Monday, May 18, 2009

Star Trek: The Product Placement Experience

My wife and I went to see Star Trek again today, this time with some friends, and my assessment of it hasn't changed one bit since last week: good summer action flick, but not a Star Trek movie. (it's a pretty one-dimensional film - there isn't room in this speed-binge of a story for nuances requiring more than one viewing to notice or understand)

One thing I noticed last time that I tried to keep track of this time was product placement. In Trek, the blatent display of the 20th/21st century products in the 23rd century shows the lengths Hollywood will go to offset the cost of a film, even when it's not reasonable to claim that those products would still be around in 200-odd years, after a couple of fairly significant global wars and occasional economic slumps. I've counted four fairly obvious ones:

1) Corvette (sure, it's vintage, but still a good plug for the car brand)
2) Nokia (the brand of cell phones/car phones preferred by delinquent young galactic heroes)
3) Budweiser (you'd think in the future they'd drink good beer - sadly, it appears they don't)
4) Jack Daniels (can't fault them for this choice, really)

Does the old Beastie Boys song Sabotage count as a product plug? Maybe, if song/album sales suddenly go up as a result of the movie.

I wasn't sure whether Kirk & Sulu's parachute packs had brand names on them.

Any other product placement shots I missed?

In the end, Yogurt was only half right in Mel Brooks' Spaceballs when he said: "Merchandizing, merchandizing, merchandizing! Where the real money from the movie is made!" A big chunk of the coin comes from selling screen time for product placement.


Also, for another take on the new Trek film, check out my friend Steve Rowe's review.

No comments: