Jaguar’s Super Bowl Ad Explains Why All The Best Movie Villains Are British

AARON TAUBE

Jaguar’s recently released Super Bowl commercial uses a trio of British actors and the cinematography of director Tom Hooper to delve into why all of the best movie villains come from across the pond.

In the 60-second ad, actors Sir Ben Kingsley, Tom Hiddleston, and Mark Strong speak to the camera and posit that Brits make the best bad guys because “we’re more focused,” “we have a certain style,” and “maybe we just sound right.”

Along the way, the men use a fancy helicopter and two swerving Jaguar F-Type Coupes to meet at a high-tech command center in London. “Oh yes,” Kingsley remarks at the end of the ad. “It’s good to be bad.”

The commercial features an ominous original soundtrack that was composed and conducted by Alexandre Desplat, who worked with Hooper on “The King’s Speech,” and recorded by The London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road.

The “Good To Be Bad” campaign is being run by Jaguar’s creative agency, Spark 44, and its media agency, Mindshare, which hope to cast the brand as an edgy British outsider challenging mainstays like Porsche and Mercedes-Benz in the U.S. luxury market.

The campaign has also included a digital promotion aspect through a partnership between Jaguar and Gawker Media’s content studio. Gawker created a separate blog, called Good To Be Bad, that features sponsored content from Jaguar, original work from Gawker’s content studio, and posts shared from Gawker editorial blogs like Gizmodo and Lifehacker.

The posts focus on general villainy, with titles like “A Guide to World Domination in 2014″ and “Four Devious Female Archetypes in Film (And How To Act Like Them).”

Jaguar’s ad will run during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLVIII, which will be contested Feb. 2 at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks.