Channel 4’s own creative hot (!!!) shop, 4 Creative, sees the world in a different way. So to promote Channel 4 and Cancer Research U.K.’s Stand Up to Cancer fund raising event on October 17, it turned the disaster move genre upside down.

And turned the way we see cancer on its ear. [Hint: humans win.]

The 2 minute animated film, It’s Payback Time, contains all the futuristic disaster movie clichés.

The Metropolis cityscape is a suffocatingly polluted, concrete jungle overpopulated with minions. An attack begins. Its weapon is a blue goo that combusts minions. As the attacks builds gradually to an intense crescendo, newspapers incite panic and governments “hose the flames”…

…But this time, we (humans) are the bad guys.

The minions are cancer cells and the blue goo is being administered by a scientist in a lab.

“We wanted to steer away from the obvious route of showing cells as a bunch of grotesque alien germs, but we were also acutely aware of not making them too human or cute. We also had to find a way to illustrate the new therapies, drugs and scientific breakthroughs that are fighting cancer. We wanted their arrival to be initially magical and mysterious, so we used a glowing blue orb, an unexplained light descending upon a shadowy world,” the film’s directors, Smith & Foulkes, explained.

Compare and contrast? Watch the video below and then watch the lung cancer campaign by Cactus. Which one hits you harder in the guts? Which one opens your wallet?

Creative credits:

Agency: 4Creative

Creative directors: Chris Bovill & John Allison

Creative: Pablo Gonzalez de la Pena

Directors: Smith & Foulkes

Production Company: Nexus

Live action production company: 4Creative

Live action director: Keith McCarthy

Editing: Trim

Sound design: Factory

Music production company: Siren