Earlier this month, Epic Games made significant waves in the games industry by taking action against Apple and Google. With an open call against the tech giants’ profits from their mobile marketplaces, Fortnite was removed from both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store as a result of trying to circumvent Apple and Google’s in-app purchase policies, with Epic releasing a parody of Apple’s iconic “1984” commercial to deliver its message. Naturally, that might had led to some speculation as to what the commercial’s original director Ridley Scott might think, and now we have an answer.
Speaking with IGN, Scott provided his perspective on Epic Games’ recreation of the “1984” ad, which (in this instance) showcases Fortnite characters trying to take down the monopoly of a figure with an apple for a head, a not too subtle jab at Apple. In response to whether he had seen the parody video, Scott explained:
“I sure have and I wrote to them because on the one hand I can be fully complimented by the fact they copied [my commercial] shot for shot,” Scott says. “But pity the message is so ordinary when they could have been talking about democracy or more powerful things… And they didn’t use it.”
Overall, Scott summed up his feelings on the parody that “I think the animation was terrific, the idea was terrific, the message was ‘ehh’,” seeming to critique Epic’s implementation of the ad’s original message.
Ridley Scott, the director of classic films such as Alien and Blade Runner, was the director of the original “1984” ad with Apple, which first aired nationally during Super Bowl XVIII in early 1984. The commercial originally highlighted how Apple was aiming to break up the monopoly that its competitor (at the time) IBM had on the personal computing market. Thus, in Epic’s take on the commercial, the company tried flipping the script to portray Apple as the monopolistic entity towards developers on the app marketplace.
The post Director Ridley Scott Had a Mixed Reaction to Fortnite’s Apple 1984 Parody by Ryan Meitzler appeared first on DualShockers.