, Tom Bogan tries to order him to get down like a dog rather than a primate.
After Jean Jacket's consumption of the humans at Jupiter's Claim, later on a pig can be seen on the roof of one of the buildings. Somehow untouched and uneaten despite being lifted up off the ground enough to be placed up there. Unlike many animals, it's physically impossible for a pig to lift its head enough for it to stare straight up at the sky. Which is likely why it was spared. Even if it accidentally got caught up by the winds, JJ wouldn't have put any extra effort into eating the pig specifically. So once it was done with its actual meal it would've left the pig alone.
Fridge Horror
Immediately after the title "NOPE" pops up onscreen at the film's beginning, we get to see the actors' names being listed in front of a shot of a black square with blue-green lines radiating off from behind it. That's not just a creative background, as one might realize from a second viewing. That's Jean Jacket's eye, staring directly at the viewer.
It’s more than likely that Jean Jacket is not the only extraterrestrial predator out there, due to all the documented reporting of UFO sightings. Considering how it uses the clouds as a method of evasion alongside its scavenging form, it makes one wonder how many other people have disappeared because of these UFOs.
Jean Jacket and creatures like it must have created UFO scares for years prior — but they were never captured because it disrupts recording equipment with its electromagnetic pulse, and of course because it likely would eat witnesses before they lived to tell the tale.
If governments were secretly aware of Jean Jacket's species, then it gives a new in-universe meaning to the "weather balloon" thing—it's indeed an apt description and although it may not observe the weather, it is certainly capable of altering it to an extent.
It also gives new context to legends and mythologies surrounding aerial beings and weather phenomena. The angel connection is obvious, but what about something more modern? Like, say, the Bermuda Triangle?
If the alien isn't the only one of its kind, both leaving its existence a secret and blowing the story wide open could have deadly consequences. Without explicit warnings not to look at the big, scary UFO hovering above them, many innocent bystanders would suffer the same fate as the Star Lasso Experience victims. On the other hand, once science and conspiracy buffs hear about potential proof of alien lifeforms, what's the first thing they'd want? To study them, either to prove or disprove the veracity of Emerald's footage, although they, at least, know not to look at Jean Jacket's species directly. It’s also likely that extreme / fringe theorists will even disregard that advice, leading to more death in the long run.
During the opening scene with OJ and his father, the radio makes a passing mention of hikers disappearing in the area with no explanation. Before debris starts raining down on the ranch, we hear screams in the clouds above. It's safe to assume they belonged to the missing hikers.
The fact that Jean Jacket was eating humans long before the Star Lasso Experience incident means that it had already developed some taste for humans. This is something that happens with real life animals that end up eating a human, then realize that compared to most other animals, humans are slow and weak and easy to kill, so they make humans their new prey. Even if the Haywoods hadn't fed Jean Jacket the fake horse (which is implied to be what caused it to start focusing on humans rather than horses) something like the amusement park massacre was inevitable.
A rather nasty pun: Jupe introduces Mary-Jo to the Star Lasso audience as "my first crush".
Jupe never really gets over his traumatizing experience of witnessing Gordy the chimp's brutal attack, and he continues to re-traumatize himself by reliving the experience to make money off the morbid fascination of tourists. By capturing the "Oprah shot" of the alien with the intent to sell it for money, the Haywoods will also be capitalizing off their traumatic experience and will probably be re-traumatizing themselves by reliving it.
What makes the Gordy segment so chilling is that it's Truth in Television. In 2009, a 200-pound pet chimpanzee, "Travis", famously brutally mauled and disfigured a friend of its owner. The victim had to receive hand and face implants to just barely piece together what was left of her face. She famously held her first public interview after the attack with Oprah while wearing almost the exact same veiling as Mary Jo in the film.
In a ghastly irony, Mary-Jo is left with no skin on her lips or covering her teeth, giving her a rictus grin — the exact same facial expression that a chimpanzee would recognise in the wild as a sign of aggression.
That's actually a common misconception - A chimp baring its teeth with its mouth open is a sign of aggression, but a chimp baring its teeth with its mouth closed is a sign of submission and fear. This also works, however, as Gordy leaving Mary-Jo with a permanent terrified expression could represent the trauma she was left with after his rampage.
The fake horse getting stuck in Jean Jacket's "throat" might have prolonged the suffering of those that got sucked up from Star Lasso Experience. When the TMZ photographer is grabbed after JJ spits out the statue, his screams are silenced much quicker than the audience's was. It's possible that with the blockage, JJ couldn't properly move its meal to the crushing part of its digestive system, so the earlier victims endure being dissolved by stomach acids much longer than they would have normally. Another possibility is that with a meal larger than what it usually gets, JJ naturally has problems breaking it all down, so later on it just pukes up what hasn't been digested yet to relieve itself from discomfort.
With the implication that eating the fake horse is what caused Jean Jacket to start focusing on humans, either because it was provoked by the 'deception' or because it became cautious of potentially eating another fake horse, that would mean that the Haywoods are indirectly responsible for dozens of men, woman, and children being horrifically melted alive for hours. One can only imagine their reaction if they ever realize this.
