A Gatorade commercial made me cry once.
This happened back in high school when I was home for the day, laid up on the couch with the flu. The commercial in question, which started running in 2012, showed Michael Jordan hobbling into Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, the famous ‘Flu Game’ that the basketball icon played while “suffering from flu-like symptoms,” which Jordan later said resulted from food poisoning. Despite being visibly exhausted, Jordan went on to score 38 points and lead the Bulls to a 90-88 win over the Utah Jazz. When he wasn’t in the game, Jordan was seen drinking from a Gatorade-branded paper cup on the bench.
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As I watched Jordan lean on Scottie Pippen at the end of the ad, a single tear rolled down my cheek. This was about a decade before “He just like me fr” became a meme, but that early 2020s sentiment perfectly describes how my early 2010s self was feeling. If he could play through one of the most important games of his career with the flu, I could… continue to lie on the couch. To paraphrase George Costanza, the will to win got to me.
I Hate Being Moved By A Commercial…
All that to say, I am no stranger to being moved by something that is cynically designed to sell me a product. Art and commerce are inextricably linked under capitalism, and great ads are the result of skilled artists going all-in for commerce the way Jordan went all-in on the court. PlayStation’s “30th Anniversary | Thank You” video got to me and, for that, I salute the editors who showcased an impressive awareness of the games they were supercutting together.
A tribute to Sony’s many iconic brands, the two-minute ad takes a clip show approach to PlayStation history, showing characters from across its three decade history. We see some bombastic moments, like Nathan Drake getting sucked out of an airplane fuselage in Uncharted 3, Wander sizing up the first colossus, and a Call of Duty character landing atop a speeding truck.
…But Sometimes You Can’t Help It
But it’s the quiet beats early on that got to me. Okay, I’ll be honest, it was really just The Last of Us. If a game is making me emotional, it’s usually The Last of Us, and that was the case here, where the trailer expertly spliced together a handful of scenes from Part 2.
The first shows Owen and Abby in the boat, with a voiceover of Owen saying, “We can choose to be happy…” That immediately cuts to a younger Abby sitting with her father in a hospital. Then, it cuts to Ellie watching Joel play guitar in Part 2’s early moments. As those last shots play, Owen concludes, “…but not at any cost.”
That Owen quote is sneakily combining two moments from Part 2. Owen says, “We can choose to be happy,” pretty late in the game, during the Abby half of the campaign, in an attempt to convince Abby to run away to Santa Barbara with him. The, “…but not at any cost” part of the quote, though, is taken from the very beginning of the game, when Owen asks Abby to consider the toll that going after Joel could take on their group, and on the innocent people of Jackson.
The subsequent cuts to Abby’s father and Joel and Ellie during the “Future Days” scene, make the implication clear. Joel chose to be happy with Ellie at any cost — which meant Abby’s father’s death — and reaped the consequences.
In a few seconds, this PlayStation ad elegantly summed up the thesis statement of my favorite series? How would I not get a little emotional?
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