The Small Detail You Missed About The Latest Xbox Ad
If you've seen the new ad from Microsoft, you know the company is continuing its "Power Your Dreams" campaign in a rather novel way: by capturing the dreams of gamers in lucid dreaming experiences and using that data to inspire a content series that it's calling "Made from Dreams." However, it might have been easy to miss one tiny detail: One of the shorts that's a result of this experiment, a three-minute and 31 second film called Lucid Odyssey, was created by Taika Waititi.
New Zealand native Waititi is pretty busy these days, what with directing Thor: Love and Thunder, as well as episodes of The Mandalorian and What We Do in the Shadows, along with several other projects, all current or coming up. So it's a surprise to see that the Jojo Rabbit director took time out of his blockbuster TV and movie-making schedule to put together the short movie that visually explores the dreams of gamer MoonLiteWolf, who stars as herself. The narration of the film comes from the actual video that was recorded during her participation in the dream study.
The introductory ad explains that scientists tried to tap into gamers' dreams using Hypnodyne technology on the gamers after they played the Xbox Series X for the first time. Then, gamers explained their dreams to study researchers during guided sessions. The creators that turned these dreams into a visual reality used a blend of "science, technology, art, and entertainment" to do so.
"It's utterly insane seeing your dream come to life," MoonLiteWolf said in the video.
As many dreams do, Waititi's short film Lucid Odyssey ventures into some surreal imagery with Xbox-inspired icons. MoonLiteWolf summons up the glowing outline of a rabbit-like creature that then flies in a balloon into a sky where a whale "that didn't look like a whale" swims around. She falls, and floats, and ends up in space where Halo's Master Chief is DJ-ing — only to take off his helmet and reveal that he's a cat. When asked what she's dreaming of next, MoonLiteWolf simply smiles, and the short ends.
While not all the other shorts seem to be available yet, there are at least four others that are expected as part of the campaign. They include Odell Beckham Jr.'s Dream Kit, in which he dreams about giant shimmering stars.
According to Xbox Wire, upcoming shorts include Digital Dream Art from visual artist and director Quentin Deronzier, who interpreted gamer Stallion83's dreams, and AR Dream Filters from digital artist Johanna Jaskowska, who created augmented reality filters from Emericangirl24's dreams. The final announced offering will come from audio studio Big Orange, who made a 3D audio-adventure tale called Walking in Steve's Dreams from BlindGamerSteve's Xbox Series X experience with Destiny 2: Beyond Light.
While Master Chief DJ-ing as a cat isn't necessarily the news about Halo fans were expecting, we'll take it — for now!