Yesterday, an ad for Burberry’s upcoming new men’s fragrance, Hero, leaked online. The ad features the scent’s spokesperson (scentsperson?), Adam Driver, running into the sea, frolicking with a beautiful palomino… and then…turning into a centaur? What…what is happening? Did Adam Driver and the horse merge into one through the magic of Poseidon? Did Adam Driver, Large Man™️, consume the horse and thus become it? Did the unholy union of man and horse birth a new creature, like Loki birthing Sleipnir? First, someone needs to check on John Oliver, because there is no way he’s handling this well. Second, this reminds me of the Tom Hiddleston Jaguar murder car ad, for sheer insanity of premise. Let’s break it down.
Adam Driver sprints into the sea as if he cannot abandon land fast enough while FKA Twigs’ “Two Weeks” plays on the soundtrack. Fairly normal fragrance ad stuff so far. It’s a fit dude playing in water, Chanel has been doing this with Bleu de Chanel for a while.
Next, Adam Driver makes contact with the horse in the water. They frolic. On an unrelated note, in Victorian literature, water, specifically the ocean, is often a symbol of sexual release.
The horse and Adam Driver are superimposed. Are they merging? What is this supposed to tell us about the smell of Hero? That it smells of wet horse? Or wet Adam Driver? What do we imagine wet Adam Driver smells like? I think…he smells like the floor of the hotel that has the pool on it.
Beauty shots of Adam Driver’s ripped torso and the horse’s, er, horse body. I am SO confused.
They cast a guy most famous for playing a villain to front a fragrance called “Hero”.
Adam Driver rolls blissfully under the water, free from gravity’s horrendous grip. We transition to an unfocused shot of a centaur on a beach. The implication is that Adam Driver has subsumed the horse, become the horse, is now the Horse Man. What is it with cologne ads and mythology? Versace does this, too, though to their credit, at least their cologne is called “Eros”, the name of an actual god.
Is this supposed to be a reference to Burberry’s classic logo? Except that is very clearly a knight on a horse, and a man on a horse is very different from a Horse Man.
I don’t know what to think.
Hey, remember in Harry Potter when Harry and Hermione let Umbridge be carried off into the forest by the centaurs where it is heavily implied that they did bad things to her?
I can’t stop looking at this final image. The centaur appears to be twelve feet tall. What kind of antediluvian sorcery is this? Is this like the beach from Old, except instead of aging you, it turns you into a mythical beast? And if so, where is it and if I carry a fish into the water with me, will I finally realize my dream of becoming a mermaid? Or is there some kind of invocation one must know to assure the transmogrification doesn’t go awry? Like, Adam Driver could have just as easily emerged from the sea with the legs of a man and a horse head. Oh god. Haunting.
Is this actually going to make people buy Hero? Are you going to buy this fragrance because Adam Driver turned into a centaur? I am kind of dying to know what Hero smells like. Oh no, I’ve been incepted by the Horse Man.
