While some may consider this year’s Super Bowl a nightmare for various gridiron related reasons, the 2025 TV schedule is going to be hard pressed to top Seal as…a seal. A highlight of our Super Bowl LIX commercial live blog was the Taika Watiti-directed Mountain Dew ad was something, which I knew would haunt my thoughts. So you’d think seeing the behind the scenes process would help dispel that fright, right? Wrong.
Taking a peek behind the curtain on Mountain Dew’s latest Super Bowl spot is still as fun and educational as you’d expect. And ET even got commentary from Seal himself on how the Thor: Love and Thunder director accepted this gig, just to work with him! Added in along with additional stories about making his kids laugh is footage of the actual shooting process, which you can now check out for yourself...if you dare:
As a kid who became a little less scared after watching the nitpicker friendly documentary for Michael Jackson’s Thriller, I appreciate that Mountain Dew has provided this material for the public. And it isn’t even the filming of the British entertainer singing on set that’s the disturbing part, which is surprising as I thought they’d have put him in some sort of mo-cap seal suit.
So we’ve now seen the initial shooting process, as well as the end result from this past weekend’s big game - neither of which is that terrifying. Which is probably leaving you all asking your screen, "Mike, what the hell are you scared about?" Oh, dear reader, it’s the stuff they’re not showing us that creeps me out.
Looking back on that footage, they filmed both the "Kiss From A Rose” superstar and a statue of his nautical counterpart for reference. Which leaves the actual process of creating Seal’s seal as the hotbed for where our potential future night terrors may spring from.
Could you imagine how many different versions of this Mountain Dew concept had to be drafted through the power of CGI artistry? The rejected versions could be the greatest horrors this side of H.P. Lovecraft, as everything from the length of the neck to blending Seal’s face into the animal’s body could have gone wrong.
On one end of that scale, we could have seen Seal singing from a face that blended in too well, making him look like Lady Cassandra from the early run of modern Doctor Who. And, on the other end, we could have seen a freakishly long neck with Seal’s head attached to it.
Picture a thousand of either scenario's results coming at you at night, or even in broad daylight, and try not getting freaked out! Those visuals are something that conjures a specific portrait of body horror, straight out of one of the best horror movies ever created, John Carpenter’s The Thing:
Try looking at Seal’s seal again after that clip, and I think you can see why Mountain Dew’s Super Bowl pitch still unnerves me. Even the final, creepy looking product is something more disturbing than network executives reading fans’ reaction to the new Fox scorebug.
But, hey, people aren’t going to forget Mountain Dew’s Baja Blast anytime soon! Seeing as that's the point of a memorable ad, I can't fault this clip for getting the job done. However, what I can fault the powers that be for is leaving me to ponder the question, "What would the offspring of Seal's seal look like, after mating with a wild seal?"
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