Quantum of Annoyance--When Product Placement Goes Horribly Wrong
My wife and I watched the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace a week or so ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. As you might guess from my frequent references to Bond, I am a fan of the franchise--and while I occasionally miss the humor and campiness of the Roger Moore movies, I overwhelmingly approve of the franchise reboot. The series badly needed more realistic villains and a darker, more dangerous Bond, and the last two movies have delivered.
As good as Quantum of Solace was, though, all of its goodness was nearly unraveled by Ford's product placement whitewash. It didn't start out badly--the movie began with a thrilling car chase that featured Bond piloting a gorgeous Aston Martin. Even setting aside from Bond's history with the marque, Aston Martin is the perfect Bond car--muscular, debonair, slightly threatening, and thoroughly English. Aside from the fact that the company is owned by Ford, of course. (EDIT: Partially owned by Ford, that is. Ford sold all but a small stake last year. Thanks to the commenters for reminding me--I thought Ford still had a bigger stake.)
Likewise, I could buy that Bond would drive a Land Rover--it is a believable Bond vehicle, especially for off-road situations. Again, Land Rover is a Ford property. I even enjoyed the novelty of seeing a motorcycle chasing down an electric subcompact--a electric subcompact Ford Ka, naturally.
Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. As the movie went on, the Ford placement got more and more blatant, to the point where we saw the evil mastermind being driven around in a convoy of black Ford Edges. I don't have anything against the Edge--it's a nice-looking mid-size SUV--but I have difficulty accepting it as the preferred vehicle of an impossibly wealthy and powerful villain. I mean, this is a guy who pals around with powerful generalissimos at lavish parties and pulls the strings of the rich and powerful. And he's chauffeured in a Ford Edge? Really? If it must be a Ford product, why not another Land Rover? Or a Jaguar? Or why not get wacky and put the villain in a Maverick Grabber?
This may not seem like a big deal, but to a car guy, a Bond movie featuring only Ford products is like a drama movie featuring only people who, for no good reason, are all dressed in identical red leotards. It's completely unreal in a way that is incredibly distracting and destroys my willingness to suspend disbelief. And while it's true that these movies are packed with unrealistic events, excessive product placement is an unreality that actually undermines the movie's plot. By the end of the movie I cared less about what was going on with Bond and more about wondering which Ford product would show up next.
My wife is a noted automotive agnostic. Unless it's a Volvo 240 or Jeep Cherokee, she actually goes out of her way to not know or care about cars. When even she noticed and commented on the preponderance of Fords in Quantum of Solace, I knew it was excessive.
Even so, this isn't the most gratuitous example of automotive product placement I've seen, or even the most over-the-top Bond movie placement. My picks are below, but I'm sure I've missed some classics.
Most Gratuitous Movie Placement
The level of automotive product placement in The Matrix Reloaded completely dwarfs the Ford marathon in Quantum of Solace. In fact, it's not even close.
The Matrix in the film is a virtual reality created by our computer overlords that serves as a mental cage for the human race. It's not related to the Toyota Matrix, though whenever I ride in my friend's Toyota Matrix I have to suppress my desire to beatbox electronic music and speak like Lawrence Fishburne.
There is a scene in Reloaded, the second movie of the trilogy, in which some of our heroes are caught in the Matrix and pursued on a virtual freeway by various evil computer programs in the form of human-looking bad guys. Of course, mayhem ensues. The 10-minute-long freeway chase is an astonishingly ambitious action set-piece, it's fantastically entertaining, and ... every car involved is a GM vehicle.
Yes, that's right--about 10 minutes of movie time are completely dominated by GM products.Our heroes drive a Cadillac CTS; they are pursued by a Cadillac Escalade EXT and a bunch of Chevrolet police cars. The police cars are particularly unlikely--some are ancient Caprice Classics, and the rest are the too-small 2000-2005 Impalas that weren't particularly beloved by police departments. The rest of the cars on the freeway are Saturn wagons, Oldsmobile Intrigues, Pontiac Grand Ams, Chevy trucks and SUVs, minivans--virtually the entire GM catalog is represented. There are a few older GM products as well--an older Chevy pickup, and, as the prominent "outsider" car driven by some other good guys, a first-generation classic Pontiac Firebird.
