Call of Duty has never been a particularly smart series, but this Advanced Warfare trailer is pretty dumb even for it.
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Live-action trailers are all the rage nowadays with big releases and now Activision has their own, directed by Peter Berg, creator of modern classics like Battleship and Hancock. (Fine, fine, we'll give him Very Bad Things.) It features a first-person viewpoint that puts you in the role of the protagonist, and has Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) showing you how fun it is to use all these nifty futuristic toys. In case you're not aware of how fun it is, never fear! Kitsch will tell you how awesome it is near the end.
Another fun thing that happens is an appearance by model Emily Ratajkowski. She's a truly stunning woman that shows up right after we get knocked unconscious, sporting tiny shorts and a belly-and-boobs-exposing top, playing with her hair and bending over seductively, a vision framed in lens flare.
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"Hey- what are you doing?" she asks, before the camera whips over to Kitsch. "What are you doing? We don't kiss goats!" he yells, reminding our recruit of a rule printed in every futuristic military manual. The camera swings back and instead of a beautiful woman we see a goat licking its lips.
Ha-ha, it's cute and funny, right? It's harmless! And the perfect point of feminist critics like Anita Sarkeesian. The only woman in the trailer is a sex object, used solely as a joke.
Listen- I like looking at beautiful women as much as (and probably more than) the next guy, but this is the kind of thing the industry should be thinking more about, especially with all the nonsense going on nowadays. What does it say to your audience that you make a dumb association like this? What does it say to young girls that see that the men get to have fun blowing up stuff and playing with futuristic gadgets, and the only woman turns into a goat?
It's not like this is Leisure Suit Larry or some other comedy game where this kind of thing is expected, this is completely out of nowhere for the gritty series and apparently only used because boys like looking at half-dressed ladies. Is this the audience they're targeting?
"Discover Your Power" is the name of this trailer, as if to drive the bone-headed point home even further.
What do you think, am I being too sensitive? I'm sure you'll tell me in the comments below regardless.
