The Time and Place

Unlike most of the American public this weekend I traveled to the cinema to check out the last installment (or is it?)in the Resident Evil movies. Right off the bat let me just tell you one thing, it was a good movie. I'm tired of the movie getting bashed over and over because of some of its short falls. Come on people, its a video game movie, it's not supposed to be some Oscar Nominee. It's a movie about zombies and viruses. So, if you like those kinds of movies, I highly recommend it. If not, save your money and your views.

The biggest thing I noticed when reading the reviews was the consistent bashing people did about the apparent product placement throughout the movie. Watching it I did notice one company in particular, Sony, who had a few products included in the movie, most dominately their VAIO computer which is used by every lab scientist. I thought this might be a fun idea to explore and demote as best I could.

It's funny how people were extremely apparent to it in this film when pretty much every movie ever made has some product tie in somewhere. Resident Evil clocked in with a total of 11 products being shown throughout the entire film. To the avid reader, this may seem like a lot, but is actually a relatively low number when you look at other films. Take for instance the low budget hit Superbad that clocked in with 34 different product placements or The Bourne Ultimatum with 59.

While most people complain that they hate being bombarded with these images from corporations, I think everyone need to keep in mind the fact that movies aren't cheap. Those high tech CGI scenes that we all know and love cost the company a pretty penny. The company needs to do whatever it possible can to reduce these costs, as well as combat the costs of promoting the movie once it is done. A studio can spend anywhere up to about 18 million dollars just to get the name of its movie out there. Slap that on to 35 million dollar budget and you got a pretty hefty charge on your credit card.

I think no one said it better than Michael Bay, director of the newest summer smash hit Transformers. For a long time he had been receiving criticism for his product placement in his movies.


" There are products in everything in everyday life. Do people think there shouldn't be brand names or something? Everything is branded. I hate commercials when they take logos off of stuff. It's not real life."


I for one appreciate when I'm watching a movie and see the actually Pepsi logo on the side of a can, rather than one blotted out. It helps the movie flow. It's the little things in movies that make them believable, such as brands. It'd be funny to take them away and then see how much people start complaining.

Product placement is an extremely interesting topic when it comes to movies. A cool site to visit is BrandCameo, a site that actually counts the number of brands that show up in a movie. Another cool site all about product placement is Product Placement News. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to view each page.