I didn't exactly do a frame-by-frame review, but I have watched the video intently a few times now. Non-GM cars show up before the chase reaches the freeway; and once on the freeway we see some semi trucks, a prominently displayed Ducati motorcycle, and a Dodge Ram pickup that sticks out like a sore thumb. Otherwise, though, it's all GM.
The real world is populated by lots of different types of cars--different makes, different models, different ages, different conditions. A freeway filled with only new GM products is completely unnatural. And it's not just a few cars--a little research turns up the fact that GM donated 300 vehicles for use in the scene, and I believe it.
As with the Ford placement in Quantum, the whole thing is incredibly unlikely and, for me, horribly distracting. I can almost give the Matrix a pass because it's meant to be unreal--a computer-generated representation of the real world created to enslave humanity. But even this doesn't hold much water. Are we supposed to believe our computer overlords are only capable of rendering GM cars? If so, the Matrix is an even more horrifying place than previously imagined.
Unintended Consequence: I'm not sure this is what GM was going for, but if the producers wanted to pick bland, generic cars to blend into the background, early 2000s GM vehicles were the perfect choice.
This isn't the first time we've seen an all-GM freeway--In researching the Reloaded placement, I stumbled across a post describing an all-1973 Chevy Caprice freeway in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die. As you can see in the image, it's also wildly unnatural, though given my automotive tastes I find it completely fantastic.
If a freeway populated with Oldsmobile Silhouettes and Pontiac Grand Ams is hell for a person like me, a freeway filled with 1970s Impalas and Caprices is clearly heaven. If they were going for blatant unreality, why didn't the producers of The Matrix Reloaded choose to fill their freeway with 1973 Caprices? That at least would have been highly original.
The Matrix Reloaded freeway chase scene is broken into two sections below. Caution--the videos feature mature language, violence, offensive product placement, and a whole lot of assorted Matrix-related weirdness.
Most Gratuitous TV Placement
My wife and I were huge fans of the TV show Alias--its action, wackiness, and anything-goes mythology made it a gripping show into which we could totally sink ourselves. Thanks to the magic of TV on DVD, we would watch episode after episode, sinking ourselves into the entertaining espionage and counter-espionage of Sydney Bristow and her partner in crime prevention, Michael Vaughan.
That is, until we came across the 14th episode of the third season--Blowback. A few minutes into the episode, Sydney and Vaughan were chasing down some faceless double agents, one of which, unbeknownst to Vaughan, was Vaughan's wife. The pursuit led Sydney and Vaughan through a building, up the stairs, and into the top level of a parking garage, at which point they see the bad guys screaming away in a stolen Ford Mustang.
Sydney looks around and chirps, "Quick, get the F-150!"* The camera then zooms in on the F-150 fender logo before the burly F-150 pushes some other cars out of the way (other Fords, of course) and sets off in chase.
This was the apparent culmination to a season-long plot thread, a dramatic moment bringing to a head Vaughan's wife's betrayal and potentially revealing to our heroes the shadowed enemy they had been chasing for the previous 13 episodes.
"Quick, get the F-150!?" Really? That's the best they could do in that situation? With that one line and the camera zoom on the F-150 logo, the producers took a blowtorch both to their own credibility and to our willingness to suspend our disbelief for this show.
In the moments after Sydney uttered that infamous and completely unlikely line, my wife and I shared a moment of shocked silence and then at least 30 seconds of derisive laughter. I understand that when the episode aired on broadcast TV, a Ford F-150 commercial led off every commercial break--we would have greeted those commercials with the same cynical laughter.
We continued to watch Alias, but we never felt quite the same about the show after that moment. As with Bond and the Matrix movies, I was used to dealing with unreality in Alias; it's part of the show's appeal. But this unreality had nothing to do with the show's mythology or quirky charm. The producers had put an advertisement above their viewers and the credibility of their own show.
And, to be honest, the placement did the F-150 no favors in our household either. It's not as if I am in the F-150 target demographic anyway, but now there's no way I will never buy one. And even if I did, I know my wife would ridicule me with "Quick, get the F-150!" jokes before every trip to the supermarket.
