Watch Apple’s ‘Mission: Impossible’ style spaceship HQ tour
Apple kicked off its hardware event today with a charming little video that did double promo duty, both introducing the event in a lighthearted way and giving a quick curated tour of the company’s new “spaceship” headquarters. We don’t always post Apple advertisements here at TechCrunch, but when we do, it’s because they actually show off something new. Well, kind of new, anyway. It’s nice to see it all in motion.
A low aerial shot brings us into the scene, the top floor of the spaceship’s exterior, and as the opening strains of the “Mission: Impossible” theme start up, we see our protagonist (Alison, we find out later) blast out of a conference room.
However, there do appear to be some shared spaces with chairs and other accommodations here and there. It just doesn’t appear that lots of the outdoor spots will be cherry offices with nice views, with peons stuck in some inner ring. That’s good. But there will have to be a full-time staff, plus robots, to keep the glass clean. That’s bad. It’s poetic in a way, though: everyone is always having to de-smudge their phones, why shouldn’t Apple have to de-smudge its headquarters?
This shot is very “North by Northwest,” by the way.
The spoke opens up on the inner side onto the big courtyard, as we all know, which is elaborately landscaped and criss-crossed with paths. At the center is a large pond, though interestingly there seem to be rather few paths leading to it, since our heroine takes the direct route through the sage and other brush.
Across the pond our intrepid briefcase carrier perhaps unadvisedly runs right through a bunch of people blowing grass all over each other on what appears to be a large continuous greenbelt or fairway between the lake and the ring. Doesn’t Apple know you’re supposed to leave the cuttings on the grass? What do those guys think they’re doing anyway? There are like 20 in one little area.
Of course the denouement is the delivery of the briefcase to Tim, and the reveal — with a shot that will probably be used and reused for dank memes in the future — that it was The Clicker.
Check out the full short film here:
Clearly Apple wanted to show off its new HQ in a careful way, and certainly they’ve whetted the appetites of many Apple devotees who will want to see this haven in person. Unfortunately, however, our heroine has tasted the bitterness of being carelessly exploited by the executives at her company, perhaps now feeling for the first time what Apple’s manufacturing partners exact from their workers. With luck she will learn from this and enact change from within. Now that’s an impossible mission.