If JJ really is an alien, then we might be in for a Double Subversion of Alien Invasion. JJ is clearly not sapient, and a creature with its biologicalneeds would be very unlikely to be able to travel through vast distances in space on its own. It may well have been brought to Earth by something much more intelligent.
While animals such as the tardigrade shows that creatures can survive travelling through the vacuum of space, there are many connections to the planet Jupiter and Jean Jacket... Jean Jacket only has one visible eye (whether that is actually its eye, or just a threat display), similar to the Red Eye of Jupiter, and a creature that lives an exclusively floating existence, never touching the ground, would be well-suited to a gas giant planet like Jupiter. In addition, Jupe named his ranch, "Jupiter's Claim," and OJ figured out that Jean Jacket was territorial and claimed the area of OJ and Jupe's ranches as its home territory... so, if Jean Jacket is from Jupiter, Jupe's ranch could be considered to be "Jupiter's Claim".
One of the items Jupe has on display from Gordy's rampage is the bloody shoe of his former co-star, Mary Jo Elliot, as in, the child actress who got her face bitten off by Gordy...and whom Jupe invites to Jupiter's Claim to witness the Star Lasso Experience. Does Mary Jo know about Jupe's "museum?" If she (most likely) doesn't, how would she react to seeing her shoe?
Considering Antlers Holst is shown watching films of predators killing their prey, was he ever going to content himself with capturing footage of Jean Jacket, or was he secretly desiring to film the creature killing the Haywoods or Angel? It's only after Otis has proven he can scare off Jean Jacket that Holst offers himself up as the kill instead, perhaps realizing he would not get that kind of shot otherwise.
The ambiguity of the TV show being named Gordy's Home — is it that Gordy is a resident, contained within human civilisation, or is it that this is Gordy's home territory, that we are intruding upon? — which is reinforced by the camera panning in on his carnage through the stage plants as though tracking through the "jungle" which the SNL sketch erroneously (if for presumably comedic purposes) attributed as the trigger for his rampage.
Gordy also sounds similar (and is a homonym if you have a non-rhotic accent) to "Gaudy" — a term which denotes something over-the-top (such as a balloon display), and in particular a spectacle.
It's not entirely clear why Jean Jacket devours the entire population of Jupiter's Claim, whether it has expended energy from attempting to digest or expel the plastic horse; whether it needs a larger meal to help it spit the plastic horse out; or even whether it is irritably punishing its only consistent source of food. Whatever the cause, it is unambiguously true that it would not have escalated to such attacks if Jupe had not made a show out of it and begun to feed it OJ's horses — prior to that point, it had been picking off individual hikers and acting stealthy enough to go unnoticed.
Holst is seen popping pills while talking to Angel, implying that he is possibly suffering from a chronic illness. This explains his sudden daredevil techniques. He knows that he hasn't long left anyway, and that his equipment, being metallic, will be spat up by Jean Jacket after he gets the shot, guaranteeing that his legacy will carry on. This parallels with Reid Blackburn, the real-life photographer killed during an unexpected pyroclastic eruption of Mount St. Helen.
Angel expresses to OJ his understandable terror of getting stuck with metal probes by aliens. By the end of the film, he saves himself from being gobbled up by Jean Jacket by wrapping himself in a tarp and barbed wire, some of which does end up penetrating his skin.
During the footage of the final episode of "Gordy's Home", as the balloons release, everyone laughs and claps (likely enraging Gordy)...except for young Jupe, who is distracted by the balloons, looking up with the same bewildered facial expression that he wears in his final moments alive, years later.
While visiting him in his office, Emerald calls attention to the black kid in the "Kid Sheriff" memorabilia, whose gimmick was wearing 3D glasses. Then, as now, Jupe was unable to see as much as the people around him.
Jupe's family unit is two parents and three kids. While said kids are three boys, it's a little disconcerting that he drifted into the same setup as the fictional family of "Gordy's Home".
Jupe was so blithely sure that his plan would work that he outright invited OJ — knowing OJ wanted to buy his horses back — to watch a show in which Jupe would admit he had allowed a suspected UFO to abduct ten of said horses and then do it again in front of him for entertainment. A hubristic belief that the Haywoods would be just as taken in by the spectacle as him...or a plan to intimidate them into selling their land...or both?
It’s also quite fortunate that the Haywoods and/or Angel did not attend the Star Lasso Experience as guests like Jupe had wanted them to originally. If they had, not only would they have died with every other attendee, but then there would be no one to stop or warn others about JJ.
Immediately before opening the Star Lasso experience, Jupe whispers to himself on-microphone. Subtitles reveal he is giving himself an affirmation: "You are chosen." Not just a reflection of the warped sense of destiny he has built up in himself ever since he witnessed Gordy seemingly "choosing" him to be spared death, but also a Twilight Zone twist, in that very soon, he and the audience will all be "chosen".
