In Comcast Xfinity Ad, Moon Landing's Not What It Seems

Reality skews uncomfortably virtual as Will Forte and Chris Bauer recreate the 1969 lunar landing in a Super Bowl :60 from Comcast Xfinity.

You can’t blame the pair for feeling a little spaced out. After the astronauts set foot on the moon, a bunch of gamers saunter across its cratered surface to deliver a message from 2023.

Alas, our intrepid explorers are just characters in a video game. And the bad guys have arrived in their starship, death-beams blazing. Houston, we have a zaaaaap!

Goodby Silverstein & Partners developed the commercial with director Lance Acord, touting Xfinity’s next-generation 10G network. Makes us realize just how distant that giant leap and the marvels of the Apollo era appear from our present vantage point.

Well-staged and visually dynamic, this vignette does a fine job of playing with notions of what’s real, what’s not, and how technology keeps moving the goalposts. Maybe we’re all just avatars. The actual players could power down at any moment and we’ll fade into non-existence until the next game begins.