It's bad enough that filmmakers are so out of ideas they are on a rampage of "movies about stuff you liked as a kid" (and unfortunately only liked because you were a kid). But the cross marketing of cars in movies and TV is not only out of hand, it's just awful. Transformers was transcendently terrible. Knight Rider IS the dark side of product placement. And, now, the newest addition to the list: Iron Man, which stars a recovering drug addict and his Audi R8. To help convince you that their car will make you a superhero, Audi launched an Iron Man microsite that lets you begin watching commercials for free in advance of the two-hour commercial coming to theaters soon. How much of a role the car will have in the movie remains to be seen; sometimes filmmakers will just tease viewers with a supposedly hot car and then it's Gone in Sixty Seconds. Other times its a ten-minute set piece involving Robots Gone Wild. Or an R8 sneaking into Moe Green's bedroom to make him an offer he can't refuse. Anyway, we'll give you the link, but don't click on it or else you could accidentally buy an R8 and pay 10 bucks to see a bad movie. P.S. Iron? That's soooo 18th century.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
how many viewers of Iron Man could realistically go out and buy an Audi? especially an R8. I mean, cool, but how is this profitable for car companies?
It’s just exposure.
Plus I love all the summer action movies. Come on Robots, destruction, hot babe. What about this is not good?
The X-men and spider-man movies have been great and I expect the same from Iron Man. Car porn is just a bonus
Of the recent Super Hero/Summer Action flicks, this one looks half way decent from the trailers…but we know that trailers can look good and the movie be total crap.
The GM financing of Transformers was meh – the whole premise is robots that transform into automobiles and back, so you’re stuck duplicating something. It would have been nice to have more brand variety however.
It’s the myth of the “halo car”.
But Iron Man should kick some serious butt, regardless of Audi’s marketing dollars. Then again, I had high hopes for Fantastic 4, and we know how that turned out.
Knight Rider IS the dark side of product placement.
Is this any different than it was with any other TV show? This has been going on for decades and all of a sudden it’s a bad thing? Does anybody remember the Rockford Files? GM actually admitted this helped them sell Firebirds for almost a decade.
The sounds track rocks and he has some cool cars in his garage that aren’t Audi. “I am Iron Man” love me some Ozzy!
Hey, don’t knock Iron Man. It actually looks pretty decent mostly because Robert Downey Jr. does fit the role, the Tony Stark character (Iron Man) is an alcoholic. That can’t be too much of a stretch.
I don’t mind product placement too much if its subtlety and tastefully done.
A good example would be Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne rolls around in a Murcielago in that one, which is apropo as Murcielago is Spanish for bat.
A bad example would be Transformers (blech) or any Michael Bay “film”. My favorite robot in the cartoon, Jazz, went from transforming into a Martini Porsche 935 Turbo to transforming into Pontiac Solstice in Bayformers. How the hell do you go from a 935 Turbo to a Solstice?! Then they killed him off in the same movie.
Just when I thought Michael Bay had stopped making stinkers…
This microsite is useless.
Some odd menu selection I did, panned by all 3 audis in the garage; the Wagon, the Sedan and then to the R8. You had to wait for the tailgate to shut on the wagon, it zooms through the windows to the dash in the sedan before settling on the R8.
I like Audi’s. This site sucks.