We May Never Have Gotten ‘Get Out’ if It Weren’t for This 6% Rotten Tomatoes Family Film

20 hours ago 1

Daniel Kaluuya smiling for a crowd in Get Out

Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself.

When the going gets rough, sometimes you just have to call your own shot, especially when the handed options consist of drivel like The Emoji Movie. Often cited as one of the worst movies of the last decade, the 2017 animated family film holds an abysmally low 6% on Rotten Tomatoes. Directed by Tony Leondis and featuring an all-star voice cast, The Emoji Movie is emblematic of a dire pop culture trend of cashing in on the popularity and cultural ubiquity of Internet language and iconography--ideas that have studio heads convincing themselves that they are "hip."

Having said that, the maligned family film had a monumentally positive impact on filmmaking. Even weirder than The White Lotus creator and Survivor contestant Mike White having a writing credit on the film, Jordan Peele being offered an undignified role in The Emoji Movie inspired him to rethink his career and get to work on his masterful feature debut as director, Get Out.

Being Offered To Voice Poop in 'The Emoji Movie' Inspired Jordan Peele To Quit Acting

As accomplished sketch comedy writers and performers on television, Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key were ready to elevate to the big screen. However, the pair failed to launch as proper movie stars, a testament to the waning viability of comedies in Hollywood that we're still living with. After the underwhelming performance of their debut film vehicle, Keanu, the team behind Key & Peele was destined to be stuck doing supporting comedic parts, a service that Key has remained prolific at, particularly in animation. Peele, on the flip side, had other aspirations.

Speaking at the DGA Awards in 2018 after his debut film dominated the box office and earned mass critical acclaim, Peele revealed that Get Out's origins stemmed from a career crisis of sorts. "The Emoji Movie actually helped me quit acting. I was offered the role of Poop," he explained, ensuring the audience that this was no lie. The sheer offer to voice this fecal part, which was shamelessly given to Sir Patrick Stewart, drove Peele to reflect on his career and quit acting. "That’s f--ked-up," Peele proclaimed when offered the part by his manager, only to learn that the part was already cast when he reached back out. "F--k this," he said, an apt expression of frustration about not even feeling worthy enough to be in The Emoji Movie.

'The Emoji Movie's Lasting Impacts on Jordan Peele and the Horror Genre

Had Get Out not been the miraculous success that it became, there's a world where Peele would've been forever trapped in the perils of terrible voice acting jobs. Luckily, the black comedy/horror film about contemporary racism in America immediately minted Peele as one of our great auteurs, with each of his subsequent films challenging him and the conventions of the genre. The domino effect is too profound to measure, just like the gap in quality and substance between The Emoji Movie and Get Out. Not only did the film launch Peele's career as a filmmaker, but it also helped spawn the spiritual subgenre of "elevated horror," a label that even the schlockiest gorefests and slashers aspire to obtain, much to the detriment of your basic horror programmers.

Audiences in 2017 were stunned that a sketch comic could ascend to the director's chair and make Oscar-worthy genre fare with the assurance and craft of a seasoned veteran. For Jordan Peele, this elevation was likely more shocking because he was at a point in his career where he was on the casting shortlist for voicing Poop in The Emoji Movie. The sense of wonder and ingeniousness of an ambitious filmmaker with something to prove resonates on the screen in Get Out, which sees Peele throwing out hundreds of ideas and genre mashups into one story that reflects his satirical work on Key & Peele and signaled his future interests in identity and power in America. The awkward ice-breaking between Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and the Armitage family (Bradley Whitford's hilarious "would've voted for Obama for a third term!" proclamation) and every scene with Lil Rel Howery are straight out of one of his old sketches, but they are not incongruous with the sinister horror components and bleak ruminations on modern-day racism.

Today, where most actors are seemingly content with mediocrity and steady paychecks, Jordan Peele, trusting his innate artistic abilities and taking a big swing, was a sheer triumph. He easily could've rested on the popularity and cultural viability of all the iconic characters and bits he co-created, but Peele reached for a higher calling that seemed ridiculous from afar. Now, Zach Cregger has proved that the sketch comedy to horror auteurism pipeline is prosperous. While everyone has forgotten The Emoji Movie, Peele's next project, still clouded in mystery, is one of the most highly anticipated movies in the near future.

Get Out is available to stream on HBO Max in the U.S.