HOLLYWOOD FAIL: TRINITY

Yes, it's the third installment of Hollywood Fail, and this time out I'm going to be tackling a very topical subject: product placement.

As UK readers will know, the laws in the UK have recently been relaxed so as to allow US-style product placement in TV shows. Part of me thinks the change is due to the relatively perilous financial situations of the big three commercial broadcasters (ITV, Channel 4 and Five respectively), and is seen as a quick fix solution to the plummeting advertising revenues.

Of course, this rather conveniently overlooks the fact that if you can't attract paying advertisers (due to the poor quality and thus low audience numbers of your show), then you probably won't be able to attract product placements either. Speaking personally, as a heterosexual male, I really can't think of a show on the ITV network that I can be bothered to watch, unless they have a football match or occasional movie I fancy seeing, so if I were trying to advertise a product aimed at 18-35 males, which show would I do it on? I'm stumped.

Critics of the idea believe it will lead to TV dramas becoming nothing more than one giant advert, somewhat akin to nightmarish future envisioned so capably in The Truman Show.

The best example of product placement would have to be the Bond movies, which, up until recently has done so in a fairly subtle manner, and even at their most blatant they're still a damn sight more subtle than the competition. However, there are those movies and TV shows which also get it horribly wrong, and prove the fiercest critics of product placement to be absolutely right.



For me, the award winner has to be Blade: Trinity, in which we see Jessica Biel downloading songs from her MacBook onto her iPod, as we are told that she likes to listen to her iPod while she hunts vampires.

Just take a second and allow the abject stupidity of this statement to sink in. You're going off to hunt down these deadly creatures that stealthily stalk around these dark, shadowy lairs, and you're going to do whilst negating one of your five senses which could conceivably alert you to their presence and/or location.

I'm guessing Nike passed on the opportunity to be her blindfold sponsor?

Jessica Biel is ridiculously hot, and as such I feel I could probably forgive her anything. Anything, that is, except this. It's stuff like this that Meat Loaf was going on about when he said he'd do anything for love, but he won't do that. Even her nude striptease and candlewax sequence in "Powder Blue"(totally NSFW, but totally worth it at the same time...!) seems like scant penance by comparison.

Sadly, it seems there are things that Hollywood also isn't prepared to do for love (of the artform), but there are plenty of things they are prepared to do for money, like completely violating any semblance of common sense and cinematic reality to accomodate an ill-thought out yet probably lucrative product placement.

Of course, we cannot let this topic go by without reflecting upon this scene from Wayne's World, in which they spoof product placement sellouts whilst actually being product placement sellouts themselves. In effect, Myers and Carvey are laughing with us, but at us too...and getting paid handsomely for it in the process. For me, it's the Alpha and Omega of the product placement debate.

HOLLYWOOD FAIL II: Electric Boogaloo

I'd like to take the opportunity to address the phenomenon known as 'PIS', which stands for 'Plot-Induced Stupidity'. This occurs when characters in a film do something preternaturally stupid, completely against all logic, simply to advance the plot.

Case in point: The bridge sequence in Mission Impossible III.

Ethan Hunt and his IMF agents are apparently the cream of the cream of the crop, but once they touch down in the USA with high profile captive Owen Davian, it seems their ability to think rationally goes straight out of the window.

Rather than just landing their plane at a fortified military installation, they instead elect to transport Davian via a convoy, and just a regular convoy at that. No armoured vehicles, and no air support either. Then, just to compound their stupidity that little bit further, they decide to drive over a narrow bridge completely surrounded by ocean on both sides, meaning there's nowhere to go. Do they have gunboats in the water, shadowing their route? No. That would be far too logical.

If you've ever seen the classic convoy assault technique (and chances are, if you've seen enough action movies you will have...there's a great example of it in 'Clear And Present Danger', for example), it usually involves taking out the front and rear vehicles in the convoy to pin the remaining vehicles in and stop them from escaping. The only hope for the remaining vehicles is to ram their way out and make good their escape.

If it's a civilian target (like the opening robbery in Michael Mann's 'Heat', then you can just block the target in by using your own sufficiently heavy vehicles. If it's a VIP target, like a visiting dignitary, then the security services will normally have cleared the route of all traffic, hence necessitating the use of an RPG launcher to take out the vehicles and cause the blockage.

In MI:III, there is civilian traffic on the road. Yes, that's right, we're supposed to believe that the guy previously smart enough to break into CIA headquarters at Langley now doesn't have brains enough to think ahead and close the road off to civilian traffic...and who's to say that it is civilian traffic? Could be a plethora of highly-trained and heavily armed mercenaries bearing down on the convoy from both directions for all they know.

What's most funny is that Hunt is now apparently an IMF instructor. Suffice to say, with mission planning like this, he needs to take his ass back to class, because this is an unadulterated FAIL on all levels.

HOLLYWOOD FAIL

To quote the immortal line, "What's wrong with this picture?".

Firstly, it's "Spider-Man", not "Spiderman". They have at least got this right on the UK poster.

Most importantly, if you were some hotshot Hollywood marketing exec, and you had a horror flick by Sam Raimi to promote, would you really choose Spider-Man from Raimi's back catalogue to promote it with? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong (...and I'm not. I never am.), but didn't Raimi helm the Evil Dead trilogy, the first of which scared the living shit out of the kindly censors over at the BBFC? Yes, I believe he did.

Do today's moviegoers really have such a goldfish-like attention span that you have to namecheck a more recent movie in favour of a more apt one, or is it just a case of the Hollywood brain trust thinking it is so?

Me personally, I'm looking forward to getting one of them there posters for Robert Rodriguez' "Machete" flick, hopefully with the legend "From The Director Of Spy Kids" proudly emblazoned upon it. After all, it's not like they're going to acknowledge the fact he directed "Planet Terror" now, are they...?

I should add, no knock on the movie itself (which I haven't seen yet) as I've heard encouraging things about it, but whoever thought "From The Director Of Spider-Man" was a good idea needs to be dragged to Hell (or perhaps a conveniently located alleyway somewhere) and have their teeth knocked out.