But when a company uses this in an ad, THEY are the ones that come off as nihilists, and not in a good way.
If they wanted to express that the ipad CONTAINED all of those older things within it, they could have created this as something like Dr Strange would have done. Like make those items fly into a portal shaped like a giant ipad, and then shrink the ipad with all those items still inside.
Or at the very least, they could have presented the items to be destroyed like they were worn out and broken (and no longer in use), and then presented their destruction as giving them new life through recycling as an Ipad.
This ad will definitely pop into my head the next time I consider buying an Apple device, and not in a good way.
If you can't see the difference here I think this says more about you being able to put together reasonable comparables for arguments then anything else.
For example using "Australian girl on Instagram that crushes things and dances to their shape" as a comparable is so completely different as to be irrelevant except that there is similarity in something being crushed. It's like comparing a military jet and a mosquito because they can both fly.
To your question - they literally used crush and destroy as their message.
Unforced error on Apples part plain and simple.
Hollywood does destroy all sorts of things but that's not their sales pitch to you. It happens in the background. Also it isn't replacing those soulful cars with a new car -- it's using them for a shot.