Unintended Consequences: First, Ford products are apparently incredibly easy to steal. Second, the Mustang is evidently worthless as a performance car. The Mustang has a lot of apparent advantages over an F-150 in a parking garage race--lighter weight, more power, better handling--and in this case, the Mustang had a head start of at least 20-30 seconds. Yet the F-150 caught it within seconds. Why would I want to buy a muscle car that performs so much more poorly than a full-size pickup truck? If Ford had really been thinking, they would have put the baddies in a Camaro and let viewers draw their own conclusions.
I am a helpful guy, and so I have been thinking of three acceptable alternate scenarios that would have salvaged the show's credibility.
1. Play up the absurdity of the placement
In this case, one way to rescue the absurd it to make it so over-the-top that it's clear the producers and writers are as disgusted as the viewer.
For example, Vaughan could have stared right into the camera and said in a deadpan voice, "Absolutely, Sydney, and it's a great choice. After all, the F-150 has been America's best-selling vehicle since 1992."
Also acceptable would have been the absurdly specific reference ("Quick! Get the F-150 Extended Cab Harley Davidson Edition with the 5.4-liter Triton V-8!") or a reference to an old car whose sales don't benefit Ford at all ("Quick! Get the Ford Escort EXP!").
2. Ridicule the placement
In this scenario, after Sydney chirps, "Quick! Get the F-150!" Vaughan stops running and fixes Sydney with a silent, derisive, mocking stare for a minimum of 30 long seconds. Ideally, Sydney flushes with shame under Vaughan's reproachful stare, and she looks completely deflated as they silently get into a different, non-Ford vehicle.
This is probably my favorite of the three alternate scenarios.
3. The placement works out poorly
Sydney and Vaughan jump into the F-150, but they lag badly behind the Mustang. They pull to a stop after losing the Mustang, defeated with the knowledge that selecting a pickup truck to follow a performance car through a parking garage was an abjectly awful idea.
Part of the episode in question is archived in the video below; skip ahead to the 2:50 mark to see the moment of shame
* Video review shows that she actually just said "The F-150!", but I prefer my version.
--Chris H.
Jim Bob on December 04, 2008 at 03:45 AM
How about all the Ford LTD's in Hawaii 5-0? I used to watch it in reruns a few years ago and always found it funny that the police would drive a car that pitched and rolled like a dinghy in a hurricane. I also seem to remember that the ending credits of an early 60's TV show ( My Three Sons?) had the entire lineup of 1962 or 63 Chevys as part of it.
That Car Guy on December 04, 2008 at 06:47 AM
Jim Bob, I fell out laughing when you remended me of the black sedans on "Hawaii 5-0" wallering around all over the place... they looked like the shocks had been totally removed! Also, they were the only cars in history to make asphalt tire-screeching sounds while spinning or sliding in the sand.
Chris Hafner on December 04, 2008 at 08:19 AM
Rob the SVX Guy: "I saw it, and honestly at least it was the unattainable euro fords. I didn't bother me at all, since they weren't numerous and blatent about it."
Well, the electric Ford Ka is Euro ... but the worst and most blatant example was the convoy of Ford Edges, and those are all American.
Rob the SVX Guy on December 04, 2008 at 10:45 AM
Yeah, but again, it wasn't unbelieveable. I could see a rich guy buying a bunch of the same car. What I can't see is a chase taking place in LA where EVERY SINGLE VEHICLE ON THE ENTIRE FREAKING HIGHWAY is a new GM vehicle. Ugh.
That really ruined Matrix 2 for me.
ken on December 04, 2008 at 12:14 PM
The worst product placement I've seen in a while was in an episode of Monk where Glad ForceFlex garbage bags was part of the plot for a few minutes.
As horrible as Josie and the Pussycats was at times, the over-the-top skewering of product placement was one of its redeeming features.
