Adam McKay enlists Woody Harrelson for darkly satirical Exxon ad

With cozy images of flowers, happy babies, and frolicking beachgoers subtly shifting to rapid-fire clips of wildfires, raging seas, and collapsing houses, Harrelson’s narrator never wavers in his calmly patronizing spiel as he segues to suggesting that people direct their “finger-pointing and blame” at the right people. Meaning “poor immigrants and refugees.”

Over shots of police and masked ICE thugs manhandling, firehosing, and beating non-white people and protesters, Harrelson’s calming voice never wavers. “It’s a fact: Immigrants look and talk weird,” he states, “so you never know if they’re asking you what time it is or planning to sex traffic your daughter.” And don’t get him started on “those fat cat climate scientists” (cut to lines of cocaine and massive yachts, presumably owned by the likes of Neil Degrasse Tyson), who “bang supermodels” while “poor oil executives, corporate media types, and corporate CEOs grind out a living.” (Thankfully, Joe Rogan also appears, counseling climate change victims to simply “move to where it’s not so warm.”)

McKay’s done this sort of dead-on pranking before, as his fake Chevron ad from 2022 employed a similarly accurate oil company delivery device to explain how Chevron loves all life, “especially the dead kind that has been compressed for hundreds of  millions of years under massive rocks until it magically becomes oil.” As McKay put it at the time, “The idea for making this video joking about how Chevron, along with all the other oil companies, are murdering us every day, came from the fact that Chevron and all the other oil companies are murdering us every day.” 

As this most recent doomsday comedy short concludes, Harrelson’s narrator promises, “No one loves you more than Exxon,” adding, “In fact, if it were possible, we here at Exxon would want to, in a gentle and loving manner, enter you from behind.” The ad concludes unironically with the message that people concerned about being screwed by massive energy concerns (and El Niño) should head over to www.elninowarning.com.