Iron Man product placement goes too far
by Chris 9 comments Leave a comment May 12th, 2008
I saw the new Iron Man this last weekend. I thought it was a pretty good movie. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was satisfying for a summer action flick.
I don’t have many complaints about Iron Man, but there was one scene that really bothered me and ruined my sense of immersion.
***Extremely minor spoiler to follow***
After Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, escapes from weeks of captivity in Afghanistan he demands two things, a press conference and an American cheeseburger. What kind of cheeseburger does billionaire Tony Stark get for himself after his near death experience? He gets one from Burger King!
This is just product placement gone too far, but if true, this is a good story to go with Iron Man’s bit of corporate whoring:
On or around Independence Day in 2003, [Robert Downey Jr., a.k.a. Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man] stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway and threw all his drugs in the ocean. And while he was sitting there chewing on a burger, he decided he was done. This being America, five years later you can walk into that Burger King, and if you order a Kids Meal you can get your own Robert Downey Jr. action figure, wrapped up in gadget ware. (And what does Tony Stark want when he escapes his kidnappers? A good old American cheeseburger — from Burger King, natch.)
From NY Times @ Spout Blog
Don’t forget that the car he always drives, even though he has a garage full of them, is an Audi.
Its inescapable now in movies, especially summer blockbusters. Like I watched Hellboy the other day and there is a scene where Hellboy steals some beer to take to Liz, and as he is taking it you get a nice good closeup on only the beer for a good couple seconds so you can read “BUD LIGHT” across the cans.
By the way, what did you think of Hellboy?
Dude… product placement… don’t get me started.
It’s evolving. As the % of DVR users increase, so do the elaborate PP marketing schemes… I’m pretty sure that *any* time any sort of product or service is shown or mentioned on a show or in a movie, it’s PP.
I think it’s gotten to the point where companies are paying shows to write ENTIRE EPISODES revolving around their product. Like that Second Life video game… back in the fall, there was a NUMB3RS episode and at least a CSI/Law & Order-type episode whose plot was centered on the game. The main characters had to learn all about it and solve the crime by playing it the whole time. Half of the dialogue could have been taken right off of the game box.
I really hope this PP trend of writing a product into the heart of the story doesn’t continue… anyone else seen examples of this?
There are those great episodes of South Park with World of Warcraft and the Nintendo Wii… The Seinfeld episode with the Junior Mints.
But those might be legit.
There are supposedly entire shows out there, and I am not just talk episodes, dedicated to a certain product. They don’t appear on TV but are free downloads. I don’t remember the specifics but one was like Alicia Keys doing a miniseries on the internet which was really just a big ad for Nokia or something.
I also forgot about the cell phone placement in Iron Man. They make a pretty big deal about showing his phone and there are ads out there where a phone company is using Iron Man to sell the phone.
And as for Hellboy, I thought it was pretty ridiculous storywise, but I liked the main character’s wise-cracking and the Del Toro visuals were awesome as expected. That Nazi assassin guy was gruesome.
Well here’s a couple examples of product placement:
http://www.avclub.com/content/hater/the_pepsi_stuff_dana_carvey_show
And the Alicia Keys thing I mentioned:
http://www.avclub.com/content/hater/alicia_keys_is_making_tiny
And its for Dove products, not Nokia.
I saw an episode of some show a couple months ago where a band would play concerts in an abandoned Stride gum factory, and the whole plot was about how this guy could turn himself elastic by chewing some contaminated Stride gum.
I’ve seen them try it on some reality shows too, like the entire cast just suddenly gets hungry for some Subway, it’s ridiculous.
Burger King is an English corporation.
Cameron,
According to Wikipedia it was founded in the U.S.