PlayStation’s Star Wars: Battlefront holiday commercial is absolutely shameless

Skillfully combining three things that make thirtysomething dudes cry—Star Wars, Boyhood, and the end of Fight Club—Sony’s new holiday commercial cruelly attempts to manipulate its target audience into buying Star Wars: Battlefront by appealing to the powerful twin forces of nostalgia and ennui. Yes, Sony has brought a melancholy bomb to a merchandising knife fight by reminding customers of a lifetime of play inspired by Lucas’ space opera, carefree days now reduced to a dirty R2-D2 figurine on a lonely desk in a soulless corporate workplace. Naturally, the only escape from this existential hellscape is more Star Wars—in video-game form this time, because you are an adult now. All it needs is “Cat’s In The Cradle” and a paternal voice whispering, “I’m proud of you,” and this would be the most blatant appeal to repressed male emotions since the end of The Lego Movie.

Star Wars: Battlefront will be available November 17, just in time to numb the overwhelming sadness of a child who just realized Santa isn’t real.