Alright, alright, alright — Matthew McConaughey teamed up with the software company Salesforce for an epic new ad that aired during the Super Bowl on Feb. 13, and it was pretty amazing. The actor wanted people to think they were seeing a trailer for Interstellar 2, and that’s what it looked like. According to Matthew, teasing viewers with what looked like an ad for the non-existent sequel to his 2014 space movie with Christopher Nolan was all part of his plan to raise awareness of some current societal issues.
“I wanted this misdirect at the beginning. I wanted it to open and look very serious and in space because we’re about to pull the rug out from under you. Some people are going to think this is going to be the trailer for Interstellar 2,” Matthew told Variety before the Super Bowl.
For those who haven’t seen Interstellar, the movie features Matthew as Coop — a pilot leading a mission to find another inhabitable planet in space. “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars,” Coop says in the movie. “Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.”
But the ad, which you can watch above, goes in a different direction. He’s seen in space wearing an astronaut’s helmet before bringing the audience back down to Earth in a hot air balloon.
“I hope they go, ‘Look, what McConaughey and Salesforce is saying, is there is a problem in society today. Our relationship with each other, our relationship with the environment is fragile, man. We got a lack of trust, we got a lack of fairness. We got a lack of sustainable innovations. We have a lack of values’,” Matthew told Variety. “A lot of us are looking to escape and get the hell out of here or maybe look the other way. You know what? They’re right! But we can look around at our earthly challenges and look those in the eye and say, ‘Let’s handle this and restore what we got going here. We’re not ready to quit.’ Hopefully businesses will see this and are urged and nudged to make a commitment to making life here on Earth more fair, equal, and sustainable.”
Watch the full ad above.