While warming the crowd up for the Star Lasso experience, Jupe swears "on my wife and children's lives" that the horses were abducted by an alien spacecraft, and that he believes the "Viewers" trust him — "If they didn't, I don't think any of us would be here right now." In another Twilight Zone twist, what happens next is due to a break in trust:
Jupe has been (unknowingly) feeding the horses to Jean Jacket, likely a violation of any contract he made with Otis Sr. or Jr., especially since OJ fully believes he can buy the horses back and Jupe does not correct this notion.
OJ becomes aware that the horses are disappearing when he witnesses Ghost being abducted into the air (in clear contrast to Jupe's showmanlike claim that "It was like he was going home").
Emerald steals Jupe's prop horse for bait, then lies about it to his face.
In retaliation, Jupe's boys prank OJ and release the horses, including Clover, which may contribute to Jean Jacket taking the bait.
For ambiguous reasons, Jean Jacket emerges the next day to eat the Star Lasso audience and Jupiter's Claim staff rather than Lucky.
Ultimately, despite believing he had built trust with the "Viewers", Jupiter's lack of trust with his neighbours literally came back to bite him — because nobody fucks with Haywoods.
Jean Jacket’s corpse is clearly visible above the valley, and its death ended the electromagnetic interference that prevented digital recording. Considering the crowd of people behind Emerald, it’s likely the Haywoods getting their Oprah Shot won’t mean much when paired with hundreds of other pictures and videos.
However, that footage will mean little by comparison, since Emerald still captured the only picture of a living Jean Jacket; whatever remnants floating in the air most likely won't be registered as anything but another cloud.
Besides which, Antlers took a calculated risk, the ultimate results of which we don't see. He tempted Jean Jacket to eat him because it was already established that it doesn't digest or even attempt to chew inorganic material (see also the plastic horse, Mary-Jo's wheelchair, the coin, and so on). His film reel, and the others he took of Jean Jacket chasing OJ, are more than likely out there somewhere on the Haywoods' property, ready for them and Angel to reclaim.
Immediately after Gordy is shot dead by police, a balloon can faintly be heard popping in the background. Remember that it was a popping balloon that pissed Gordy off in the first place, and at that point, Jupe was reaching out to meet Gordy's fist bump, thinking he was being friendly. Had the cops not arrived just in that moment, that pop would have triggered Gordy to panic again, and young Jupe would very likely have been attacked too.
The lesson Jupe learned from the "Gordy's Home" incident was always going to be wrong. We the audience learn from Nope that a living creature, animal or human, should never be exploited; from Jupe's perspective, Gordy was only killed when he stopped being exploited (i.e. when he held to his true nature as a sensitive wild animal rather than a 'tame' pet). It can be assumed that this trauma left him with a deep-seated need to constantly entertain and make a spectacle out of what he holds dearest - his career, his family, even his trauma itself - out of fear that they would also be "put down" as soon as they were no longer useful.
This also explains why he only frames his memory of the incident in the MAD Magazine and SNL versions: he’s deeply afraid of telling a version of his own story that won't come off as entertaining or fun.
The possibility that Jean Jacket has a threat display implies that it has a need to scare off competition and/or predators. At some point, past or present, there were more of its' species around — or something bigger.
Jean Jacket was toying with OJ when the group makes their first attempt at filming it. Given how fast it can move, it could have easily sucked up OJ right when he started his run but instead it flew over a hill to just pop out from behind another one, possibly to scare OJ, before eventually swooping down on him like an enormous bird of prey.
The reason for why we always hear the victims screaming might be in part due to Jean Jacket's physiology. If we assume Jean Jacket to have traits akin to invertebrates such as anemones and sea cucumbers it would breathe through its singular orifice, which means fresh oxygen flows within its body 24/7. Not only that, but Jean Jacket generates an intense EM field which may affect nervous systems and its innards could act as constant electric stimulation or defibrillator. These things could force its still-living victims into a state of heightened awareness and incur increased sensitivity to physical sensations. Which means anyone eaten could never sleep and will all very intimately feel the pain of being enveloped and slowly digested over an extended period of time.
Holst gets eaten by Jean Jacket while getting his "impossible shot," presumably because he's so obsessed with getting the perfect angle that he forgoes his own personal safety. The camera will probably survive being eaten, given that JJ can't digest metal, and his footage may survive so long as it wasn't destroyed in the final fight, but how long was he filming exactly? Was the camera still rolling as he was finally swallowed, or in JJ's stomach? And if his camera is recovered, just what the hell will people see of the salvageable footage?
Its a good thing OJ, Em and Angel decide to go back to the farmhouse and eventually kill Jean Jacket. If the three of them had decided to stay away and cut their losses, Jean Jacket would have been left in an empty desert with only a few stray horses around, as the human life in the town would have been either already dead or have abandoned the area to save their own skin. And what do animals do when food is scarce? They migrate. Jean Jacket would have eventually wandered to different areas in search of food, which means it may have started heading to more heavily populated towns….
Jupe says the Star Lasso experience will "change" the audience. They did... into dead viscera.
from which we get the term "monster." What do you call a bad miracle? A monster.