Dr. Kenneth Noisewater on December 04, 2008 at 12:16 PM
I dunno, I still am annoyed at the Mercedes ad in X-Men 3, where Magneto is moving the bridge and there's just a ton of cuts on this Merc SUV inside and out.. It's like "look at the grille! look at all the cupholders!".. Par for the abominable course of that excrescent film...
atm on December 04, 2008 at 12:28 PM
I'm sorry, while the madman plots in the latest two Bond movies have been more mundane, they have not become any more realistic. Do we really believe that terrorists and their bankers would engage in high stakes gambling with agents of spy agencies to secure funding for terrorist operations? Do we really believe that this global criminal and terror organization in the current Bond movies is interested in cornering water supplies in third world countries? What I found particularly obnoxious about the last Bond movie is tired old oil-for-blood charge levied against the US.
While I like the grittiness of the new Bond, the plots and political commentary are weak. If they continue this course in future Bond movies, I probably will boycott them.
LA LAwyer on December 04, 2008 at 12:28 PM
YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!! I am so glad someone else pointed this out! The "rub my face in it" placement almost ruined the movie! What next? "M" driving a Ford?
Ford ought to know better: swamping the old 1060's TV series "The FBI" with Fords that even the bad guys drove didn't keep the VW's away.
The producers of the Bond movies ought to know better: this is the way the Star Wars movies declined: stop it!
jfb1138 on December 04, 2008 at 12:31 PM
I watch reality cop shows for the car brands. Usually, it's a good sign of the cars I don't want to have.
jaymaster on December 04, 2008 at 12:32 PM
Shawn,
The placement in the Transformers movie is even worse than you imagined. Not only did all the “good guys” turn into GM products, but the “bad guys” were pretty blatantly Fords.
I thought the movie was good, though (and that’s coming from a Mustang guy….) I would recommend it to any autophile.
LA LAWYER on December 04, 2008 at 12:33 PM
Oh by the way "ATM," he wasn't gambling to fund the terrorist plots, he was in the game to replace the money he lost short selling an airline he intended to ruin, with money he had been given to invest by some African mercenaries. Bond stopped the airline accident, caused lachiffe to lose $100 million and lachiffe's only way to replanish the money (and not get rubbed out by the African mecs)was the card game. Geez, man watch the movie.
Mark on December 04, 2008 at 12:39 PM
Sorry, I couldn't even get to the cars in that Alias clip. As soon as they were informed that the guy's vault was designed to accomodate teraflops, I checked out. I knew there were reasons, beyond Garner, why I didn't watch that show.
rateoforange on December 04, 2008 at 01:03 PM
It looks like 'quick, get the F150' is mocking of product placement. Zooming in on the logo is total, classic camp--to the degree that I can't believe you wouldn't recognize that it was satire.
Orion on December 04, 2008 at 01:03 PM
The Bond movie franchise toned down James Bomd considerably, turning him into a swinging, international playboy that women swooned over and oh-by-the-way-he-kills-bad-guys. Actually it started off just the other way around: Originally 007 was an assassin, a sabatour, a "fixer" sent in to ruin the bad guys' day. In one of the early Flemings books Bond remarks, "I am Her Majesty's Blunt Object". British intelligence in the Bond universe is divided between MI5, whose agents are the super spies that infiltrate and ferret out information and MI6, whose agents act on the information the MI5 spies uncover. That's James Bond's outfit. When he comes to town it's because you have well and thoroughly PO'ed the British Government and he's there to make you pay.
Chris Hafner on December 04, 2008 at 01:08 PM
rateoforange: "It looks like 'quick, get the F150' is mocking of product placement. Zooming in on the logo is total, classic camp--to the degree that I can't believe you wouldn't recognize that it was satire."
It was almost over-the-top enough to qualify under my absurdist exception - exception No. 1 above. But even if it wasn't product placement and was just satire - which it wasn't - then it was still really jarring at that crucial point in the plot.
SydneyBristow on December 04, 2008 at 01:14 PM
I was almost afraid you'd overlook it and am so proud that you didn't!
In the moments after Sydney uttered that infamous and completely unlikely line, my wife and I shared a moment of shocked silence and then at least 30 seconds of derisive laughter.
the line was actually, "Vaughn! The F-150!", but yeah, it was horrific. My roommate and I stared at each other for several full seconds going, "huh?...They did NOT?????" And then didn't Vaughn and Sid run around several *really* fast cars in that structure before they took the truck, too???? Ugh.
On the upside, that line has served as a running joke between several friends now for years, so, you know, there's that.
Dan Palmer on December 04, 2008 at 01:25 PM
"This has always bugged me about car chases. For the car chase to work, the two cars must be of roughly similar speed, but the cars they use just aren't. Bullitt is the most famous example - the bad guys drove a Hemi Charger, and Steve McQueen drove a Mustang. The Hemi Charger was way, way faster than the Mustang, and the driver of the Charger had to take it easy to allow the Mustang to keep up."
Chris, I'm not an expert, but I am pretty confident that McQueen's GT390 Mustang would have been able to keep up with the larger heavier Charger.
Rob the SVX guy on December 04, 2008 at 01:26 PM
You guys are being way too harsh about bond. Sure, there is SOME product placement. Certain people drive a certain type of vehicle, some of which aren't even offered in America. Big freaking deal.
It's completely preferrable to GM's Transformers movie, where EVERY VEHICLE ON EARTH is a GM product. Or GM's Matrix Reloaded chase scene, where EVERY VEHICLE ON THE STREET is a GM product. That just pisses me off.
If some company wants to donate money for certain cars to be certain characters rides, fine. But don't replace ALL the vehicles in a movie with one marque. It just looks ****ing STUPID.
JOHN B on December 04, 2008 at 01:36 PM
The worst offender for a current tv show has to be Smallville. Teenage Clark Kent is full of angst because his parents are stuggling to keep the farm and yet he and his unemployed friends have a different new vehicle every couple of episodes. There may be a meteorite infection that causes their cars to mutate. It is Smallville after all.
Bryan Frymire on December 04, 2008 at 01:42 PM
Andy Griffith anyone? Old Fords galore! And the Chryslers on "The Beverly Hillbillies" were awesome. Jed's old truck? An Oldsmobile. Seriously. Ransom Old's finest.
buster1 on December 04, 2008 at 01:44 PM
The auto product placement in "24" was over the top, too, although I can't remember now which brand it was (American).
Moptop on December 04, 2008 at 01:45 PM
Come on, in Casino Royale Ford went so far as to place their New Holland heavy equipment into the movie, having bond gratuitously drive a front end loader through a junk yard after a villain of some sort.
vic on December 04, 2008 at 01:53 PM
I've been watching the DVD reissues of the old "Route 66" television series recently. Aside from the Corvette the two guys cruise around the country in, every other car is a recent-model Chevrolet, from '59 Bel Air convertables to '61 cop cars and sedans, and '61 pickup trucks, etc. In one episode I watched last night, a dowager lady from a wealthy boatbuilding family is driven around in what looks like about a '53 or thereabouts Cadillac limousine with the drop-top over just the back bench.
Quite an exquisite experience, seeing all that lovely GM sheetmetal...
I disagree with those who deride the Matrix chase scene. The "main character" Cadillacs in that scene are very futuristically styled and that works well in context. The scene in the garage right before the chase is cool because the cars parked in there are all Cadillacs of various vintages. I thought it was clever, not obnoxious.
LAN3 on December 04, 2008 at 02:04 PM
The "play up the absurdity" gag was done very well in, of all movies, "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" (which is the sequel to "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" and shouldn't be confused with it). The main characters final obstacle between their final strike against the killer tomatoes turns out to be the movie's budget-- the crew and director suddenly appear to inform the stars (including a nobody named George Clooney in a major supporting role) that the movie has gone broke. They resolve to do product placement, which places the main characters on brand new Honda ATVs and drinking some-or-other popular soft-drink, giving expository dialogue about the merits of each product and how much they'r enjoying it.
It's worth the price of seeing the movie, which, given the value of the movie and its age, should be quite small by now.
attila on December 04, 2008 at 02:09 PM
You ask why not put the villian in a Jag - they did earlier, in the opera scene.
What I want to know is why, out of all the cars featured in both Daniel Craig movies, the only car to be consistently trashed is the Aston? It makes me wince every time he rolls it in CR.
From memory, Ford's sponsorship deal with the Bond movies is now finished, so it will be interested to see who bankrolls the next one. I hope the film makers have enough integrity to keep him in an Aston (though if they are going for the "more like the books" angle, he should probably be in a Bentley)