Pearl Jam – Do the Evolution
1998 · Directed by Kevin Altieri & Todd McFarlane
926K Likes
Best comments
1.“'Why won't aliens visit us?' The calmest human disagreement:”
More comments
- 2.“There were two things consistent throughout humanity's evolution: the cruelty... and the omnipotent goth GF.”
- 3.“Millions of years of evolution... to buy a gamer girl's bath water. Edit: It got worse. Now they subscribe to OnlyFans.”
The story
Pearl Jam spent most of the '90s refusing to make music videos. Do the Evolution, from 1998's Yield, was their first since Oceans in 1991. And they didn't even show up in it.
Eddie Vedder liked the look of the Spawn cartoon, so he sent Spawn creator Todd McFarlane a tape of the song dubbed over episodes of the show. McFarlane co-directed with Kevin Altieri, a Batman: The Animated Series veteran. Epoch Ink Animation did pre-production in Santa Monica, studios in Seoul did the animation, and more than a hundred artists spent sixteen weeks on it.
What they made is four minutes of human history at full throttle. Single cells become dinosaurs become people with tools in a blink. Then come the wars, genocide, fascist rallies, a bishop and a judge, a presidential candidate who turns out to be a puppet, and a nuclear blast, with a pale Death figure tagging along the whole way. It ends on Earth as an egg and a yield sign getting smashed. Vedder sang it as a character – a man drunk on technology who thinks he owns the planet – and the song leaned on Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael.
It premiered on MTV's 120 Minutes and got a Grammy nomination for Best Music Video. The band's official take? They'd tried to make a good stoner video. Mission accomplished, plus a little existential dread.
