Having won plaudits for its first two films featuring a balletic troupe of dancers, Festive and Open Spaces, Burberry is back with a third in the series, this time with a sci-fi slant.

Once again helmed by the directorial collective Megaforce via RiffRaff Films, the new film starts with a group of Burberry-clad young people on a London night bus discussing their night out at the movies. Suddenly the bus stops and on getting out they find the streets overtaken by an enormous alien creature with what looks like steel tentacles.

The alien reaches out and lifts the dancers into the air, where they perform some breathtaking sequences, interacting with its tentacles and at one point, looking up into its "face" in a "Close Encounters"-type moment. It concludes with the dancers reclining on the River Thames aboard the creature, which seems to have morphed into an aquatic craft.

The whole effect is as mesmerizing as ever, with incredible craft from the production team.

In a statement, the directors said that while "Festive" was about "resilience and facing adversity," and Open Spaces was about the  "‘joy of freedom," this year they wanted "to express the bold attitude that it takes to dive into the unknown: the fearless and playful spirit of adventure.”

(An alternative reading from a U.K. perspective: the first spot referenced Covid-19, the second, the end of the pandemic, and the third -- diving into the unknown with an alien force --- could reflect the current political and economic situation in  post-Elizabethan Britain.)