Top Hollywood production values contribute to the slick effect of former President Donald Trump‘s latest campaign video, a sensationalist highly-stylized noirish 30-second spot.
Filmed in black and white, the video features dramatic music and Trump’s voiceover pledge to “demolish the deep state” and “liberate America” from a cast of villains.
Weird apocalyptic video posted by Trump on Truth Social tonight: “This is the final battle …” pic.twitter.com/lBzgqCRYz3
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 30, 2023
The villains to be defeated in the “final battle” by the hero, per Trump’s Hollywood script, include — according to Trump’s voiceover — the “warmongers, globalists, communists, Marxists and fascists” for starters. The news media is another target.
Trump also appears to mock Special Counsel Jack Smith and his investigation into Trump’s handling and storage of sensitive documents, which has so far resulted in 37 criminal charges. At the start of the video, before Trump enters the frame, the camera lingers for seven seconds on a room clearly marked “STORAGE” — an Easter egg reference to Smith’s case that is not accidental.
[NOTE: Easter eggs are “hidden references, clues or inside jokes that have been inconspicuously (and sometimes not so inconspicuously) placed” in media.]
Trump then slow-walks the hallway, past the storage room, staring into the camera, which moves in closer as he proceeds — a Hollywood directing technique staple.
See the scene below of Russell Crowe in Gladiator, vowing to have his “vengeance, in this life or the next” as the camera zooms in on the actor’s face.
Similar scenes abound in Hollywood hero films — see Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of The Lost Ark, and Al Pacino in Scarface — the latter featuring the camera closing in on the antihero as he fires an assault weapon.
Trump’s video has not yet been posted on Twitter, where it is rumored that Trump will return and where he has nearly 90 million followers, but instead on his Truth Social platform.
