I watched Casino Royale (no not the Peter Sellers version) for the first time a few nights ago and was extremely frustrated. I couldn’t help but focus on the product placement overload. Here’s my observations:
- Every car was a car from the Ford motor group. I only ever saw Ford, Land Rover, Jaguar, Lincoln, and of course Aston Martin cars.
- Every piece of consumer electronics was a Sony. I saw Vaio laptops, Sony Ericsson phones, Sony Bluray players, LCDs, etc.
- He says at one point, “I wear an Omega watch”, or something to that effect.
It verged on the ridiculous.
It seems is if there are way too many competing interests on the James Bond franchise, that the artistic integrity of any movie made suffers.
My favourite part in the movie was when Bond ran through the wall in one of the opening sequences. So ridiculous it was that I went to create an Epic Maneuver, only to discover that there were two already.
almost correct about the cars but there where also numerous cars of the he group: several bentleys a new beetle a golf skoda police cars. Also one Ferrari 430
It’s one of the sad facts of life that movies have become so expensive to make that they have become obliged to start charging millions of dollars for a company’s products to be featured prominently. James Bond of the books always wore a Rolex, something that was carried over to the movies until Pierce Brosnan came on the scene. At least in Quantum of Solace there will be a car chase between the Aston marin (no longer owned y Ford) and an Alfa Romeo. But we can be sure to expect more of the same regarding other product placements.
I do not think that placements are too frequent, there are only several moments in the movie where they are blatant like the moments when Bond uses his SE cellphone or the “Omega” dialogue. Maybe there are more of them than in other films but hey, this is probably the biggest movie franchise on the planet.