Two summers ago, it was the abuse of CGI effects leading to soulless, tedious uninteresting movies (a problem that has most definitely NOT gone away). Last summer it was the overuse of the "cinema verité" style of handheld camera work (a la Bourne Supremacy) that got me going. This year, my nominee for the most abused movie tool is product placement.
God knows this isn't a new problem… product placement has been a part of entertainment since before movies were even being made, I'm sure. It's just that it keeps getting worse and worse and worse and there are two truly egregious examples of it in this year's crop of summertime brain-death movies. (Not that there probably aren't other bad examples to pick from… these two just beat me over the head with it and I find it annoying at best.)
Fantastic Four, in an apparently desperate attempt to give Johnny (the Human Torch), some kind of character hook, made him an action junkie prone to X Games friendly pursuits. While this isn't necessarily a bad idea from a story angle, what it really gave the producers and director an opportunity for was a lot of extraneous product placement. From the sharp, lingering close-up on his sunglasses (so we can see the brand emblazoned on the lens) before he's off for a day of snowboarding, to the stadium filled to bursting with advertisements amazingly well in-focus, considering they're (theoretically) background art, the moviegoer is attacked repeatedly with "subtle" advertising jammed into the movie and, arguably, distracting from the story the movie's trying to tell.
Worse by far is The Island. Michael Bay makes no bones about the product placement in his movie. Saddled with an "insufficient" budget of $120 million, he actively sought out placement deals with Budweiser, GM and Microsoft, offering them overt product placement in exchange for about $850,000. So he got his money to help make his movie, and we got treated to lingering shots of Michelob bottles, and a heavily-customized Chevy SSR among other things. (My favorite part of this is that, later in the article I've linked to, Bay admits that despite the product placement money, the movie went about $2.2 million over budget, but that "it totally wasn't my fault". Way to take ownership of your movie there, Michael.)
Let me acknowledge that I tend to have lower standards for summer blockbusters, as a genre. I don't expect deep characterization, I understand that plot, character and most times any internal logic will take a backseat to explosions, action and effects. And I'm willing to go along for the ride to see where it takes us. So problems that I would find unforgivable in a serious drama, I shrug off for the latest action film.
Having said that, let's make it clear that Fantastic Four and The Island are NOT great movies. I actually found The Island to be somewhat more entertaining and certainly more "slick" than Fantastic Four (let's face it, it's a Michael Bay film… you know what you're getting going in and he DOES have a way with action). The CGI-filled chase scene through future-LA, for instance, was pretty damn exciting. But lets not confuse these with actual good movies.
What it comes down to is that, when the most memorable moments you have coming out of a movie are of the products featured in the movie, you haven't made a movie… you've made a commercial. (A really bloated and over-produced commercial, perhaps, but a commercial none the less.)
And the studios wonder why people are staying away in droves this summer.
God knows this isn't a new problem… product placement has been a part of entertainment since before movies were even being made, I'm sure. It's just that it keeps getting worse and worse and worse and there are two truly egregious examples of it in this year's crop of summertime brain-death movies. (Not that there probably aren't other bad examples to pick from… these two just beat me over the head with it and I find it annoying at best.)
Fantastic Four, in an apparently desperate attempt to give Johnny (the Human Torch), some kind of character hook, made him an action junkie prone to X Games friendly pursuits. While this isn't necessarily a bad idea from a story angle, what it really gave the producers and director an opportunity for was a lot of extraneous product placement. From the sharp, lingering close-up on his sunglasses (so we can see the brand emblazoned on the lens) before he's off for a day of snowboarding, to the stadium filled to bursting with advertisements amazingly well in-focus, considering they're (theoretically) background art, the moviegoer is attacked repeatedly with "subtle" advertising jammed into the movie and, arguably, distracting from the story the movie's trying to tell.
Worse by far is The Island. Michael Bay makes no bones about the product placement in his movie. Saddled with an "insufficient" budget of $120 million, he actively sought out placement deals with Budweiser, GM and Microsoft, offering them overt product placement in exchange for about $850,000. So he got his money to help make his movie, and we got treated to lingering shots of Michelob bottles, and a heavily-customized Chevy SSR among other things. (My favorite part of this is that, later in the article I've linked to, Bay admits that despite the product placement money, the movie went about $2.2 million over budget, but that "it totally wasn't my fault". Way to take ownership of your movie there, Michael.)
Let me acknowledge that I tend to have lower standards for summer blockbusters, as a genre. I don't expect deep characterization, I understand that plot, character and most times any internal logic will take a backseat to explosions, action and effects. And I'm willing to go along for the ride to see where it takes us. So problems that I would find unforgivable in a serious drama, I shrug off for the latest action film.
Having said that, let's make it clear that Fantastic Four and The Island are NOT great movies. I actually found The Island to be somewhat more entertaining and certainly more "slick" than Fantastic Four (let's face it, it's a Michael Bay film… you know what you're getting going in and he DOES have a way with action). The CGI-filled chase scene through future-LA, for instance, was pretty damn exciting. But lets not confuse these with actual good movies.
What it comes down to is that, when the most memorable moments you have coming out of a movie are of the products featured in the movie, you haven't made a movie… you've made a commercial. (A really bloated and over-produced commercial, perhaps, but a commercial none the less.)
And the studios wonder why people are staying away in droves this summer.
Comments
The hilarious and crazy/stupid thing about THE ISLAND is that half the product placement takes place in the utopian world. Pumas, Aquafina, and (ouch) X-Box all appear in this place. BUT...how can these mega-corporate brands exist in a post-apocalyptic haven of the last humans on earth? Where do they come from???
Yep...lamest product placement of all time.
Q