On has made Zendaya an action hero for two minutes, and the shoe she is selling is a ballet flat. That tension – full-contact fight film versus a Mary Jane sneaker you could wear to brunch – is the whole story of “Your New Favorite Action Movie,” the launch film for her second co-created collection with the Swiss brand and stylist Law Roach.
The hero product is the Cloudnova Moon Mary Jane, and the strategy behind it is not subtle. According to Adweek, the campaign is part of On’s push to win younger women at a moment when growth in the Americas is slowing and Nike is the obvious wall to climb.
WHAT HAPPENS
We open on a lone figure dwarfed by grey concrete fins – a brutalist plaza that looks borrowed from a 1970s Eastern Bloc thriller. Zendaya, in a python-print bodysuit and a drab anorak, is ambushed by a squad of women fighters. What follows is a run of set pieces: a brawl across a rain-slicked plaza, a parking-deck standoff beside a boxy vintage sedan, a stairwell scramble, a chase down a glass-walled office corridor and a final rooftop showdown above a city of red roofs.
She takes hits. She lands on her back on wet asphalt. She gets up, stares down the camera and goes again. There is no dialogue and no product shot until the very end, when the film drops the pretence: Zendaya falls backwards off the rooftop onto a giant red air cushion, flips, bounces and lands in a crouch. A python slides across the red surface. “Dream On.” On logo. Done.
CREDITS
- Brand: On
- Talent: Zendaya, with Law Roach (co-creator of the collection, featured)
- Director: Pantera
- Production: Smuggler
- Product: Cloudnova Moon Mary Jane, from the second Zendaya x On co-created collection
- Sources: On press release (Oct 1, 2026), Adweek (Oct 1, 2026)
No creative agency is credited in On’s release or in the trade coverage, so we are not naming one.
EXECUTION
Pantera and Smuggler clearly took the brief literally. This is not a fashion film pretending to be an action movie; it is staged like one. The fights are blocked in long enough takes that you can follow who is hitting whom, the stunt work has real weight, and the camera stays low and close enough to sell impact without the shaky-cam blur that usually hides weak choreography. The grey, overcast grade and the concrete locations do a lot of work: they make the snakeskin bodysuit the only texture in the frame.
Zendaya is good at this. She does not wink. The close-ups – wet hair, eyes up, fists set – play the genre straight, and that commitment is what keeps the film from tipping into parody. The fighters are cast as a real threat, not background – a hero only looks tough if the opposition does.
The ending is the clever bit. The red air cushion turns the stunt fall into a reveal: a movie set gag, a soft landing and, finally, a wide shot where you can actually see the shoes in motion as she jumps. The python crawling across the red is a neat callback to the print, and a quiet admission that the collection is the real star.
WHAT WORKS
- Genre commitment. The film earns its title by behaving like an action sequence, not a lookbook with a few kicks inserted.
- Clothes in motion. The bodysuit and anorak read clearly in every fight beat; the styling is legible even at speed.
- The red-cushion finale. A smart pivot from grit to play that reframes the whole film as a stunt rehearsal – and gives the product its only clean moment.
- Restraint. No voiceover, no feature list, no slogan beyond “Dream On.”
What does not work as well is the sell itself. For roughly a minute and a half, the Cloudnova Moon is a blur on someone’s foot in a wide shot. A Mary Jane is a delicate silhouette; it is the one thing you cannot read in a fast fight cut. The film argues that the shoe can take a beating, but it barely lets you look at it. If you did not already know this was a footwear launch, you could watch the whole thing and remember the python print, the hair and the rooftop – not the shoe. Two minutes is also generous: the middle stretch repeats the same beat – ambush, struggle, recovery.
There is a broader question, too. On built its name on engineering – CloudTec, Swiss performance, real running. This film says almost nothing about how the shoe works, only how it looks on the most photographed woman in the room. That is a legitimate fashion play, but it means the ad is building Zendaya’s brand at least as much as On’s.
VERDICT
“Your New Favorite Action Movie” is one of the better celebrity sneaker films of the year: committed, well choreographed and confident enough to skip the explainer. Pantera makes Zendaya look like she belongs in the genre, and the red-cushion ending is a genuinely nice idea. As a shoe ad, it is weaker – the Cloudnova Moon Mary Jane is the least visible thing in its own launch. Watch it for the fight work. Then go to the product page to find out what you were supposed to want.
