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Watch: Avengers director Joss Whedon assembles all his famous friends to get you to vote

Constance Grady
Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.

Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has returned to Twitter.

Whedon, who famously left Twitter shortly after his movie Avengers: Age of Ultron opened, is back — and it’s not to tell us that he’s finally making a sequel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. (My fingers are still crossed, though.) No, he’s here to tell us to vote.

Whedon’s created a new Super PAC called Save the Day, one that describes itself as “a short-form digital production company dedicated to the idea that voting is a necessary and heroic act.”

To promote it, he’s produced a star-studded ad that is basically the most Joss Whedon-like thing I’ve ever seen; all it needs is for someone to have sex and then immediately die and then it would achieve Joss Whedon apotheosis and probably spontaneously combust while reciting a snarky one-liner or something.

The spot is simultaneously earnest and self-parodying, an ad that absolutely sincerely thinks you should vote (and, not so secretly, thinks you should vote for Hillary), but that also thinks celebrity-filled political ads are kind of dumb.

“You might think it’s not important, you might think you’re not important,” says Mark Ruffalo earnestly.

“But that’s not true,” adds Keegan-Michael Key, also earnestly.

“And the only way we can prove that to you is by having lots of famous people,” continues Robert Downey Jr., who is echoed by celebrity after celebrity assuring you of the importance of having famous people — “Just a shit ton of famous people,” says Julianne Moore — telling you to vote.

Not all of them, admits Tom Lenk (Andrew on Buffy), are really that famous, but they’re still pretty famous. “Like, you’ve seen us somewhere,” says a woman who I have in fact seen somewhere before and cannot for the life of me remember where. (Pro tip: Googling “brunette actress joss whedon” will take you nowhere good.)

And if passels of famous and semi-famous people holding up signs that say “IMPORTANT” aren’t enough to convince you to vote, consider this: If you vote, Mark Ruffalo will do a nude scene in his next movie.

“Wait, what?” says a nonplussed Ruffalo.

“Mark’s gonna have his dick out,” confirms Downey.

So really, if you vote, we all win.

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